Upholding sovereignty against big tech is not so easy

The political class has spent much of the year focusing on whether the two big supermarkets chains have abused their market power to the detriment of Australian shoppers. The regulatory scrutiny is now before the courts in the form of the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission’s case against Coles and Woolworths for allegedly misleading customers over discounts.

It would be unwise to pre-judge the matter before the Federal Court has had its say. But it’s interesting to compare how local duopolies or oligopolies such as “Colesworth” are treated compared with the big US-based tech platforms such as Google, Meta and Apple.