Tim Wilson

The only reason I'm gripped by Coles is you know what's going on with supermarkets in this country.

So let me background that for you in a moment.

Yeah, just quickly.

So Coles, both major players in Australia, Aldi hasn't, but the other two major players in Australia have been in court.

The federal court yesterday handed down the decision on Coles that the discounts misled customers on, quote, an industrial scale.

This is a guy called Michael O'Brien.

I want to say that just as Michael O'Brien was the same guy who was involved with that whole, I can't even remember their names now, the Fitzsimons case, whatever it was, you know, the people who sued the people and it was involved in the media and all that sort of stuff.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter.

The deal was, in essence, and by the way, the ACCC who took the case, which is the equivalent of our ComCom, they're going after major, major penalties.

They want multi-million dollar penalties because this is a company that made $1.1 billion in profit last year.

So they say we've got to hit them and hit them hard so this stuff stops.

Anyway, and of course, to be fair, Coles defended all of it and said they were genuine specials.

What are you talking about?

So it was a two-week hearing.

They agreed to focus on a small number of products sold between Jan of 21 and May of 23.

Two litre bottles of Coke, Colgate toothpaste, 900 gram tins of Carey Care Baby formula, Rexona deodorant, Lurpac butter and a box of Arnott Shapes.

So then there was the nature's wet dog food or the nature's gift wet dog food that was priced at $4.

Between April 22 and Feb 7, 2023, it increased to $6 for seven days before Coles introduced its third price of $4.50 advertising at a discount from $6.

So it's gone from four to 450, but down from six.

You see how they're playing that game?