According to CHOICE, Australians want changes to the Privacy Act, which will give them greater protection from those who will steal their privacy. They want a limit on what can be accessed about them by organisations and individuals.

CHOICE is the commonly used name used for the Australian Consumers’ Association. it is a not-for-profit consumer advocacy organisation founded in 1959. and its main functions are to regularly give consumers information about the products they are buying, about fair prices, the quality of products, and the performance of those who provide goods and services. CHOICE fights for the rights of consumers, and therefore provides the community with a valuable service.

A big part of this work is conducting research and polling the opinions of the Australian community. The new survey on the state of our privacy is a good example. This comes after revelation that hackers have stolen health information and other personal details from 13 million people, after a cyber-attack on prescription deliverer MidiSecure in April. This is but one of a series of large-scale data breeches in recent times. Examples are Optus, Medibank, and Latitude Financial.

Another part of its work is to wage campaigns to bring about positive changes. CHOICE is now backing the demand coming out its recent Consumer Pulse survey. that Australian for a much tougher response on the protection of persona; information. Senior Campaigns and Policy Advisor Rafi Alam says that after years of massive leaks, people are fed up and want change.

A petition currently underway calls for the fair use of data by all businesses.

Part of the problem is the over collection of data, often by, but not limited to government agencies. A second problem is the extremely wide scope in how this data can be used. Both combine to create the conditions for misuse and an opportunity for obvious criminal activity.

Outlawing collection of data above what is strictly required for a specific purpose would help. Banning the use of data without a clear consent from the person concerned is another must.

A third is the rampant and rising use of data collection by government for the purpose of spying on us. The rise of the computer age is helping to bring in big brother government, and this carries its own type of threat. This was not part of the topic covered by CHOICE. But this doesn’t make it any less important. Many of our basic rights are threatened by this.

The concern of this campaign is how private businesses accesses personal data and misuses it, and the response to the federal government’s introduction of new legislation to amend the Privacy Act. While it provides the right to sue for serious breaches, extra enforcement powers for the regulator, greater transparency obligations, and how businesses use algorithms to make decisions. there are telling omissions.

Little will come out of it if there is no limiting of the type and amount of information that can be lawfully collected. The Act remains full of loopholes, and the emphasis on self-regulation by business remains as the dominant feature of regulation.

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Everyone is upset about how Coles and Woolworths jeep on bumping up prices. So they should be. After all, they control the bulk of the groceries retail market. What they do affects us all. When they used their monopoly power to rise prices far above what a competitive market would sustain, it has an unreasonable negative impact of the standard of living of the population.

News that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is investigating a particular trick allegedly practiced by these two giants, is welcome news for the broad Australian community.

In this instance, the using pretend discounts to trick customers.

“Many consumers rely on discounts to help their grocery budgets stretch further, particularly during this time of cost-of-living pressures,” said the ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb.

Th graph below shows how in a real case involving Oreo biscuits the price started at $3.60. This was raised to $5 for two weeks and marked down to $4.80 in an advertised price drop campaign.

By practicing this across many products, the supermarkets can widen their profit margins considerably. more so when they hook the public in with their dishonest “Prices Dropped” or “Down Down” promotion campaigns.

The ACCC allegations involve 245 products. At Coles and 266 products at Woolworths. And these are companies that score multibillion dollar profits each year. A report on these allegations will be out is due course, and the ACCC is signalling it intends to seek a court order to comal the two supermarket chains to contribute to charity. This would be a very mild penalty indeed. Any organisation guilty of fleecing the public on this scale should be considered to be involved in large scale theft and penalised accordingly if found guilty.

This is not too tough. Everyday Australians are finding it harder to put food on the table and a roof over their and their family’s heads. The rising cost of living is real. Jobs are getting scarcer. The economy is in the doldrums. This is a time for the nation to pull together, in a way where we look after each other, share the load and the reward.

Corporations operating in the opposite direction, driven by greed to maximise the bottom line and feed major shareholders, deserve the ire of society and to be held to account. What they do causes harm.

Image from The Australian: Supermarket CEOs love a healthy bottom line, pretend concern for cost of living affecting as the money flows to the shareholders

In this light the ACCC’s latest move on Coles and Woolworths, although welcome, is rather mild. Good if it can bring some easing of this particularly bad practice. But the reality of price gouging involves more than this.

Back in May, the ACCC released a report saying that there is evidence of price gouging coming out of the research of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The 195-page report detailed everything form the impact of pricing, excessive profitability, the wages and conditions of its staff, food waste, company mergers and land banking. It found many questionable practices. The ACCC recommended giving courts the power to break up anti-competitive monopolies and imposing a mandatory food and grocery code of conduct.

