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Flawed Laws, Greedy Giants

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One Nation agrees with the sentiment behind the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Make Price Gouging Illegal) Bill 2024. Coles and Woolworths have morphed from trusted Australian grocery stores into greedy, shareholder-driven machines that have rightfully become the most disliked brands in the country.

While we support the goal of reining them in, we cannot support this specific bill for several reasons:

✔️ Free enterprise is doing what it does best — punishing greed. We see Amazon partnering with Harris Farm to deliver fresh food and independent retailers like IGA and Supabarn are treating customers like they matter.

✔️ We don’t need more poorly worded regulations. What we need is the ACCC and the Labor government to grow a spine and enforce the laws we already have. The supermarkets are already using deceptive “specials” to manipulate prices and the fines they receive are a pittance.

✔️ If we’re going to talk about price gouging, let’s talk about the government. Between $70 cigarette packets, fuel excise, and skyrocketing energy bills, the government is the biggest price gouger of all.

This bill won’t help the Aussie family at the checkout.

Instead, it will simply create a goldmine for lawyers. And with their deep pockets, Coles and Woolworths will be the ones who will walk away winning while the customers lose.

One Nation supports the “principle” of stopping corporate greed, however we completely oppose this flawed implementation.

STOP making new, ineffective laws and start enforcing the ones that actually hold these giant corporations to account.

Transcript

One Nation agrees with the motivation behind the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Make Price Gouging Illegal) Bill 2024. Coles and Woolies have far too much market power and they’re exercising that power in a way that benefits their shareholders, not their customers. With BlackRock Inc. holding influential positions in the share registers of these once fine companies, rapacious greed was always going to be the outcome. The accent here, though, is on the fundamental mistake Coles and Woolies are making, which is to exercise market power for the benefit of their shareholders, not their customers. Customers have been given notice. Coles and Woolies, once trusted and respected names, are now the two most disliked brand names in the Australian corporate scene. What a fall from grace!  

This abuse of market power has caused customers to migrate to new options, so the market’s coming to the rescue. In a stunning rebuke to Coles and Woolworths, Amazon has now paired with Harris Farm to add fresh food to Amazon. Amazon now offers same-day and next-day delivery of Harris Farm products—including meat, dairy, eggs and fresh produce—to over 80 suburbs in Sydney’s inner city, inner west and surrounds. This will use specialised insulated chilled packaging via Amazon Flex for freshness. Harris Farm already had its own online store and partnered with Uber Direct for quick store based same-day delivery prior to this happening. That’s the beauty of free enterprise competition. If one retailer turns a cynical and greedy operation, this creates an opportunity for someone else. And Coles and Woolies will be done.  

If you haven’t been into your local Harris Farm, IGA or Supabarn lately, I suggest you do that because Coles and Woolies have put their prices up much more than the inflation rate would justify, and the independent retailers have not. The price difference now is almost negligible, and you still get served by human beings. Fancy that—a human being serving! A retailer who values the customers wants to treat them as human—what a refreshing change! The 25c paper bags don’t fall apart, but the Coles and Woolies’ paper-thin rubbish bags faint with fright when confronted with an escalator or steps on the way back to your car. We’ve all had this happen.  

The existing regulations need to be policed before we add new ones, especially ones as poorly worded as this bill. Seriously, this bill could mean anything. The ACCC conducted an inquiry into deceptive price advertising by Coles and Woolies and found they’re using specials to put the price of a product up, then down and then up again in a way that leaves the public confused as to the real price. And the public is learning from this. They know that Coles and Woolies are not focused on customers; they’re focused on their BlackRock Inc. investors. They exploit the confusion to put the prices up further. They were fined a pittance and they’re still doing it. Surely we have laws already to bring these companies to heel. This Labor government needs to grow a bloody spine and just enforce the laws. You’re not enforcing the laws, and then you’re quite often wanting more. How much have Coles and Woolies donated to the ALP in recent years?  

While we are on the subject of price gouging, will this bill cover price gouging by the government? Seventy dollars for a packet of cigarettes is price gouging. Fuel excise, the fees on passports, energy bills, insurance, strata fees—these are price gouging One Nation supports the principle but completely opposes the implementation. This bill won’t do anything except create a lawyers’ picnic that Coles and Woolies will win. It will be a lawyers’ picnic, and the customers will lose. 

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Hong Kong’s Struggle Shows the Cost of Communism

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Hong Kong is a lesson of what happens when communism is imposed on democracy. China assured the citizens of Hong Kong they would be respected, and then promptly broke that promise. The top 10% of income earners in Hong Kong own 40 times the wealth of the bottom 10%, with income inequality worsening every year under communism. This confirms that free enterprise lifts people out of poverty, while communism puts them in it. Communism promises joy and inclusion – while delivering misery and repression.  

China is improperly imprisoning freedom journalist and businessman Mr Jimmy Lai.  China is taking a well-worn path of totalitarian governments  seen throughout history.  We must remain alert here in Australia against the actions of a government with its own totalitarian tendencies.

One Nation firmly stands for free enterprise, small government, and the primacy of the family—unlike Communist China.

Transcript

Hong Kong is a lesson in what happens when communism is imposed on democracy. China assured Hong Kong citizens that they would be respected, and then promptly broke that promise. In Hong Kong, the top 10 per cent of income earners now own 40 times the wealth of the bottom 10 per cent. Every year under communism makes income inequality in Hong Kong worse. It confirms that free enterprise lifts people out of poverty, while communism puts them in poverty. Communism promises joy and inclusion, while delivering misery and repression. Repression leads to everyday citizens having less, leading to more repression, which leads to more inequality, and on it goes. 

