The old saying that you can drag a horse to water but can’t make it drink should be updated.

No matter what you do to encourage Australian shoppers to fill their trolleys with cheap groceries, we keep going back to the same supermarket duopoly.

Consumers have to take action if they are to put pressure on our big supermarkets.Credit: Sydney Morning Herald

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s decision to take on Coles and Woolworths, accusing them of misleading millions of customers with their pricing practices, generated the anger, the hand-wringing and disgust you’d expect.

In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, which has forced many Australians to charity organisations for the first time, the companies’ “Down Down” and “Prices Dropped” slogans are alleged to have had only a passing acquaintance with the truth.

As former ACCC boss Allan Fels noted in these pages, a particularly galling issue was that the alleged price manipulation was on day-to-day staples such as breakfast cereals, cat food, soft drink and toothpaste. High-end (and more profitable) goods were seemingly not affected.

What’s seriously impressive in all of this is that the ACCC action was driven by countless complaints from shoppers, who told the regulator of their concerns.........

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