ACCC VS SUPERMARKETS
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has listed concerns over how the major supermarkets are operating in its interim report on the sector. The report comes after the commission said it would take Coles and Woolworths to court over claims of misleading specials.
“Oligopolistic market structures can limit incentives to compete vigorously on price,” the commission’s deputy chair Mick Keogh is quoted by the AAP as saying. “We see Woolworths and Coles providing a broadly similar experience to customers through largely undifferentiated product ranges, pricing at similar levels and similar non-price offerings including loyalty programs.”
Guardian Australia reports the commission found grocery suppliers had raised “concerning” issues, including being required to pay rebates for promotions to supermarkets. The ACCC then used compulsory information-gathering powers to examine the reported behaviour.
Keogh said customers were struggling to compare prices and felt forced to take part in loyalty programs and hand over personal information. “Many consumers have told us that they are losing trust in the sale price claims by supermarkets,” he said.
AAP reports Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said his government would examine the report closely. “Customers don’t deserve to be treated as fools by the supermarkets — they deserve better than that. My government is taking a range of actions to make sure Australians are paying a fair price at the checkout and Australian suppliers are getting a fair price for their goods,” he said.
In a week that has seen interest rates hold steady, inflation come down (but by not enough for the RBA), negative gearing suddenly reappear amid very mixed messaging from the government, and the opposition leader continue to refuse to tell Australia how much his nuclear energy plans will cost, you’d think everyone might want to take a beat and work on improving their messaging and agenda. Well, Peter Dutton is instead out there claiming he’s on an election footing and suggesting the country should go to the polls in December.
Now, whether the Coalition leader actually believes that is another thing entirely, but he told The Nightly: “If he [Albanese] thinks that they’re going to go up [interest rates], or if there’s no chance of them coming down and if he thinks he’s got a restless backbench, then December 9 [for the election].” For what it’s worth, the prime minister has continually said he wants his government to go a full term.
DUTTON VS FOREIGN STUDENTS
Dutton has made headlines elsewhere after telling 2GB that foreign students trying to extend their stays in Australia were “the modern version of the boat arrivals”. The Sydney Morning Herald reports when asked about the number of people using the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to challenge their visa refusals, the opposition leader said “people have found a weakness in the system, they are exploiting the weakness”. He then added: “They obviously will be getting advice from lawyers in this space and others who have tested the system and found success, and ultimately have stayed in Australia, or they have extended their stay.”
The government responded in fairly blunt terms, with a spokesman for Immigration Minister Tony Burke saying he made “no apology for reversing the rorting and exploitation that the former government allowed to flourish in pockets of the higher education sector”.
The spokesman said the numbers were a result of Labor rejecting a higher number of student visas and the government was “not only battling a broken migration system but also inherited an [appeals tribunal] irreversibly damaged as a result of the actions of the former government”.
The Australian and the ABC have led on Jim Chalmers’ continuing visit to China, with the former picking up on the treasurer’s warning over the potential impact on Australia of China’s economy slowing. Writing in the paper, Chalmers said: “To put that in perspective, a one-percentage-point drop in China’s GDP growth roughly costs Australia a quarter of a percentage point of our growth, or about $6 billion in lost output.”
Chalmers reportedly told his Chinese counterparts late on Thursday he was looking forward to “hearing more about efforts to boost growth [in China’s economy]”.
Talking of economies, The Age reports on an analysis of US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s policies, with claims they would cause “severe collateral damage” to the Australian economy.
The research, led by Australian economist and former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin, found the combination of the tariffs, mass deportation of workers and Federal Reserve interference proposed by Trump would leave Australians worse off.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
Scientists believe a species of “walking” fish can help shed light on how humans evolved to stand upright millions of years ago, the Press Association reports.
New studies in the journal Current Biology looked at how the sea robin fish grows leg-like structures to scurry across the sea floor and dig for food.
The researchers say the bony fish’s six “legs” are an extension of the creature’s wing-like fins and are grown using the same genes involved in human limb development.
Professor David Kingsley from Stanford University said: “Land animals evolved from fish ancestors, so some kind of relationship between human limbs and fish fins is not a surprise.
“However we were delighted to see that the gene that makes some parts of the fins develop in a new way in sea robins is also a gene that controls some bones in humans.”
Nicholas Bellono, an associate professor at Harvard, added: “This is a fish that grew legs using the same genes that contribute to the development of our limbs and then repurposed these legs to find prey using the same genes our tongues use to taste food — pretty wild.”
Say What?
There will be no ceasefire in the north. We will continue to fight against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation with all our strength until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.
