LEADER of The Nationals, David Littleproud has called out the Australian Government for being too slow to act on supermarkets, a Price Gouging and Unfair Pricing Practices report has shown.

Mr Littleproud said former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Professor Allan Fels’ recommendations, indicated supermarkets were taking advantage of shoppers.

The recommendations came after the Opposition called for the ACCC to be directed to investigate the clear evidence of meat and fresh produce price disparity between the farmgate and the checkout prices since November 2023.

“There’s clear evidence around price gouging,” he said.

“We saw that with meat prices when farmgate prices dropped by 60-70 per cent in June, yet the checkout price only dropped by eight per cent.

“Someone was cleaning up and it was the supermarkets.”

The inquiry recommends the government uses its powers to require the ACCC to conduct more price and market investigations, require the ACCC to undertake market studies and that the ACCC should have the power of its own to initiate price and market studies.

Mr Littleproud said it was obvious for some time that an ACCC inquiry has been needed.

“The latest report into supermarket price gouging confirms what we already know - government policy, or Labor, is not paying sufficient attention to high prices and it needs to,” he said.

“Labor could have started the ACCC investigation before Christmas but didn’t understand the scale nor severity of their cost-of-living crisis.”

The Opposition said it had also offered the government support to introduce ‘big stick’ legislation as early as December 2022.

Mr Littleproud said he wrote to the competition minister over 12 months ago offering bipartisan support to bring forward all the reviews into the architecture and bring forward divestiture powers so that they could be used by a court or by the ACCC.

“I think that’s common sense,” he said.

“That’s what the consumers want, that’s what suppliers want.

“They just want transparency and fairness - but there’s too much market power in some of these industries and we need to protect suppliers and also the consumer.

“While Labor spent last year distracted on a $450 million failed Voice Referendum, price disparity between the farmgate and the supermarket checkout was allowed to escalate out of control.

“The Nationals wanted this investigation urgently before Christmas, but Labor was simply too slow to take action and in fact said that the Grocery Code of Conduct Review was their solution, which took 100 days to appoint someone since its announcement.

“It’s unfortunate it took Labor so long to realise that these powers exist, after previously promising Australians that two other inquiries they announced would yield results.”