Yes, Australia pays ridiculous prices for things like groceries, and sure, price gouging exists, but it's a small part of the problem and exists because of the much larger problem over overregulation.
I've lived in countries where you pay less than half of Australian prices for things like meat and vegetables, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that most Australians would often get sick if they ate those groceries. Whether it's food standards or building regulations or work safety laws or anything else you can think of, Australia is extremely strict and intensely regulated and that makes things expensive. You can believe it's worthwhile or a waste, but it's still the reality.
Given this economic and legal environment, new competitors can't realistically get in. The government can complain about the symptoms and results of what they've done, but they're not going to deregulate. We're not going to see a return to family-owned farms selling independently to the local communities. Everyone hates the system, I do too, but most Australians don't want to give up the hyper regulation (it's like everyone wanting coal plants to be shut down and replaced with renewables, then they whinge about increased prices and decreased reliability, they don't understand the obvious connection between aspects of reality), the government isn't going to change the status quo, if push comes to shove we all know that Coles and Woolworths have enough money and power to control things, and nothing is going to change. Aldi with their cheap and nasty image strategy can't even match prices, they have noticeably lower quality for the same price or a token 1-5c difference.
At the end of the day (or month or whatever), the inquiry will result in nothing, people will continue grumpily paying crazy grocery prices and switch the focus to petrol prices or electricity prices or politician wages (which are actually far too low - if you have monkeys because you pay peanuts, you won't get better staff by reducing the pay you offer!), none of which will change either. Woolworths will continue to be extremely profitable on "Treasure Island" and the share price will recover after the current dip caused by everyone hating the company because of bad politics and optics. Hate it as much as you like (and I do too, it's horrid), but at the end of the day, the company's bottom line will guide the share price. While everyone is finding any excuse to denigrate the company, it makes sense that it's probably a great time to buy. The share price seems to have bounced off a double bottom last week and should increase from here, likely back to the high 30s over the next few months.
WOW Price at posting:
$32.40 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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