Federal Labor has pledged to outlaw price gouging in supermarkets, despite the competition regulator recently finding it wasn't a widespread problem. Anthony Albanese argues it's an important step to get fair prices for families, and farmers.
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00:00Anthony Albanese is in the suburbs of Canberra, arguing the government can do more to protect
00:06households from paying too much at the checkout.
00:09The major supermarkets have become something of a political punching bag in recent years,
00:13with both sides of politics pushing plans to take them on.
00:16Anthony Albanese was standing around the kitchen table this morning, making the case that sometimes
00:20groceries are just unreasonably expensive.
00:23He's making that argument despite a substantial report from the ACCC finding it couldn't conclude
00:28price gouging is actually a problem within Australia.
00:32The PM's plan is complicated.
00:33He'd launch a taskforce to find the best way to make it illegal, looking overseas for ideas,
00:38before action is taken.
00:40Anthony Albanese says it's about clearly unfair prices.
00:43It will certainly have an impact in overseas experience, is that it does just that.
00:49Overseas experience is that.
00:51The pressure that's placed on supermarkets by this law makes a difference.
00:55To give you a definition in the EU, a price is unfair and excessive if, and to quote their
01:03law, it has no reasonable relation to the economic value of the product supplied.
01:08So there are examples there that we can use.
01:11And quite frankly, I got asked today by someone as well, how do you know what's price gouging?
01:20Price gouging is when supermarkets are taking the piss off Australian consumers.
01:25That's what it is.
01:26The Coalition has a plan of its own.
01:28It wants the power to break up the supermarkets if it finds the major players are abusing
01:32their market power.
01:33Anthony Albanese has also been asked this morning about energy prices and what happens
01:38after his government's energy bill rebates run out.
01:41What we do is we focus on the budget, on immediate needs.
01:44And one of the things that my government has done, David, is we've governed in what have
01:49been turbulent economic times.
01:51We had COVID, we had the long tail of COVID with the supply chain issues, and we had the
01:57impact of the war on Ukraine, the impact of global energy prices and global inflation,
02:02which hit double digits in some of our competitors.
02:05I understand that.
02:06Now during that, what we have done throughout our term is to provide immediate support when
02:13people needed it in a calibrated way that has also put that downward pressure on inflation.
02:19The suburbs of Canberra is an unusual place to take a campaign.
02:22This is very safe Labor territory.
02:24The campaign is back on the move this afternoon, likely bound across the country.