New polling shows supermarkets are Australians’ public enemy No. 1 in the cost-of-living crisis.
The Australia Institute’s Carmichael Centre/Centre for Future Work surveyed 1014 voters about increasing costs.
Some 83% said supermarkets deserve some blame, or a great deal of blame, for the soaring cost of living.
That puts them ahead of energy companies (82%), banks (73%) and government (71%).
Three in five (60%) respondents nominated groceries as the most noticed cost increase, far ahead of the next highest result of utilities at 21%.
There is a strong appetite among voters to increase supermarket competition, with almost two-thirds (64%) saying action in that area is very important to reducing cost-of-living pressures.
That result was mirrored by strong support for actions leading to lower utility costs (64%), lower medical costs (60%), and faster wage growth (58%).
Centre For Future Work senior researcher and report author Lisa Heap said:
“These results are emphatic. Australians are pointing the finger squarely at supermarkets as public enemy number one in the cost-of-living crisis.
“With 83% of voters assigning blame to supermarkets, it’s clear Australia’s supermarket duopoly is on the nose with the electorate.
“More people blame supermarkets for the cost-of-living crunch than governments or banks.
“The public’s appetite for increased supermarket competition is unmistakable. Nearly two-thirds of voters see it as crucial for alleviating cost-of-living pressures.
“Australians are now demanding action on supermarket competition with the same urgency as they’re calling for lower utility costs and higher wages.
“There’s likely to be political rewards for taking actions that increase supermarket competition.”
The cost-of-living crisis is also leading people to spend less on essential services:
- 37% spent less on heating/cooling home
- 29% spent less on healthy food
- 26% spent less on going to the doctor
And 26% of respondents supplemented their income by drawing down savings or superannuation.
The polling was commissioned by the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute, which is hosting a one-day symposium on the crisis in living standards in Australia, and how to address it through greater investments in wages, public services, and affordable housing and energy.
The symposium runs from 9am to 4.30pm at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, 210 Lonsdale Street in Melbourne.
It will feature presentations from some of Australia’s leading economic and social policy researchers. Media are invited to attend.
The polling evidence indicates that cost of living pressures are having a disproportionate impact on Australians who can least afford it: including low-income households, people receiving income supports, and women.
That is making inequality even worse.
It also indicates the importance of responding to cost of living challenges with a suite of measures to make life more secure and affordable – not just using high interest rates to attack inflation, which for many Australians has only made the crisis worse.
Read the full report here.
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And of course the LNP has jumped on the nasty supermarkets bandwagon. With help from the SMH “exclusive” Libs puppet polling company that always, magically, finds that almost everybody backs the LNP and P Duddy.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/voters-warm-to-coalition-plan-to-hit-coles-woolies-20241015-p5kibc.html
So the brains of most people identifies supermarkets as the main cause of rampant inflation and not the reckless lending of banks fuelled by the accompanying tax-breaks legislation of Labor & the LNP as the real cause? Great.
Supermarket super profits are not the cause of the cost of living crisis, nor do they contribute to the rate of inflation…. just ask the RBA.
Me thinks a major bank is now in the lead?
Major outage caused by cyber attacks, deemed to have been fixed a few days ago, but in fact more outages while silence from the the RW MSM who accept their advertising and Marle’s following the bank’s own corporate comms and PR?
Meanwhile customers have not been able to access online and/or mobile app to check balances or one off payments; think now it’s just offshore (with informal advice/chatter to use a VPN, which illegal in e.g. Turkey).
Meanwhile the bank has no info on either their home page nor app, but using their X/Twitter account with a bot giving advice, contact them by direct message, wtf?!
Example of how corporate Australia and foreign subsidiaries have no or minimal customer regulation to comply with, like the airline duopoly?
If this occurred in the EU (probably the US too) they would be accruing $millions in fines and compensation already, for customers due to non compliance, but in Oz, just be ‘quiet Australians’ and ignore it like RW MSM has (ABC & Yahoo did one report each a couple of days ago?).
Example of our corporate sector and ‘owned’ regulators’ sheer incompetence and lax attitudes on cyber security, corporate ethics and customer care….
I have concluded that supermarket directors hate their customers, why else would they treat their customers as imbecilic low-life cretins?
I believe that they do not fear this nation’s government regulators, as it is so easy to dud their customers.
Any and all price rises can be blamed by their directors, spieling about their supply chain problems, rising transport costs, rising wholesale costs, in times past the very least excuse has worked out for them if some consumer outfit was querying their ridiculous pricing practices.
This fortnight’s shopping trip seemed to be scarier than in times past, 12 months ago, Sappresso mild or hot salami was around $27-00 per kilo.
