Sometimes it can be better to be a fast follower than a first mover – and that’s exactly how it turned out on Tuesday at the Senate select committee into supermarket prices.

After outgoing Woolworths boss Brad Banducci spent the morning brawling with Greens Senator Nick McKim, Coles chief executive Leah Weckert took a much calmer approach, unpicking McKim’s hyperbolic outrage over the supermarket giants’ apparently egregious profits.