The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2CC RADIO CANBERRA, BREAKFAST WITH STEPHEN CENATIEMPO
TUESDAY, 30 JUNE 2026
SUBJECTS: Price gouging by Coles and Woolworths illegal from 1 July 2026 under the Albanese Government
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Now, I’ve got to say one of the very most disciplined politicians I’ve ever seen – not only in his personal life because he runs and, as I say, running is undignified – but he’ll always tow the party line, is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh. Andrew, good morning.
ANDREW LEIGH: Good morning Stephen. I’m very proud to be an undignified runner. I think many of my running companions would say the same.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Well, but having said that, it’s not the running that’s undignified; it’s what you look like at the end of it is what I find undignified!
ANDREW LEIGH: It does look like a bit of a war zone when you get to the end of an ultramarathon.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: I can imagine. Now, I want to talk about, from tomorrow there’s going to be – now, you and I disagree on the concept of price gouging, and I think we’ve done a Julia Gillard and redefined what it is. But tell us what’s actually going to change tomorrow?
ANDREW LEIGH: So from tomorrow we’re banning price gouging for supermarkets turning over more than $30 billion, which is Coles and Woolworths and that will protect Australian families from artificially inflated prices on their groceries. It means they can’t try and charge prices that are excessive when compared to the cost of supply plus a reasonable margin. And they’ll face very significant fines if they do: up to $10 million, three times the value of the breach or 10 per cent of annual turnover.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: But who terms a reasonable margin, though?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, that will be up to the competition regulator. We very deliberately haven’t put precise dollar figures on this. Excessive pricing is a concept which is used overseas in Europe and the UK, and so our model follows that template.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Yeah, look I’ve got no problem with cracking down – and nobody’s going to defend the major supermarkets. At the end of the day they earn plenty of money. But I mean, their overall profit margin and their share prices indicate to me that there’s no real price gouging going on here. So, I’m all for you cracking down on the predatory discounting-type procedures, the down-down thing that Coles was recently prosecuted for, but when it comes to a reasonable margin – if somebody outside of business is determining that, isn’t that price fixing?
ANDREW LEIGH: No, this is about charging excessive prices. And so, you’re allowed to charge prices that are as low as you like and certainly we’d encourage that. But we do have two big supermarkets, Stephen, that have a very large share of the market. They’ve got two-thirds of the market between them. And we know that there is always a risk in highly concentrated markets that consumers or suppliers have pressure put on them. We’ve put in place the compulsory Food and Grocery Code to protect farmers, and then what we’re doing with price gouging is protecting shoppers.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Okay. But again, getting back to this price gouging, I mean, you as the Minister for Competition, you must have an idea in your head as to what an excessive margin is?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, if you put that down in dollar terms, then you end up with the risk that the supermarkets game the system. What we’re doing is by providing this broad power to the competition regulator is to follow overseas competition authorities in a model that we believe will help put downward pressure on prices.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Yeah, but most businesses aren’t determining their margins in dollar terms – they’re doing it in percentage terms. I mean, how much is too much? I mean, you know, most small businesses, if they were operating on a margin of less than 30 per cent, they’d go broke. I mean, if we say that of – you know, is that excessive for a supermarket?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, it will be possible for the competition watchdog to compare Coles and Woolworths prices with prices of other retailers such as Aldi or IGA. They will be able to do a lot of careful comparison across grocery lines. They’ve got better access to data than ever before, and the ‘down down’ prosecution you mentioned earlier, Stephen, is based on their deep dive into the data that Coles and Woolworths provided to them through the supermarket inquiry. We’re confident that the regulator has the tools and resources it needs. These new price gouging powers are about protecting shoppers at the checkout.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: The problem I see with this, Andrew, is we’ve effectively prosecuted Coles for dropping their prices, effectively, which kind of flies in the face of what we’re trying to achieve here, isn’t it?
ANDREW LEIGH: You’re welcome to drop your prices. What you can’t do, according to the court, is to pretend that you are discounting where in fact all you have done is briefly spiked the prices before bringing them back down. In that case, Coles was found to be in breach of the Competition Act and they will face penalties to be determined down the track. There’s a similar case being brought against Woolworths, which is yet to be decided.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: When you talk about, you know, I guess identifying or determining what a fair price margin is, if you’re comparing against Aldi that’s difficult because you’re not comparing apples with apples. Most of their products are proprietary. And on the whole, places like IGA and Supabarn are somewhat dearer than Coles and Woolies. So how do you determine that?
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, apples are a very good example in the sense of being a product that is actually fairly homogenous across the store. The analysis that will be done by the ACCC will be very careful and make sure that they’re comparing like with like. This is about ensuring that the supermarkets do the right thing by shoppers. I reckon the ideal thing out of this, Stephen, would be if we didn’t see any excessive pricing. If the competition watchdog looked carefully at this and said Coles and Woolies are doing the right thing. We don’t want to see people being ripped off and then the courts having to act. We want to see these laws having a clear deterrent effect. They have very big penalties backing them up. We’ve supplied a lot of resources to the ACCC, and so I’m hopeful that we’ll just see a good deal for shoppers.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Well, I think apples is a bad example because nobody should be buying apples from supermarkets anyway. They should go to independent greengrocers.
ANDREW LEIGH: Well, wherever you go to for your apples, whether you go to the farmers’ market at EPIC [Exhibition Park in Canberra] or whether you pick them up at the supermarket, you want to make sure that Australians are getting a fair deal. We’ve spent a lot of time looking after farmers. Of course, we had that toothless voluntary code that governed the relationship with suppliers under the Coalition. We made that mandatory with multi-million dollar penalties, and we’ve got supplier education going alongside that to make sure that farmers are looked after.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Andrew, as always good to speak to you. We’ll catch up in a couple of weeks.
ANDREW LEIGH: Likewise. Thank you Stephen.
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Dr Andrew Leigh, the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury and the Member for Fenner.
ENDS