PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Ms ALDRED (Monash—Opposition Whip) (11:29): I want to begin with where I agree with the government: competition keeps prices down; choice matters; businesses that treat their customers fairly deserve to be rewarded. As someone who grew up in a small family-run business, every day that I have the privilege of serving in this place I will stand up and fight hard for Australian small-business owners right across this nation.
But this motion asks the house to commend the government, and families in my electorate of Monash might beg to differ. They will not judge this government on the title of motions like this, but they are judging it on the total at the bottom of their supermarket docket. On that test alone, it has failed abysmally.
Canstar compared the same basket of groceries at Woolworths in March 2025 and in July 2026. It cost $213.89 back then. It now costs $232.02, an increase of 8.5 per cent in little more than one year.
Food prices rose 3.2 per cent in the year to July. Beef and veal rose 13½ per cent in the year to February, and lamb rose 12.9 per cent. Four in five Australians say their grocery bill is higher than a year ago, and they are doing it really tough.
More than half say financial pressure has forced them to buy less food. I can tell you from speaking with local food banks in my electorate that that stacks up. In one of the great food-producing nations on earth, Australians are buying less food and paying more.
The motion commends the ban on excessive supermarket pricing from 1 July. In the first month of figures since, food inflation barely moved. The motion commends a ban on drip pricing that does not begin until July 2027.
It commends more money for the ACCC. I support a strong regulator, but a penalty paid to the Commonwealth does not put a dollar back in the pocket of a family doing the weekly shop in Korumburra. What this motion does not mention is the cost this government has pushed on to small business, and it is not fair.
On 1 October, the card surcharge ban this government championed came into force. Small businesses can no longer pass on the cost of card payments. They are being forced to absorb it.
Retailers are telling me that, instead of a precise surcharge on customers who pay by card, they're now lifting prices by a flat percentage across the board to cover that plus all of the other input costs that are going up across the board, from insurance to electricity, rent and other costs. So everyone pays more, including those customers that decide to pay cash.
It is another decision of this government that will push prices up. It will push inflation up. That has an impact on interest rates.
I also want to draw the House's attention to recent events in Nedlands in Western Australia. This didn't occur in my electorate, but it should matter to every independent grocer across this country. In an article in the Australian on 11 September, Joseph Carbone reported that at least a dozen uniformed Woolworths staff had walked through the Taylors Road IGA in suburban Perth together.
This is a small, family-run business. Woolworths is building a new store just up the road. The paper later reported that the same group had later visited a second independent store nearby.
According to the owner, James Kelly, the staff took photos, made notes and remarked that they would do a better job than his store. Checking a competitor's prices is not illegal. It is a normal part of retail, and independents do it too.
But there is a world of difference between quietly checking prices and marching a squad of uniformed staff through a family-run business in front of its own customers. The way this was done was, in my view, completely unacceptable. Mr Kelly said his store would survive, but he also said, 'It's the small guy we worry about.' No small-business owner or their staff should be made to feel intimidated on their own shop floor by a corporate giant that thinks in Albanese's Australia it can get away with it.
So I want to say this to that family-run, small-business grocer in the electorate of Curtin. The coalition will stand up for you and every family-run small business every day of the week. This matters.
It matters to that store. It should matter to every small business across Australia.