This week I found Woolworths had raised the cost to $42-00 per kilo.
The price being jacked up at the Woolworths Burnie, Tasmania supermarket
All Woolworth Supermarkets are graded, thus individualised with a set margin they place on their goods for sale
EG: Eltham in Victoria, a reasonably wealthier zone than say Burnie in Tasmania, customer prices will be higher. WHY? Opportunity to do so. : the range of imported goods in their delicatessen, there were far more brand names than for common Old Burnie in Tasmania.
I recall some years ago this Eltham supermarket had been a grade A supermarket, so yes all supermarket stores have their individual rating.
During the prior period, some say 20 odd years ago, when the ACCC or even ASIC were questioning the issue of farm price reductions for the farmers produce, Which saw both Supermarket chains were constantly screwing down the farmers for cheaper purchase prices.
So much so that many farmers could no longer supply their farmed products at a lower requested farm gate offered price for their primary products, ultimately they had to relinquish their contracted volumes of supply.
Or lose their supply contracts.
So, as aforementioned, they hated not just their customers, but the primary producers as well.
Which soon found the cheaper food products were being imported from the Asian sector.
That had begun as a result of farmers no longer being able to sell their products at much reduced costs being sought through their Supermarket purchase contracts.
An evil practice by the cut-throat directors during that era.
I also remember that these clever dick directors were increasing their use of consultants, never mind that being up to $40 million dollars per annum.
One would have thought their board of highly remunerated directors should’ve been able to manage their food shops without the need for expensive sly dog consultants.
Analogous to the Scorpion and the Frog parable, all monopolies abuse either their customer base or their suppliers, or both, period. Whether it’s the supermarkets, hardware giants, utility providers – energy & water, telcos… they all do it. Examples… Woolworths, Coles, Bunnings, Telstra, AGL, Amazon, BHP, Rio Tinto, GrainCorp, Qantas, Sydney Airport, the banks – CBA, WBC, NAB, ANZ, Centrelink also. Market dominance feeds into a corporate point of view that they are impregnable and untouchable and that they can do whatever they wish within the existing legal constraints.
Jack up prices in the midst of severe economic times, blow up indigenous sacred sites, put hundreds of small mom & pop businesses like family-owned hardware or family-owned nurseries out of business and screw down on suppliers, such as the hardware and food monopolies do… it’s a dynamic that’s rotten to the core, and it seems that we, the ‘little people,’ can do sweet FA about it.
Canguro, thank you, for adding your own fact knowledge to the Federal government failings that permit sly dog overseas owned mining corporations to avoid paying their annual income tax, as well as their MRRT and PRRT being paid
Add the additional fact that our Federal government and our nation’s intelligence agency incumbents follow the USA propaganda rhetoric, then stupidly adapt our nation to the incoming American false and misleading news reports that are transmitted into our nation.
Of special interest to the people of Australia: read below link.
https://treasury.gov.au/review/tax-white-paper/at-a-glance
(How piss-weak are both this nation’s political parties.)
Both of which, where applicable, the paying of mining and or petroleum rental resource taxes (mineral and or petroleum) are simply being ignored by the o/seas mining conglomerates as they busily continue plundering our nation’s resources. (see Chevron and Exxon)
Neither political party has the testosterone to pursue binding legislation that states must pay either or both rental resource tax and their Australia-earned income tax, where applicable, to pay their tax obligations.
If not paid, “they should have their mining permit suitably annulled, no second chances.”
Both our major political parties fail to oblige their Commonwealth of Australia duty, Why?
The failure of both major political parties. See below.
The operation of the Australian taxation system is established by statute, as follows:
Taxation law and the ATO
The operation of the Australian taxation system is established by statute, as follows:
•
the Australian Constitution establishes the Commonwealth of Australia[1] and empowers its Parliament to enact laws in respect of taxation[2]
•
the ATO is a statutory agency of the Commonwealth of Australia, established to assist the Commissioner of Taxation, who is the head of that statutory agency[3]
•
the Commissioner administers the Taxation Administration Act 1953 (TAA)[4] and is legally entitled to institute, and appear in, legal proceedings in their official name[5]
•
the TAA and other taxation laws are valid[6] and apply to the entirety of the land mass of Australia, as well as its coastal seas and external territories[7]; a person within these geographic boundaries cannot exempt themselves from taxation laws[8]
•
the Commissioner is required by law to make assessments of the taxable income and tax payable by taxpayers[9], and
•
taxation liabilities must be paid in Australian currency.[10]
What weak-gutted persons that have become our Australian Prime Ministers. (Circa say 1980.)