Coles and Woolworths are posting some of the most profitable grocery numbers on the planet while Australian kids go to school hungry. That is not a market. That is a shakedown with a checkout.
Here is the receipt. The competition watchdog has brought cases against both chains over false, misleading in-store discount stickers. A report last year found them among the most profitable grocers in the world. And Labor’s new law banning excessive supermarket pricing? Max Chandler-Mather’s crew says it has not moved a single bill in a single trolley. Not one. A law with more holes than a screen door — bullshit dressed up as action.
Then they asked voters what they actually want. YouGov put the public-option idea in front of them: 84% support, 16% oppose. When eighty-four percent of a country agrees on anything this century, you do not commission another study. You build the goddamn store.
They will scream socialism. It is not socialism. It is a grocery shop — milk that does not cost a week’s gas, bread that is not a luxury item, and produce priced so a mother is not choosing between vegetables and the power bill. I have stood in that checkout doing the math on whether the milk goes in the cart. Everybody has.
David Shoebridge called it straight: while 99% of us pay more for food, the 1% who own Coles and Woolies are laughing.
So eat shit, Coles and Woolworths. You got caught faking the discounts, you got rich while families skipped meals, and Labor handed you a law so full of holes it cannot cap a single price. Go to hell. The country is hungry, and it knows exactly who is laughing.
Source story: Australian Greens pitch $25.1bn public-supermarket plan.