While the reason given is completely ridiculous (it makes the...

While the reason given is completely ridiculous (it makes the cost of supply chain go up - fact), his conclusion that price gouging is happening is completely absurd and provided nothing to support that notion, neither did A Current Affair which for some strange reason has rebranded itself as "Four Corners".

Prices are set by suppliers, under a negotiated contract (fact) with prices locked months in advanced for everything except Deli, Meat and Fresh Produce. Coles (nor Woolworths) cannot just increase its prices all of a sudden - this would be a violation of agreements. Even promotions are planned months in advance with the exception to Fresh categories which change very suddenly and week to week.

Now if Woolworths and Coles are price gouging, then why is Siclunas, Farmers Market, Aldi and other produce retailers that have supply chain networks selling produce for comparable prices? Do idiots actually think that every single company in Australia are colluding on increasing their prices? Why is Morning Fresh, Kettle, Finish, etc selling for almost identical prices across Kmart, Woolworths, Coles, Amazon, Ebay, etc. Then you have Metcash / IGA and other independent stores selling it at higher prices - must be price gouging.. am I right?

"price gouging is the practice of increasing the prices of goods, services, or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair".

Well now... all those independent grocers must be price gouging so we better go after them... but attacking mum and pa shops isn't the hate trend at the moment so we can't do that. Lets not accuse Aldi of anything either that sends all of its profits back to Germany, as opposed to Woolworths and Coles that circulates within the Australian economy paying its fair share of taxes..

Look at Aldi's profit in 20/21 FY - yet no one called that out.




This lead to Aldi attempting to be more transparent - In FY 21/22
"Woolworths won the supermarket wars in 2021, paying $460 million in tax from revenue of $58 billion. Rival Coles had $44 billion in revenue and paid $382 million in tax, while Aldi had $10 billion in revenue and paid $149 million in tax. "

WOW = 0.7% of revenue as tax
COL = 0.8% of revernue as tax
Aldi = 15% of revenue as tax.
This indicates that both WOW and COL have higher operating costs and waste. Aldi achieves this by only operating in higher density populations in smaller geographic footprints. They aren't running stores in NT, middle of Australia, Cape York, Broome, Esperance, etc. They also achieve this by having a smaller number of products on offer. 1,600 SKU's in Aldi vs 58,000 or more in WOW / COL.

Product ranging is extremely important, because for every additional product you range, your waste and costs increase. Many smaller businesses also struggle with supplier contracts because WOW/COL require these companies to guarantee a certain amount of supply so that all stores have sufficient stock. Supermarkets lose money everytime there is an empty shelf space due to a supplier failing to fulfil demand.

Its quite clear that most of the population have no idea how any works and are just looking for anything to be angry about, while giving the federal and state governments a complete pass on everything.
The government APPROVED Coles to acquire Saputa milk production facilities.
The government APPROVED ANZ to acquire Suncorp bank.
The government (which includes the ACCC) APPROVED Woolworths to acquire PFD.

Old retired ACCC commissioner banging on about acquisitions, yet he did nothing to prevent them during his tenure, so he is nothing more than a hypocrite looking for some spot light.

These companies are operating within the law. If the laws are insufficient, then the legislature needs to change them.