Inquiry to examine profits of energy and food sectors
A new inquiry is examining concerns that excessive corporate profits are doing more to fuel soaring inflation than rising wages. Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chair Allan Fels has kicked off the union-commissioned review into price gouging.
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TVTranscript
00:00 It's looking at a gamut of issues. It's looking at basically a lot of industries, so supermarket,
00:08 grocery prices, energy prices, insurance prices and even airfares. And as you've mentioned,
00:17 former ACCC Chairman Alan Fells is chairing this inquiry on behalf of the ACTU.
00:24 So what's Alan Fells worried about?
00:27 So he spoke this morning, he did a press conference this morning, and he's very worried that price
00:31 gouging is going on. Of course, we've seen higher inflation push up prices across the
00:37 board. But Alan Fells is saying that's not the whole story, that it's not just inflation
00:43 that's pushing up prices, that he's pretty sure that there is some price gouging going
00:47 on, for example, by the big supermarket giants and by all the other industries I mentioned.
00:53 And so Alan has mentioned that he wants to see stronger competition laws and stronger
00:59 merger laws. He's saying at the moment the onus of proof is on the ACCC to prove that
01:04 a merger won't be detrimental, but they end up going to court facing an army of lawyers
01:10 and it's very hard to prove this. And the onus of proof should basically be reversed
01:15 to put it on the company to prove that it's not harmful to competition.
01:19 It's important to note that this is not a Senate inquiry, they don't have the power
01:23 to compel, for example, supermarket bosses to attend and answer questions. But I'm sure
01:29 that there will be a report that comes out of that and that report might influence future
01:33 decisions. One of the things that we've talked about, obviously, is Fells saying that we
01:38 should reverse the onus of proof. Beyond that, there's been recommendations from groups like
01:43 the Australia Institute to have price regulation in certain industries like the energy sector
01:49 and to ensure that wages are rising, not just in line with inflation, but to ensure that
01:56 it's fair in some particular sectors and ensure that workers are getting real wage rises.
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