Linkage

Well said:

This week, it was revealed that despite the Australian government’s world-first teen social media ban, around seven in 10 children remain on major platforms. What’s more, the eSafety report also shows that there has been no notable change in cyberbullying or image-based abuse reported by children.

For a policy that was touted as the solution to keeping kids safe from harm online, this is a damning indictment of the ban’s effectiveness.

Who could possibly have predicted that this wasn’t going to work? Well, lots of people.

Countless experts were ignored, including those in the fields of digital wellbeing, digital rights advocacy, youth mental health and more than 140 academics and 20 Australian civil society organisations. Even the eSafety commissioner herself had doubts, and internally the government was aware of a lack of evidence to support the ban before they passed the legislation anyway.

[…]

Ultimately, the fundamental problem with age-gating is that it fails to address any of the root problems with our current online landscape – that is, the extractive business models and pernicious design features of mainstream tech companies. We all exist in a highly commercialised information ecosystem, rife with algorithmically amplified misinformation, scams, harmful content and AI slop. Children are particularly vulnerable to these issues but the reality is that it impacts everyone, even if you’re blissfully absent from Facebook or Instagram.

Not only is the social media ban working just as predicted (that is to say, it’s not); what other, more effective alternatives might the Australian government have pursued while spending the better part of two years chasing this red herring? What if, instead of trying and failing to kick kids off social media, we focused our attention on the reasons why being online is so often detrimental in the first place?

If this is the first time you’re hearing about it, you’re not alone. Despite the significance of the changes, these latest rules are the result of industry codes, which differs to regular legislation. These codes don’t go through parliament. Instead, they’re developed by the tech industry and registered by the eSafety commissioner in a process called co-regulation. On one hand, this can be good: it can allow for more flexibility or technology-specific detail that is less appropriate in legislation. On the other: it creates risk of industry co-option, and by bypassing parliamentary process, can give an enormous amount of power to an unelected official (in this case, the eSafety commissioner).

Greens senator David Shoebridge has called the implications of age verification for search engines “staggering” and noted that “these proposals don’t have to go through an elected parliament and we can’t vote them down no matter how significant concerns are. That combined with lack of public input is a serious issue.”

The age verification policy development process has been littered with blunders that make a mockery of meaningful consultation and evidence-based policy development. It is particularly striking that these codes were drafted before the completion of the government’s $6.5m trial into the efficacy of age assurance. Later, the trial’s preliminary findings conceded the technology is not guaranteed to be effective, and noted “concerning evidence” that some technology providers were seeking to collect too much personal information.

While a government-commissioned survey on the teen social media ban found overwhelming support in theory, it also found most people have no idea what that means in practice, with many uncomfortable with the methods it might entail – such as biometric face scanning or handing over your credit card details. And while there was much fanfare around the social media ban, it’s not clear there is a social licence to extend this approach to search engines and beyond. It seems many people may be unpleasantly surprised.

The ban will prohibit very large retailers from charging prices that are excessive when compared to the cost of the supply plus a reasonable margin.

The new ban on excessive pricing of groceries for consumers in the Food and Grocery Code is now law and will come into effect on 1 July 2026.

This will fix a key gap in Australia’s competition and consumer protection framework and provide a safeguard for consumers.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found in its Supermarkets inquiry that Coles and Woolworths have limited incentive to compete vigorously with each other on price and that their dominance of the sector seems set to continue.

If Coles and Woolworths breach these new price gouging laws, the maximum penalty per contravention is the greater of: $10 million; three times the value of the benefit derived, or, if that value cannot be determined; 10 per cent of the company’s turnover during the preceding 12 months.

The ACCC will be responsible for policing the excessive pricing regime.

Couldn't have put it better myself:

While reform on this front could be effective, the tendency of smaller retailers to align their pricing strategies with dominant supermarket chains – known as “price leadership dynamics” – may undermine any downward pressure on retail prices.

In essence, any slight reshuffling will recalibrate the balance of power between suppliers, wholesalers and retailers. But consumers may see little direct benefit.

One solution that might work, however, is a publicly owned grocery chain, tasked explicitly with stimulating genuine competition. For the sake of argument let’s call it a “community provisioning enterprise”.

This could be designed as a conglomerate of wholesale centres, distribution networks and retail outlets. By leveraging state-of-the-art logistics and retail technologies, it could achieve significant efficiency gains.

Potentially, that could see gross profit margins driven down into the 4–7% range, compared with margins of 55% or more on individual items enjoyed by major retailers.

The main priority of such an enterprise would be to move commodities efficiently from producers to consumers. It would have a competitive edge because of operational efficiency, minimal marketing spend, streamlined supplier contracts and capped executive salaries.

Really interesting.

From their inception in the early 1990s, Australian food banks were supposed to be a temporary solution to food poverty.

They have since morphed from “emergency to industry” – lauded for reducing food insecurity and helping to solve the food waste problem by diverting tonnes of produce from landfill.

It’s the ultimate win-win that big food corporations and retailers love: feed the needy and save the planet at the same time. This logic has been enshrined in Canada’s National Food Waste Reduction Strategy and in European laws that require supermarkets to donate surplus produce to charities. 

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.