Andrew Leigh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC CANBERRA BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 25 JUNE 2024

SUBJECTS: St Vincent De Paul’s CEO Sleepout, Coalition’s failure to provide detail on their nuclear plan, Food and Grocery Code of Conduct, Government funded CHOICE reports to help Australian shoppers.

STEPHEN CENATIEMPO, HOST: All right, time to talk federal politics with the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury and Member for Fenner, Andrew Leigh. Morning, Andrew.

ASSISTANT MINISTER ANDREW LEIGH: Morning, Stephen.

CENATIEMPO: How did you pull up after the sleep out?

​LEIGH: Oh, pretty rough. That's the aim of the game, isn't it? One rough night and reminds you how much tougher so many people who have to sleep rough have it. It's brutal in the Canberra cold.

CENATIEMPO: Now, I've got to say, I should temper this by saying I didn't take part this year, but I think you guys are a bit soft - sleeping in the car park at Parliament House.

​LEIGH: I thought exactly the same thing, Stephen. It was great to be in Parliament. It's symbolically really good. But, you know, somebody said to me afterwards, plenty of Canberra homeless people would love to be able to sleep undercover in a place like this. So, they could have inflicted a little bit more pain on us. But there was over $800,000 raised by the Canberra Sleepout. You know, shout out to some of those high achievers who were just out there year after year. My colleague Dave Smith did his 10th CEO Sleepout. There's some really dedicated people raising money for Vinnies, a great Australian charity.

CENATIEMPO: Now, the speaker of the House, Milton Dick, a Queensland MP, slept out here in Canberra and made all you locals look bad.

LEIGH: He did indeed - raised $23,000. He was remarkable and, you know, for Milton, it actually was cold. He was, I think, the only one wearing gloves.

​CENATIEMPO: Yes, indeed. Well, as a Queenslander, he probably would have, yeah - really felt it down here. Now, Andrew, I've got to take you to task on something. Now, there's a debate going on at the moment about nuclear energy and I understand that it's a debate that needs to be had. We need to talk about costs, we need to talk about rollouts, we need to talk about how much energy will be generated, whether or not it's economically viable. But this scare campaign that the government has tried to engage in and, you know, I thought better of you, but you got involved in it as well with this three eyed koala tweet about this is what Peter Dutton wants Blinky Bill to look like in 50 years. I mean, fair dinkum.

​LEIGH: It seems people on the Coalition side can't take a joke, Stephen. I mean, the fact is that if Peter Dutton wanted the serious debate, then he would have put out some serious policy. If he's going to put out a cartoonish policy, you can expect cartoons in response. We don't know how much it's going to cost…

​CENATIEMPO: No, no. Hang on, Andrew. Well then ask those questions. Don't put out these ridiculous tweets suggesting that nuclear energy is dangerous when we all know that it's not. You're trying to whip up a scare campaign here. I mean, are we suggesting - why not memes about three-eyed sailors from the AUKUS submarines?

​LEIGH: Well, Stephen, in politics I think you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. If you put out a bit of wit on Twitter, you're criticised for wit. If you don't, you're criticised for being all dull talking points. I don't think anyone who knows me doubts my seriousness about public policy. If you don't like the cartoon, fine. Happy to have a serious debate about nuclear any day.

​CENATIEMPO: All right, well, you know, because, I mean, it looks to me, I went through your Twitter feed this morning. Looks like you've deleted it anyway.

​LEIGH: Oh, it was on Instagram rather than Twitter.

CENATIEMPO: Oh was it? Okay, fair enough.

LEIGH: We haven't taken it down.

CENATIEMPO: All right. Okay, moving right along. Now, I want to talk about this Food and Grocery Code. We're going to talk to Craig Emerson about this a little bit later on this morning. Look, I think there's some good things in this, that there will be a crackdown on the supermarkets if they engage in predatory behaviour towards suppliers. But I think we're kidding ourselves. We think that if that's actually going to bring prices down. If it works properly, it'll actually put prices up.

