Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, who has been a strong advocate for breaking up Australia’s supermarket and airline duopolies, has called on the ACCC to look into the airlines for alleged price gouging, citing the high prices seen for flights to Melbourne for this weekend’s AFL grand final.
The ACCC announced on Monday it would sue both Coles and Woolworths over alleged price gouging practices.
Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“Maybe the ACCC needs to turn its attention to the duopoly we’re seeing in the air. I mean, the price hikes at the moment ahead of the AFL Grand final. Absolutely absurd,” McKenzie told Nine’s Today.
As of this morning, the cheapest return flight from Sydney to Melbourne for the weekend was $726.
“You know, your heart goes out to anyone from Brisvegas or Sydney who wants to head to the G this weekend because it does seem that both Virgin and Qantas, and that includes Jetstar, everybody is actually taking advantage of this,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie continued:
I’ve been a strong critic of the anti-competitive behaviour of our airline industry and of the government for not doing anything.
They’re in government, they’ve got all the levers in their hands. Please start using them so that Australians can have lower prices on their airline flights and actually have better data around cancellations and delays. That’s what we want to see.
We’ve given them lots of helpful suggestions. I want to be bipartisan, please. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, pick some of them up and let’s get it done.”
Teals MP Monique Ryan also appeared on Today, and said she’s been pushing for a code of conduct for the aviation industry for “some time”.
“We need the government to work on competition in lots of industries,” Ryan said.
“We need the government to act on that in the same way that it’s acted on supermarkets recently.”
Read the full article here
