(continued from last post)

The report also stated that while it was not examining whether or not the prices were excessive “while most grocery price increases from July 2019 to June 2024 appear attributable to increases in input and operating costs across the economy, at least some of those price increases appear to have resulted in additional profits for Coles and Woolworths.”

But here’s the thing about tracking prices to see if they are excessive. It is bloody hard – especially when that is not even the object of a report. There are a lot of moving parts – including many different items – imagine for example just trying to determine if the prices of soft drinks are being gouged – which brands, which type of brands, in which location, which sizes, cans or bottles, in individual bottles or when combined into packs. Now do that for every item you can think of.

Essentially if you want to do that you need.. gee I don’t know… how about a prices taskforce?!!

So anyway, after explaining that it did not look at explicitly whether or not there was price gouging going on, the ACCC still concluded:

“If there were a greater degree of competition between supermarkets, we would expect margins to be lower, either by way of lower retail prices, or higher costs incurred to improve quality of service, or both”

ie – the companies are making a motza and this is likely due to being able to charge higher prices. If we had better competition prices would be lower, or the quality of service would be better.

Through the lens of our media, this quickly became in the AFR “ACCC fails to find smoking gun on supermarket price-gouging” (yes, because they were not looking for a smoking gun!!).

Even worse though in the ABC, the line became “Price gouging claims don’t stack up”. That’s just wrong. The media are demanding evidence for something the ACCC was not investigating and then saying that no evidence was found is damning.