Federal Labor is promising to make supermarket price gouging illegal, if it wins next month's election. But Labor has indicated that changing those laws could take some time.
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00:00It's promising to set up a task force to investigate how it could go about making price gouging
00:08illegal.
00:09Price gouging is usually defined as kind of charging too much, excessive pricing beyond
00:15any sort of point of reason for goods that are often fairly well sought after.
00:19So supermarket goods, things like food, groceries, other items like that.
00:24Now, this all comes after a pretty substantial ACCC inquiry that reported back only in the
00:31past month or so.
00:32The competition regulator took a really good long look at the supermarket sector in Australia
00:37and found that actually couldn't conclude if that practice of price gouging was occurring.
00:43But Labor is now taking this step, it says it'll accept all the recommendations from
00:48that inquiry and take this further step of this action towards making price gouging illegal.
00:54So this task force that was set up would include both Treasury, the Department of Treasury
00:59here in Canberra, but also the ACCC, that competition regulator that conducted that
01:04inquiry.
01:05And it would be that regulator, the ACCC, would be given the powers to police this issue
01:10down the track under these new laws that Labor wants to set up.
01:14The Prime Minister says that both farmers and families deserve fair prices in their
01:19supermarkets and this is what it sees as the best step to take.
01:23Now, it's also worth noting the coalition has its own policy when it comes to supermarkets
01:28as well.
01:29It's promised to set up, to enact divestiture laws, laws to literally break up the supermarket
01:34sector if it finds that Australia's sector is too concentrated.
01:38It is, of course, dominated by two major players, Coles and Woolworths.
01:42That's essentially what the ACCC was looking at.
01:45The coalition says it needs these powers as a last resort to break up the sector if need
01:51be.
01:52And Tom, you're on the campaign trail with the Prime Minister and Anthony Albanese is
01:56starting the day back in Canberra today.
01:58Yeah, as you can see, Dan, the campaign trail hasn't gone terribly far today.
02:02We're back in Canberra today, but for very good reason.
02:06The Prime Minister is appearing on the Insiders program on the ABC in just a couple of hours'
02:12time.
02:13This is a significant moment.
02:14This is his first major televised interview of the election campaign.
02:18Probably not his last, but certainly his first.
02:21So certainly one to watch later on this morning.
02:23He will be back out on the trail later today.
02:25We're expecting him to be out spruiking this new supermarket policy and then back out on
02:30the road across the country later on this afternoon.