The nation’s largest grocery chain says the bill put forward by the Greens as a tool against the misuse of market power could even result in higher prices.
Supermarket giant Woolworths says it is open to working with parliament to address shelf prices, but argues the forced divestiture of stores proposed by the Greens as a tool againstWoolworths, the nation’s largest private employer with 200,000 staff in Australia and New Zealand, argued that even if divestitures were used as a regulatory back-stop they would not reduce shelf prices and may have unintended consequences.
“This approach to pricing is one of the key ways we achieve value for all Australian customers including those who live in regional and remote areas,” the statement said. “In recent reviews of the process, the US government found little evidence of consumer benefit from divestiture remedies, and it estimated the remedy cost of $US5 billion in lost productivity,” Woolworths said.
Woolworths noted that its reduced scale, if it were forced to sell stores, could also cut its power when negotiating with big multinational suppliers which accounted for 80 per cent of the price increases during 2022-23.Woolworths pointed to the large role it played to ensure food security and supply during disasters like the Trans-Australian railway outage in 2022 which was due to floods.
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