Australian families can’t afford groceries but at least there’s a wealth of cost of living inquiries — more than half a dozen, in fact, some of which are due to report in coming months.
The Senate’s cost of living committee is getting close to wrapping up its work, but before members finish their final report, due in May, there’s one last witness some would like to call: the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Crikey understands some committee members are keen to call the consumer watchdog to give evidence about its own probe into supermarkets, which has yet to hold a hearing and is due to finish next February. The ACCC’s view on competition in the airline industry is also of interest.
The cost of living committee has become somewhat divided down party lines, which is not unusual for Senate committees where politicians are made to collaborate with rivals across the aisle.
An interim report released last year and co-authored by chair and Liberal Senator Jane Hume blamed the Labor government for worsening the crisis and failing to follow through on its commitments to fix it. Both Labor and the Greens had dissenting statements included in the report. Greens member Penny Allman-Payne showed up to 10 out of 17 hearings, and her office said the absences were partly due to medical reasons. (Labor and the Coalition have both shown up to every hearing, occasionally dispatching several senators from each party to hear evidence.)
“The Liberals were in government for the better part of a decade, but it was only in opposition that they suddenly started feigning interest in the cost of living,” Allman-Payne told Crikey.
“They’ve used this inquiry process not to surface real solutions but purely as a way to score political points against Labor and give a platform for their corporate mates to spout their free-market propaganda. If easing the cost burden on families and tackling rising poverty was really their goal they’d be pushing for reforms that we all know would work: increasing income support, providing affordable housing, and fully funding public services like health and education.”
Hume said the committee had heard a large body of evidence and would aim to make practical recommendations in its final report.
“The committee has received over 130 submissions, 900 community survey responses, and evidence from the charity and community sector, businesses, peak bodies and the public,” Hume told Crikey.
“The committee will consider all evidence that’s been put forward, in order to present practical recommendations that will bring down the cost of living without adding to inflation.”
While the cost of living committee is wrapping up, another Senate committee has recently been formed to look at supermarket prices. In its first public hearing on Thursday, that committee heard evidence some Australians were forced to “dumpster dive” to afford food.
“Members of our community who are nurses have reached out to us, and said they’re studying full time, working as nurses and they’re also having to go to the bins to get food because that is the most economically and environmentally friendly way to source these essential items,” Grassroots Action Network Tasmania member Amelia Cromb told the committee, according to Sky News Australia. That committee’s final report is also due in May.
As the ABC reported last month, at least three other related probes are ongoing: one by Treasury looking into the Australian Government Food and Grocery code of conduct, due in June; another by Treasury reviewing industry competition, due in August 2025; and one by the House of Representatives standing committee on economics, looking into “promoting economic dynamism, competition and business formation”.
Senator Hume was clearly born without the shame gene. What did the LNP do for the cost of living for the last decade or so apart from actively contributing to wage suppression through anti-union and anti-worker policies? Their attack lines might get traction on Channel 7 breakfast shows but no-one with a memory span greater than a flea’s should be impressed.
A necessary condition for selection as a Lib/Nat candidate
Whelp, I was going to comment that Penny’s remarks being directed at the coalition, instead of Labor might quell the concerns of the Labor rustadons about Greens playing party politics – but as we can see, MG beat me to it.
Penny’s remarks aren’t ever going to be meant for the peanut gallery, where dodgy crap like blaming a half-term government for dumpster fires years in the making gets all kinds of play.
Unfortunately, sensible comments like pointing out how obviously disingenuous the Libs are about the cost of living are always going to land with a thud.
Fwits, fwits everywhere.
And amongst those who aren’t as dumb as a box of hammers, we get people who should realise the Greens are the only hope we have, constantly tearing them down. You know how we make the Greens more appealing? Help make them more popular. More popularity will increase the size of the party, and dilute the dodgy aspects.
Stop throwing the baby out with the bathwater, folks. Help turn the Greens into a broad church where all the halfway sensible anti-establishment sentiment can find a home, and where resources can be pooled. I’m fairly sure I’m not imagining things, when I sniff the wind and get the sense they’re pivoting away from niche social justice issues, towards far more pressing and universal economic justice issues, which are intrinsically linked to the environmental issues at the foundation of the party.
Don’t shtcan our only snowflake in hell of a chance. If they can form government next time with Labor in minority, they can demonstrate Labor’s disingenuousness and corruption by causing Labor to vote with the LNP against their nominal partner in government, against eminently sensible policies a majority of the electorate are in favour of.
