Unfortunately not a great article, it’s just sourced from AAP, the ABC at the moment is too busy doing live coverage of an American shooting for some reason
From Bloomberg:
Australia will ban supermarket price gouging from July 1 under a new law the government says would protect shoppers from excessive grocery prices charged by major retailers.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Assistant Minister for Competition Andrew Leigh said the changes would make it illegal for “very large” grocery chains to charge prices deemed “excessive” relative to their cost of supply plus a reasonable margin.
Penalties would be steep: as much as A$10 million ($6.7 million) per violation, or three times the value of any benefit gained, or 10% of annual turnover if that figure can’t be determined.
I don’t know what “excessive” means and what the rate would be.
Excessive really does need to be quantified or else terms like price gouging are still undefined and it’s more of a vibe.
Also who gets to determine what “excessive” means, and whether they’ve already been bought by lobbyists.
I assume the ACCC but nothing is really spelled out in this article. Whether that is the article’s fault or the loose way the regulations seem to be written I do not know.
These days it’s probably both 😉
