The government’s first step in reining in the power of Coles, Woolworths and their smaller supermarket rivals is likely to push consumer prices up, not down.
Former Labor minister Craig Emerson has concluded a review of the relationship between Coles, Woolworths and their suppliers, and recommended that the existing, voluntary, decidedly piss-weak code of conduct relating to that relationship be turned into a mandatory code, with stiff penalties for abuse of power.
Emerson is the real deal when it comes to competition: he passed the current Competition and Consumer Act when Labor was last in power and fought — in the case of books, unsuccessfully — Labor’s internal tendency to cloying protectionism.
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