China is improperly imprisoning freedom journalist and businessman Mr Jimmy Lai. China is taking a well-worn path of totalitarian governments across history. 

Australia has cause for reflection. We’re discussing this motion in the shadow of a looming Senate legislation guillotine. In a guillotine, the government gets the numbers to do whatever it wants, and it does just that, which is how communism starts—with unchallenged power. Senate guillotines have become commonplace. They should not be. Both parties have silenced democratic debate during guillotines, although it seems that Labor is wearing out its guillotine faster than Robespierre. 

Three days of hearings into the misinformation and disinformation bill heard from expert witness after expert witness, all criticising the government for introducing a ministry of truth tasked with issuing sanctions against any social media platform which resisted removal of what the ministry considered ‘misinformation’. This is how communism starts. The committee report had little in common with witness testimony. The report was nothing more than the government’s ‘truth’. The first target for the Albanese government’s ministry of truth should be the Albanese government. 

I welcome calling out Chinese communist repression, and I look forward to a wider conversation on where our actions in this chamber are leading Australia. 

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Predatory Billionaires Are Corrupting Free Enterprise

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One Nation is the party of free enterprise, which has lifted the Western world out of poverty, providing high standards of living within peaceful societies.

In recent years, predatory billionaires—who already possess more than their fair share—have used their wealth to compromise industry, media, and politics. Their reason is simple: for these individuals, no amount is ever enough. They covet every cent you have and every freedom you enjoy.

The end result is not free enterprise but crony capitalism—a corruption of true free enterprise. This corrupted system serves only to enrich the elite while enslaving everyday citizens in a debt trap and more recently, a digital prison designed to ensure their transfer of wealth is protected.

Transcript

Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson recently declared that no new airlines could survive in Australia; that was about Bonza. We’ve since seen Rex’s demise, leaving two companies running three major airlines in a market worth $20 billion a year. 

One Nation believes free enterprise competition delivers the highest quality product for the lowest price to the most people. Competition best meets people’s needs. In Australia, we do not have free enterprise competition; we have crony capitalism. Those are not the same thing; they’re enemies. 

Crony capitalism occurs when a cabal of companies acts together to capture production, manufacturing and delivery, to provide the lowest quality product at the highest possible price. That arranged market domination inevitably lowers wages and transfers wealth from working Australians to crony capitalists. 

Anyone who shops in foreign-owned-and-controlled Coles or Woolies will have noticed that everything is smaller, cheaper and doesn’t work like it used to. That’s crony capitalism at work. The world’s largest wealth funds have bought out Australia and turned our once-loved companies into weapons of mass exploitation. Our corporate sector no longer serves us. Instead, we serve the corporate sector, including by the forced purchase of fake medical products during COVID. 

One Nation believes government regulation—including of airlines, banking and the medical field—does not protect the public against corporations; it protects the corporations against new competition and, therefore, against the people. High levels of regulation are barriers to entry to new players, allowing large corporations to thrive while small local players like Rex are strangled and wiped out. Masses of regulations protect corporations with expensive lawyers against court cases. 

If you believe it’s time to reduce regulation, to reduce the presence of foreign corporations and governments in our economy; if you believe it’s time to unleash real competition, to solve the cost-of-living crisis and provide better choices, then welcome to the light. Welcome to One Nation. 

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Government doesn’t create prosperity, free citizens do

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Our country has been ruined by governments trying to pick and choose winners instead of letting people be free to invent new and innovative solutions. We used to lead the world, inventing the refrigerator, electric drill, tanks, pacemakers, ultrasounds and wifi. Not anymore.

The right to raise ourselves up through hard work and enterprise is a freedom that must not be compromised. It must be protected.

Transcript

Later this year we will pass an amazing milestone when an Australian designed and made satellite will be launched into space using an Australian designed and made rocket and launch facility. We now have a domestic end-to-end space capability, creating jobs and injecting new wealth into our economy. Government has not achieved this, private enterprise has, proving once again that governments do not create wealth; free personal enterprise creates wealth. For many years, we led the world in innovation, inventing the refrigerator in 1856, electric drill in 1889, military tanks in 1912, pacemakers in 1928, ultrasounds in 1961 and wifi in 1992. But that’s where the list ends, 30 years ago.

Australia once led the world in patents; now China registers four times the patents per capita that Australia does. This is partly the fault of the big banks, whose tight hold on the capital sector funding for business development is throttling investment, suffocating beneath our banks greedy obsession with real estate. The government, through its future growth fund, has taken upon itself the role of picking winners and losers amongst start-ups, making private sector growth beholden to government bureaucrats. Lockdowns have decimated small business and forced medium and large businesses to shelve research and development plans.

Australia is going backwards and is losing the ability for citizens to support themselves through their own hard work and enterprise. Reliance on government handouts appears to be a design feature of Prime Minister Morrison’s socialist version of Australia. Instead, One Nation will shrink the government to fit the Constitution, we will get government out of the way of free enterprise, we will let the Australian spirit out of [inaudible] to then invent and create to carry this nation forward, even to space. We have one flag, we have one community, we are one nation. The right to raise ourselves up through hard work and enterprise is a freedom that must not be compromised. It must remain.

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