Queensland has joined the growing number of jurisdictions examining supermarkets.
In early March, the Queensland Government announced a Parliamentary Supermarket Pricing Select Committee, to look at impediments to fair pricing, including impediments to the profitability of primary producers, and report by May 21.
“As well as the current consultation about the Dairy Industry Code there are now seven inquiries under way, all looking at the bad behaviour of big supermarkets,“ eastAUSmilk government relations manager Mike Smith said.
“eastAUSmilk members know supermarkets have enormous influence on farm gate prices, which is why we have made submissions to several of the these inquiries,” he said.
“It is clearly in the interests of eastAUSmilk members, and the dairy industry as a whole, for the relationship between supermarkets, all of their suppliers, and the whole supply chain, to be cleaned up.
“We’ve made submissions to the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices and to the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct Review, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has also commenced an examination of the pricing practices of the supermarkets and the relationship between wholesale, including farm gate, and retail prices — our submission to them is due in early April.”
Mr Smith said the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct is voluntary, which means “it isn’t applied properly nor enforced, so in our submissions we’ve been saying it should be mandatory, like the dairy code”.
eastAUSmilk is also urging that margins up and down the supermarket supply chain need to be monitored.
“We discovered during our submission research that processors are terrified to raise complaints or problems with supermarkets, because they fear retaliation, so we’ve also urged that retaliation needs to be directly addressed in these reviews,” Mr Smith said.
“Because we know the processors, and many other supermarket suppliers, won’t raise bad behaviour in their submissions to these inquiries for fear of retaliation, we have made a point of doing that work for them.
“If the retaliation issue is addressed, arising from any of these supermarket reviews, we would expect that the dairy code and industry will see the issue similarly addressed for dairy farmers.”