On 26 March 2026, I gave a speech on Price Gouging.
Transcript:
Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan)
The Greens will be supporting the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill
2026 in the House and reserving our position in the Senate. We also intend to support the passage of the Fair Work
Amendment (Fairer Fuel) Bill 2026 in the House and reserve our position in the Senate. Labor's actually lying to
you that they're tackling price gouging. All this ACCC bill does is increase penalties on existing offences—offences
which have never in their history been used to crack down on fuel.
Speaker: The minister is seeking the call.
Minister Giles: I think there was some unparliamentary language just used.
Speaker: To assist the House, I ask the member for Ryan to withdraw.
Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan)
I withdraw. All this ACCC bill does is increase penalties on existing offences—
offences which have never in their history been used to crack down on fuel price gouging. They can still put up
prices as much as they want; they just can't lie about it—so they just won't say anything at all.
Under pressure from the Greens, Labor has finally done something about price gouging in supermarkets—so why
not across the whole economy? Is that because Coles and Woollies happen to be catching a bit of flak recently?
There's no reason not to do the same across the whole economy. Maybe they're not doing it because they know it's
corporate profiteering, not everyday people, that is causing inflation. They want you to pay for the crisis. The prices
of everything go up, then interest rates go up and you're then paying more for your mortgage and more on your rent.
Politicians, the media and the billionaires want to make you think that this is inevitable—but it's not. Inflation is not
caused by everyday people spending what they need to get by. You can't decide to opt out of putting a roof over
your head or buying food for your family. Wages have hardly moved. When you pay more, someone else gets more
money; it's pretty simple.
The money has to go somewhere and it's going to the top. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it caused an enormous
transfer of wealth from regular people to the top one per cent. Publicly listed oil and gas companies worldwide
tripled their income from previous years to $916 billion in 2022, enriching their wealthy owners—and this includes
Santos. Santos tripled its net income from 2021 to 2022. Santos has never paid corporate tax in Australia since the
ATO started reporting it. It's inflation for you, and profits for the one per cent. Billionaires worldwide have increased
their total wealth by 81 per cent since the pandemic, according to Oxfam, to $18.3 trillion. It's not like the weather;
it's not inevitable. Your living standards have gone down while the superyacht business for the ultra-wealthy booms,
and this latest oil crisis, which will increase the cost of food, diesel, fertiliser and everything downstream from those
goods, will only accelerate that trickle-up to the price gouging corporations and their billionaire owners.