Maybe then, as a bunch more of those older voters still entranced by bullsht legacy media drop off the twig, and increasingly angry young voters come online, the sense of boiling disenfranchisement will reach a level where all those mugs who follow the herd finally cotton on (a few decades too late, but better late than never), and the majors will finally lose their duopoly come ’28 or ’31.
It’s a slim chance of far less salvation than any of us would like to see, but it’s all there is. Isn’t it?
“….older voters …who drop off the twig …young voters come online….”
Geez Kimmo , you’ve been listening to the wrong people.
In the regional city (of NSW) I live, it’s the “young voters” who just LOOOOVE the Liberal party and wouldn’t vote Labor or Green if their young lives depended on it.
Have to say too though that as an “older voter” myself, I do get sick to death reading comments like yours….you know what I mean? Blaming everything that’s ever occurred in the last twenty or more years on “older” people.
But hey, that’s just me having a whinge, probably because I’m “old”.
Who else can you blame it on? The young people would have been in nappies so you can’t blame it on them.
That’s a childish argument to make. From someone just out of nappies in fact. Define old. Define older. I want to know the NSW regional city where all these young Liberal voting people are at. “Young” people have been waiting for their parents to drop for millennia.
“You know how we make the Greens more appealing? Help make them more popular. More popularity will increase the size of the party, and dilute the dodgy aspects.”
Ah, news flash buddy! It is not up to the public to make the Greens more appealing. That’s like telling us the viewers to provide advice on the Channel 7 Sunrise team on where they should go for their weekly Botox shots and where they might need work in the cosmetic surgery department. It is up to the people doing the advocating themselves to come up with reasonable policies that might work. It is up to the Greens solely on how to make themselves more appealing to the electorate at large. I tried doing that and was shot down by people in the party saying it is their hard core supporting them, the Base, and they number 7-8% and we need to accept that that might be all they are going to get. Witness their nonsensical Sydney Airport policy which hasn’t changed in 40 years and they still can’t land a blow on Albo and Tanya. You are living in a fool’s paradise I am afraid. And their dodgy aspects are too numerous to mention here.
It’s more likely Greens will hold the balance of power with the Teals in a Labor minority government. But just look at what the media did to the government last time the Greens had such political power, in Gillard’s minority government following the 2010 electioin.
Was that the Jane Hume that previously starred in Kath and Kim? You know, one of those shop assistants, Prue or Trude.
The Greens can make this claim about this inquiry by their attendance at 10 out of 17 meetings. This is shameful. Senator Penny Allman-Payne used to be a school teacher right?! Did she give her kids a pass mark if they attended class for half the time?
“Greens member Penny Allman-Payne showed up to 10 out of 17 hearings, and her office said the absences were partly due to medical reasons. (Labor and the Coalition have both shown up to every hearing, occasionally dispatching several senators from each party to hear evidence.)”
That would be about right. For a party that has social justice as one of its 4 policy platforms and hypocritically attends half of the meetings dedicated to social justice matter like the cost of living, the Greens are living up to form. Can’t wait to see them attend any forum or committee meetings of any kind into live music in Australia!!
This Sen. Penny Allman-Payne looks like a precious, pampered upper class thing who would rather be fulminating and pointing fingers in typical Greens upper class style against anything but the culprits in the cost of living crisis. If she couldn’t attend for personal reasons then she should have nominated some other party member who is healthier. Don’t tell me she is on the way out too? I bet her contribution to Parliament is only matched in non-contribution by the ill-fated and poorly selected Captain’s pick of slimy Bill’s Nova Perris. I bet she has made zero contributions to the committees and has no plans to hold the Big 2 Variety/Grocery retailers to account.
I can tell everyone on Crikey here as a former Greens party member, social justice issues are a rank second order issue for the Greens. Unless they involve minorities. If it is broad brushstrokes you want from the Greens to improve the overall picture, forget it. The Greens hate people, even themselves for being mostly White. They are not interested in broad, macro-economic issues or large scale social justice issues – at least in so far as these involve getting your hands dirty in Parliament house committees. They live for the press release or conference. They only work hard at their quarterly delegate council meetings or AGMs.
That is a pretty disgusting assumption to make. Woeful actually.
The Greens don’t have a ton of parliamentarians to spare… unlike the Laborals.
They’re working hard to push the major parties to support the science on climate change and not approve new fossil fuel developments. This is THE biggest issue of this time and yet the Laborals pretend to care and yet continue BAU.
Tell ya what… get your Laboral mates to support the science on climate change and then there may be enough Greens members to cover all the rubbish inquiries into the cost of living.