LEIGH: Well, I'll give you one example of this, Stephen, which goes to the question of prices. Last year, we saw the prices being paid to farmers for lamb falling, and yet prices weren't falling on the supermarket shelf. So, I think what Australians want is for families to get a fair deal, and for farmers to get a fair deal. We've heard too many stories about farmers not being able to make complaints because of the voluntary nature of the code. So, making it a code with teeth, having multi-million dollar penalties is important for farmers. Alongside that, there's all the measures we're putting in place that should help households. The CHOICE quarterly price monitoring, which I announced last week, the ACCC inquiry. Now, we've got a lot of work going on to make sure that farmers and families get a fair deal from the supermarkets.

CENATIEMPO: Yeah, look, and that's all well and good, but, I mean, the problem with this is, and I applaud the mandatory nature of the code of conduct and all of those things, but the devil is in the detail, when we say penalties up to $10 million, that's never going to happen.

​LEIGH: Well, it could. I mean, this is a penalty which is there, we'll put in legislation, which will be available to the watchdog; a penalty which is the greater of $10 million, three times the ill gotten gains, or 10 per cent of turnover. 10 per cent of turnover is a multi-billion dollar fine. That's going to make them sit up and take notice. I don't want any of these fines to be imposed if the behaviour is good. I would rather see the supermarkets lift their game, behave well with farmers, respond to the incentives that are in place.

​CENATIEMPO: The biggest problem you're going to have here is actually determining whether or not there has been a breach.

LEIGH: That'll be up to the ACCC. It's a well-recognised competition regulator. It's gone after some of the biggest firms in Australia. It's not scared of someone because they've got a high share price. It recognises the importance of getting competition in the economy. After a couple of decades in which market concentration has risen, markups have grown, the Australian economy has become less dynamic. Our reforms are about better prices in the short run and better productivity in the long run.

​CENATIEMPO: I want to talk about this CHOICE price report for a moment, because, look, I think it's a useful tool if the detail is right. But it looked at a basket of shopping from Coles, Woolworths and Aldi and identified that Aldi's basket was 25 per cent cheaper. I think most of us knew that. I mean, that was the anecdotal evidence, already told us that. But the majors have already come out and said, well, it doesn't - it's not necessarily comparing apples with apples. Is it possible to do that properly? Because, I mean, if you look at Aldi's offering is largely a proprietary brand, so to speak, rather than name brand products. Are you comparing the same when it comes to the Coles and Woolies shopping basket?

​LEIGH: Well, the specifics of it are done by CHOICE and they are very literally, Stephen, comparing apples with apples. They've got decades of experience in shadow shopping and certainly I'd back the way in which they put together these price comparison reports. We want to set up a kind of grocery Olympics. We want supermarkets to be doing better next time. That's why this isn't a one-off, it's every quarter. So, the next one will come out in September, it'll be up to Coles and Woolies to see if they can do better. Here in the ACT, we had Coles about 1 per cent more expensive than Woolworths. That'll be put some pressure on Coles to be cheaper than Woolworths next time around. As you said, Aldi's cheaper - I'm not sure if everyone realised Aldi was 25 per cent cheaper. So getting that magnitude right really matters.

​CENATIEMPO: Yeah, okay. Well look, I would have expected a figure about that, but that's just me. I think the advice should be to go and shop at your local retailers rather than the major supermarkets anyway. Andrew, when do you think you'll start to see some results of this new code of conduct?

​LEIGH: Well, the voluntary code expires early next year, so we're going to get legislation through to have a mandatory code of conduct before then. But I think the supermarkets should be changing their behaviour straight away. There's no reason for them to wait for the new penalties to come into place. They recognise that the world has changed - they need to treat their farmers better. This is particularly true, Stephen, for the fresh food producers, people who are producing, particularly the berries, and other soft perishables. If they can't sell them in a particular week, they just rot. So, it's really important that the supermarkets up their game there. They also need to look at the incentives for the supermarket buyers, that those individuals aren't incentivised to put the squeeze on the growers too much.

​CENATIEMPO: Yeah, well, the proof will be in the pudding or in the berries, as you say. Andrew, good to talk to you. We'll catch up in a couple of weeks.