In the lead up to the Senate inquiry into supermarket price gouging, Coles made its statement of defence where it has effectively shifted the blame for high priced groceries onto farmers, supply chains, and high energy prices. Damn Coles, that’s so wild.
As people across the country continue to feel a sense of doom whenever they embark on a grocery shop due to the ever-raising prices of daily necessities, both of Australia’s biggest supermarkets — Coles and Woolworths — are copping a Senate inquiry into how their price points are selected, and the effects it has on inflation.
There’s ALSO an investigation being made by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), so lots of eyes are on the two companies this year.
Prior to the inquiry, each group must deliver a submission in defence of itself beforehand. Because in Australia everyone gets a fair trial, even members of a duopoly.
In its submission to the Senate today, Coles shared that it understood everyday Aussies were feeling the crunch of cost of living.
“We are always looking at ways to deliver value to our customers and are committed to helping lower the cost of living,” read Coles’ submission.
I’ll just point out that “looking at ways to deliver” and “committed to helping” are both company-speak for “won’t actually do anything of substance”.
Further in Coles’ submission, the company also reported that while customers have seen prices on shelves rise, the company itself is not seeing a similarly huge rise in profit.
Coles reported it made about $1.1 billion in profit last financial year, which was up $50 million when compared to the year before. So while it’s still a huge amount of money being made, and it is an increase in comparison to the prior years, it’s not massive.
Relatively massive* that is. Only a tool would say this is an insignificant amount of money. I’m not allowed to publish the things I would do for a fraction of $50 million, let alone $1.1 billion.
If not yours, who’s fault is it then Coles?
In the submission to the Senate, Coles shared that it had seen a large increase in cost increases from suppliers, including farmers, over the last two years.
“Our suppliers are subject to the same cost pressures experienced across households, as well as the domestic and global economies,” stated Coles.
Coles said that at stages it was receiving up to 70 new increases in costs from suppliers a week.
“We work constructively with our suppliers on promotional campaigns to offer great value to customers and to limit or defer the impact of supplier cost price increases to keep costs low for customers,” the company wrote.
As well as saying that suppliers and famers were causing the pain for Australian shoppers, it also stated that other costs had increased for running the national business such as wages, energy, and packaging, costing the company another $1.4 billion in 2023 than what it cost in 2019.
So who should we believe?
Naturally with two separate investigations being launched into it’s business practises this year, Coles (and Woolies too, soon) are of course going to be be put heavily under the microscope.
As these companies are being accused of using excuses like inflation and supply chains to gouge prices up, of course they are going to find whatever they can to defend themselves — innocent or guilty.
At the end of the day, that’s the whole point of the Senate and ACCC inquiries: to find out what on earth was going on behind the scenes, and how malicious or innocent the intent was.
And if the results come out and they are innocent, and it’s all been a big misunderstanding: great! We’ll hopefully be one step closer to figuring out how to fix this cost of living crisis.
But if the alternative is found out to be true…
Well, let’s just see what happens then.
