The AFR View
Greens’ supermarket inquiry a Canberra political freak show
Does anyone think the public interest was served by the back and forth over the best metric of Woolworths’ profitability and threatening Brad Banducci with six months in prison for contempt of parliament?
Parliament’s power to compel witnesses to appear before inquiries such as the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices is supposed to help make Australia a more informed and better-governed democracy.
On Tuesday, the chief executives of Woolworths, Brad Banducci, and Coles, Leah Weckert, were asked some reasonable questions by senators about their companies’ pricing practices and dealing with suppliers, levels of competition within the food and grocery sector, the workforce implications of automation, and the potential unintended consequences of introducing forced divestiture laws to break up the big supermarket chains.
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