Yet what remains unexplained is how shoring up the bargaining power of incumbent suppliers will actually lower prices for families at the checkout or will have the unintended regulatory consequences of meaning higher prices.
At least the regulatory overreach and some of the potential unintended consequences that could have resulted from the political pile-on to the two big supermarket chains amid the “cost-of-living crisis” has been contained.
After Labor ran a political diversion blaming high inflation on Coles and Woolworths’ supposed price-gouging of customers and suppliers, the Liberal Party, the supposed party of private enterprise, joined with the neo-Marxist Greens and the rural populist Nationals, by backing the insertion of a break-up power in the nation’s competition law – something Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rubbished as the “Soviet” option.
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