Nothing has come out of it so far. Price gouging is perfectly legal in Australia. Will anything come out of the look into false discount practices. Probably not, if the track record is an indicator. Up till now the major parties have not been willing to outlaw these practices. New Zealand, Britian and the United States have more laws to combat monopoly abuses than Australia does, and this goes to show just how far Australia is lagging.

Attention is needed to counter misleading advertising, the manipulation of stock availability to push up prices, understaffing and underpaying that leads to lowering service standards to widen an already wide profit margin, and the underpayment for produce from farmers and other suppliers for the same end.

A report commissioned by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) last year, measured price gouging across a arrange of industries. It was led by former head of the ACCC Professor Alan Fels. It found evidence of price mark-ups, including the use of the weather and war to inflate prices. Labour costs are often blamed for putting up prices, despite that in real terms wage increases are minimal and well below the price increases, plus the wages share of national income is on a downward trajectory, while the corporation’s’ share is on an upward one.

The supermarket monopolies must be regarded as entities existing within society and having a shared responsibility to society. When the citizens are doing it tough, the monopolies must share the burden of overcoming this. When they fail to take on the responsibility, justice demands that they must be made to.

Maybe we have reached a point where we need fewer inquiries and more action. Cloes and Woolworths may not be the only guilty ones. But paying attention to them is a good start.

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Despite all the media hype about something of a jobs boom and a sound economy, it happens that this hasn’t materialised into aa better life for most Australians. This isn’t surprising, since the talked about improvements area a mirage.

Saying that the situation is worse than claimed isn’t knocking for the sake of it. Knowing the truth is essential to finding what must be done to improve the situation.

Research at the University of New South Wales confirms that there has been a steady rise in wealth inequality over the last 20 years. The study found that the richest 20 percent have 6 times the wealth as the middle 20 percent and 90 times the wealth of the bottom 20 percent.

But the figure for the richest 20 percent is heavily skewed towards the richest 5 percent. They have more than twice than the rest of the cohort.

These findings need a clarification. The study says that income inequality has shifted less than wealth inequality. Wealth includes assets owned. One of the relevant details is that the top income bracket holds 82 percent of all investment property. This is a reality that puts to rest the image of the “mum and dad investor” being the mainstay of property ownership.

The wealthy have advantages that enables them to pay far less tax on their nominal income, and they enjoy further advantages in benefiting from government subsidies and allowances. The 80 percent get their income from wages or Centrelink payments. Those on the highest incomes get theirs through returns on their investment.

Consideration should also be given to the that that the wealth on the 80 percent is distorted by superannuation cover. Rather than an increase in wealth, this should be regarded as saving for retirement, to fill the gap caused by the downgrading of the age pension. Include this and the gap is wider still.

Returning to income. Wages have still been in decline for the past 2 decades and more. a virtual non movement in the last quarter doesn’t mean the situation is looking up. The ongoing pattern hasn’t changed.

The above graph shows the discrepancy in income in 2022. This has not changed in any meaningful way in 2023.

Real wages, or what they can buy, have declined even further in both relative to the biggest incomes and in absolute terms. In terms of dollars in the pocket, there had been a small growth of 0.8 percent in June quarter. Much of this is attributable to the minimum wage increase. This was eaten up by inflation. In real terms then, wages remained worse than stagnant, and at the lowest level in 20 years.

Another way to look at it is through the share in the growth of the economy. The graph below compares the pre COVID performance with other countries and regions. Australia shows the greatest inequality.

The major reason is the greater weakness in the bargaining strength of unions and most importantly, the transformation from full time and secure work to part-time and insecure work for a large part of the workforce. This has created a reserve of cheap labour, used to keep overall wages down. This sort of work also disguises the real rate of unemployment.

Those depending on Centrelink payments are in a worse position. Increases in these payments have been a joke and well below the poverty line.

The obvious way to establish a far more equitable balance in income distribution is to encourage Wage growth, provide Centrelink payments to where they will provide a reasonable standard of living, and to impose higher taxes on the top end.

Achieving a fairer distribution of the nation’s wealth requires, above all else, the provision of affordable housing on a scale that will make a difference.

The measures mentioned to improve the distribution of income and wealth haven’t been taken by government and there is no sign government intends to in the foreseeable future.

This points to the necessity of a broad community campaign to fight for and eventually win these changes.

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