The Independents’ agenda

Regardless of the outcome of the political impasse that has gripped the nation since the major parties each failed to convince the masses that they deserved a mandate, we can now expect a few old issues to come back into the limelight.

The gang of three Independents who promise to work as a bloc in supporting a new Government have a long list of unresolved issues the reasons why each of them didn’t go to the election on the ticket of the Coalition. They claim to be after a shakeup in rural health, broadband, supermarket power, free trade, irrigation water use and .... oh yes....competition policy. The logic may be twisted at times though.

The free trade issue is about blocking food imports which are dealing constituents of regional NSW and Queensland out of markets for their produce. The biggest industries that provide livelihoods for voters in Bob Katter’s far north Queensland seat are beef and sugar – which depend entirely on the ability for Australia to access and retain export markets. We can’t have it both ways.

There is a lot more measure in the words of Tony Windsor however who is an impressive spokesman about the inequity that has developed in the treatment of rural and regional Australia. Windsor has long pushed for an overhaul to competition policy to recognise "distance, smallness, remoteness” of regions.

The area where it seems the three amigos can have the greatest impact is in the enhancements to rural infrastructure that could come from a serious investment in telecommunications via the NBN. This subject of political promise is one where there couldn’t have been any greater distance between the two parties, and the compromises to appease the independents on addressing this genuine need for investment in regional Australia will be worth studying.

The power and influence of supermarkets are bound to be in focus as an area for attention in this term of Government, however long it lasts. This will morph into a debate about the effectiveness of competition policy which has a large degree of focus on “consumer”. Major efforts in the past to unravel the major grocery chains have come unstuck on this fact. The consumer – including the regional and rural consumer – is the beneficiary of the current approach. That line will be used again to defend the structure of our food retail markets against whatever is thrown at the current system.

But tt comes with impeccable timing as this issue reappears on the political agenda that Woolworths announces record profits and increases food retail profitability – to a level that is almost double those of its major rival Coles. Woolworths boosted its bottom line by a little more than 10% - the 11th straight year that it has grown profits by at least double-digit percentages. This comes however when food inflation is at near zero and when most consumer goods sales areas remain in decline due to the flatness of the economy.

The wider issue of competition policy however is a more complex challenge which has dogged the conservative parties for years, with some interesting unanswered issues about the structure of supply chain arrangements still unresolved from the ACCC’s inquiry into grocery prices and the recent Senate Review into dairy industry dealings now back on the table. It will be interesting to watch where those recommendations are taken as this story unfolds.