Israel Katz
The Israeli Foreign Minister rejected calls from a group of countries, including Australia, the US, and the UK, for an immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Israel-Lebanon border.
CRIKEY RECAP
Tens of thousands of patients from Australia’s biggest medical imaging provider I-MED have had swaths of sensitive health and personal information exposed in a data breach using details that have been public for a year.
This information includes medical reports, scan images, names, addresses and other details that were stored in I-MED’s internal systems, which were accessed by a third party.
On Thursday, the company provided a statement confirming the breach.
“After becoming aware of the issue I-MED took immediate action to disable all these external accounts and we contacted impacted users,” it said in an email.
War and destruction is slouching towards Bethlehem. With Israel about to invade Lebanon for the, what is it, fourth, eighth, nineteenth time, and Vladimir Putin about to escalate the stalemated war against NATO’s proxy, Ukraine, the US election should be and feel momentous. How the most powerful and extended country in the world behaves in the next four years is going to determine how we live.
Yet the election is being fought on domestic grounds, with international affairs drawn into the mix merely as an index or symptom of attitudes. Typically the second US presidential debate, of three, would have been on foreign policy. That will not now happen, a symptom of the US governance system in some small ways, starting to come apart, and leaving the contestation in disarray.
But the political organiser is particularly interested in the teals — traditional liberals concerned about climate change.
“I was interested in the kind of liberalness of the teals, you know?” he says, arguing it is only liberal parties (in the European sense) that have “pulled off transformational economic upgrades in democracies”. “Historically, it’s not the labor types or the green types, even, or the social democratic types. It’s always the party of business.”
Australia’s current Liberal Party isn’t up to it, having become, like the Republicans, “a wacko right-wing party”. But Exley reckons the teals could step into the liberal void. “They may seem unambitious economically right now,” he says. “But when a big economic and financial crisis hits next, history says they are the most likely to be free to break with tradition and dogma and do big things.”
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Netanyahu says Israel ‘will not stop’ attacks on Hezbollah despite ceasefire calls (The Guardian)
Historic federal indictment against Adams claims he fraudulently got $10M in public funds, $123K in free luxury travel, ritzy perks (New York Post)
On Ukraine’s eastern front, 100 miles of high-stakes struggle (The New York Times) ($)
Helene’s winds batter Florida as Category 3 storm races toward the coast (Associated Press)
He’s the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. A court just exonerated him. (CNN)
Naomi Campbell banned from being charity trustee (BBC)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Memo to Dutton: It’s the final quarter, you’d better start kicking — David Crowe (The Sydney Morning Herald): Peter Dutton, by contrast, lives the Albanese motto every single day. The opposition leader is holding back on every policy that would normally shape an Australian election: on the economy, the cost of living, housing and defence.
Even the glaring exception to that statement — his proposal for seven nuclear power stations — confirms the flimsiness of the Liberal policy platform. Dutton and his energy spokesman, Ted O’Brien, are incredibly coy about how this policy might work. What would it cost? How long would it take? What replaces our ageing coal-fired power stations while we wait for nuclear?
“We will release our costings in due course — at a time of our choosing,” Dutton said in a speech to a business audience on Monday. Sure, it is common for opposition leaders to reveal their full costings shortly before the election. But they tend to put their big-picture policies on the agenda well before that final stage.
Dutton is running out of time. He is acting as if the last phase of this term of Parliament is still months away. In fact, the final quarter is already upon us. It started last month, assuming the election is as late as May. And Dutton is yet to prove he can kick when it counts.
Posting ‘Goodbye Meta AI’ is pointless. But we can stop big tech stealing our Facebook pictures — Chris Stokel-Walker (The Guardian): Even if these messages seem harmless and sharing them might feel like hedging your bets, I’d encourage you not to be drawn in. Digital literacy in the age of AI is more important than ever, and it’s vital that we are able to identify copypasta nonsense for what it is.
Not only does sharing false information like this single you out as being gullible, but it is also a fruitless exercise when there are real ways of pushing back against big tech using your data. Meta says it will be sending out notifications informing users it plans to train its AI systems on user data and giving people the option to opt out. You fill out a short form and send it to Meta, and any public data will be removed (Meta has already confirmed it won’t train its systems on anything you have not shared publicly).
But if you miss that, or you’re still keen to get ahead of it, you can opt out proactively. Click on “Settings & Privacy” in Facebook, then on “Privacy Centre” and you’ll be met with some text about the AI opt-in. The second paragraph begins: “You have the right to object.” Click on it to be taken to a form which allows you to express your dissent.
As AI develops, it’s vital we all stay abreast of the real threats to our data and how to combat them — and that we resist being drawn in by distractions such as “Goodbye Meta AI”.
