Linkage

Food security impacts every Australian alive today, and all future generations. The analysis of 187 submissions made to the 2023 National Inquiry into Food Security reveals several matters of national significance.

First, that such a wide range of stakeholders engaged with the process shows the importance attached to these matters by significant organisations across the country. There was broad representation across the food system, from paddock to plate.

Secondly, there was a high level of consensus amongst stakeholders on several key issues, above all the need for coordinated national policy and governance for food security, with a whole-of-government, whole-of-country approach as reflected in a National Food Plan or similar policy instrument.

Thirdly, whilst the Committee’s report reflected some of the key policy asks made in many submissions on several key items, there were also highly significant omissions […]

Competition led to Coles shortening the amount of time it established a higher price before it was discounted — down to four weeks under its internal policies known as "guardrails".

The guardrails were designed to ensure shoppers weren't misled by prices rising and falling too quickly.

But Coles was desperate to move quicker because it was watching arch-rival Woolworths do exactly that and feared being left behind.

During the trial, Coles admitted it had broken its guardrails on pricing for at least two products — Arnotts Shapes biscuits and the Nature's Gift dog food.

It also downplayed the significance, saying it was due to mistakes and errors — not any "planned" campaign.

The ACCC hit back, saying 62 of the 245 products were sold at the higher price for less than 28 days before being discounted, and it wasn't just one or two "outliers."

It would appear the economic volatility of recent years is not going to ease in the foreseeable future, so it’s concerning we’re not getting any better at protecting the food security of particularly vulnerable Australians. Rather, despite a number of short-term measures, such as one-off payments and rebates, a significant number of households continue to struggle to meet their fundamental needs.

Australia’s housing affordability crisis appears to be supercharging food insecurity in a way we haven’t seen before with nearly 1 in 2 rental households reporting as food insecure. It is entirely unacceptable that people across Australia are facing scenarios where food and shelter have become mutually exclusive.

Overall food insecurity levels have not improved on 2024, with certain groups being observably worse off. Shockingly, nearly 7 in 10 (67%) of households that have a person with a disability or health issue now experience food insecurity, with three quarters of these severely affected. Also alarming is that a similar proportion (68%) of single-parent households are now food insecure. 

Er… Nothing.

Entry into Australia's supermarket sector isn't so simple, according to retail expert Lisa Asher from the University of Sydney.

Aldi entered the market in 2001 and it had taken the company 24 years to get to 600 stores, which was a market share of slightly less than 10 per cent, she said.

"So this idea that it's easy to get market share when Aldi is one of the most innovative grocery retailing models that we have at the moment in the world," she said.

[…]

Ms Asher [highlighted] that divesture powers existed in places such as the United Kingdom and United States.

Without these powers in Australia, she said retailers such as Coles and Woolworths had minimal competition.

In 2000, Franklins had about 12.3 per cent of Australia's market share.

Now, no single retailer outside of Coles and Woolworths has more than 8 per cent.

"There are no disincentives for entrenching market concentration and dominance," she said.

The focus should be less on large foreign chains entering Australia's grocery market, and more about empowering local entrepreneurship, she said.

The ABC used data analysis tools to investigate about 11,000 food products listed on the Woolworths website, and looked at the percentage changes for the main or “characterising” ingredient — like raspberries in raspberry jam — across a 15-month period.

Of these, the ABC then selected 47 products where the main ingredient appeared to decrease in proportion, according to the label.

These products include ice cream, meat, dips, jams, cereal and packaged meals, with some brands represented more than others.

[…]

While some manufacturers said their changes were to improve the recipe, others said they were due to supply chain cost increases and wanting to keep the price of the product low.

Similar changes, where the quality of the product decreases but the weight and price stay the same, have been labelled as “skimpflation” in overseas media.

Supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths expect to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more to repay staff the companies underpaid, following a legal judgement experts say could have wide-reaching implications.

Woolworths has flagged potential additional costs topping $500 million after tax, while Coles has put its preliminary estimate at up to $250 million.

The development could see the total cost of the underpayment scandal soar past $1 billion, with Woolworths having already repaid $330 million to thousands of staff, while Coles has repaid $31 million so far, and had set aside a further $19 million before Monday's extra provision.

On Friday, the Federal Court handed down a judgement on the historical underpayments of employees at the two major supermarkets, affecting nearly 30,000 employees.

The dispute centred on annual salary arrangements, where the employees were paid above the award rate over the year, in place of calculating actual entitlements — under what was known as a "set-off" arrangement.

Fifteen years ago, the biggest challenge that faced the Tablelands food bowl was water security.

Now, it’s how far farmers have to send their produce to market, because they have to cover the freight costs to the metro distribution hubs.

“That central point has been moved to further and further away, to a location where there is a lot of consumption, but … regional areas [suffer] because it takes time to get all the way back,” Mr Keevers says.

“We can all grow crops, there’s no fear of that, and we’ve got big producers, and we’ve got small producers.

“But the key is they have to have a home for their goods.

“If they don’t have a home for it, they’ll go broke.”

[…]

Griffith University’s Kimberley Reis, who researches local supply chains and how to make them more resilient, says the current model needs to improve.

“We don’t have a food system model that is based on supporting local and regional economies,” Dr Reis says.

She wants the big supermarkets to bring in local food procurement requirements, where food isn’t just grown locally, it’s also sorted in the region where it is grown.

In other words, “the produce doesn’t leave” the area at any stage.

“So that they [the big supermarkets] are showing good corporate responsibility to support the self-reliance and the resilience of that region,” she says.

But a Coles spokesperson says central distribution points and a national supply chain “is the most effective way for us to deliver value and quality for our customers”, with the same prices for shoppers in the supermarket giant’s city and regional stores.

You might have an idea about how supermarket specials work — there’s a retail price, and if there’s extra stock or a special promotion, there’s a discounted sale price.

But for thousands of products at Coles and Woolworths, like the box of Cadbury Favourites and the packet of Tim Tams, these specials aren’t occasional. They follow a clear, and sometimes predictable, up-and-down movement.

The ABC analysed the online prices of nearly 44,000 items at Coles and Woolworths available to purchase between the end of May and mid-August this year, not tied to any specific location.

The analysis assumes the shopper is taking one product off the shelf, and so it excludes “multi-buy” specials, such as two-for-one.

It found that roughly 2,500 products moved in weekly cycles, mostly alternating between two or three price points, just like the box of Cadbury Favourites.

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Using RSS is a way to regain control over the information you read online. Instead of letting platforms like Twitter or TikTok control what you see based on engagement metrics meant to prolong your time on the platform and subject you to endless ads, you can subscribe only to the sources and writers you want to read. Unlike enshittified social networks, your RSS feed will give you exactly what you signed up to read — no promoted posts, no algorithmic deboosting for posts that dare to link to articles, no ragebait from people you don’t follow.

RSS offers readers and writers a path away from unreliable, manipulative, and hostile platforms and intermediaries. In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.