Name: Australia’s Monopoly Is Hidden in Plain Sight
Uploaded: 2025-11-28T14:25:26.000Z
Duration: 23 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

How much did you make in the last financial year, Mr. Banducci?

Senator, that's available in our annual report.

Adverbs of manner

I'm simply asking you the question, Mr. Banducci, how much did you make in the last financial year?

Senator, as I said, it's available in our annual report.

I know it's available in your annual report, Mr.

I'm asking you in front of a Senate committee how much you made in the last financial year.

I mean, what's your reluctance to disclose that?

Senator, my base salary at Woolworths is $2.6 million.

And then I get a short term bonus and a long term bonus, depending our performance relative to the metrics I've just talked about on top of that.

And what did that add up to your total remuneration in the last financial year?

As you would see in our annual report, it is, I think it is $8.4 million in total.

Welcome to another episode of Coldfusion.

That was Woolworths, outgoing CEO, being grilled in Parliament about whether Australians are paying too much at the grocery checkout for anyone outside the country.

Woolworths is one of Australia's two supermarket giants.

Along with its rival, Coles, the pair dominate what Australians eat, drink and pay at the register.

On the surface, it looks like an ordinary corporate inquiry, but it's a symptom of something deeper.

Australia has quietly become one of the most monopolized economies in the developed world.

And when you live here like I do, you can look around and see it.

Two supermarkets control nearly 2/3 of all grocery sales.

Two airlines handle over 90% of domestic flights.

Four banks hold the savings of most Australians.

One media empire dominates the national conversation.

And telecommunications has long been ruled by Telstra, a former state monopoly.

As you'll see, some of these corporations use their economic weight to shape the political process.

They lobby governments, pressure regulators, and work behind the scenes to keep the system tilted in their favor.

Mining companies have gone head to head with governments and wondering.

Now the question is, how did a wealthy modern country end up like this?

And what does it mean for the future of ordinary Australians?

Money buys influence, and influence protects money, which buys more influence.

Once that cycle takes hold, it can shape entire markets and at the extreme end, entire countries.

Now, just for definition's sake, Australia is actually full of duopolies and oligopolies rather than strict monopolies.

The former is when two companies or a few companies dominate an industry.

Concentrated power in the hands of a few Companies in the UK, the largest supermarket holds less than 30% of the market, with others close behind.

Whereas in Australia, Coles and Woolworths together control more than 65%.

In the US and Europe, budget carriers thrive on short, busy routes and constantly chip away at the larger airlines.

Long distances push up costs, airports charge higher fees, landing slots are limited and loyalty schemes keep passengers tied to big carriers.

It's no surprise then that Qantas and virgin carry 94% of all domestic travellers.

Well, part of the answer lies in geography.

It's not what you'd think, but hear me out.

Australia is huge, roughly the same size as the continental United States, but

The vast majority cluster in a few coastal cities separated by long stretches of empty land.

This makes distribution costly and leaves fewer customers in each market.

Economists call this a thin market, one with so few buyers and sellers that competition is weak and prices are easier to control.

Now compare that with the United States, where more than 340 million people share one integrated economy.

Giants like Walmart and Kroger are huge, but they still face plenty of regional rivals.

So yes, geography and dwelling demographics explain part of the picture, but not all of it.

Other countries with similar challenges, like Canada, have been more willing to break up companies to keep competition alive.

They've got a problem, so they fan the flames.

The lay of the land set the stage for corporate concentration.

But political choices made it much worse.

Sometimes it's quiet, buried in policy papers or whispered in back rooms.

Other times, though, it's a relentless ad campaign on TV.

One of the most dramatic examples came in 2010.

That year there'd been a global boom in commodity prices.

Being a resource exporting country, the Australian government decided to use some of this new massive wealth creation to to pay back the public support for small businesses, tax cuts for businesses, retirement boosts, infrastructure spending and that kind of thing.

It's a pretty good idea, as using natural resource profits to help the nation is similar to what Norway does.

So for Australia, in order to carry this out, they needed to tax the mining companies a bit more.

And before you feel bad, some of these guys were making $14 billion a year, a 200% increase year on year.

When the mining industry heard about the proposed reforms, they were furious.

They set out to seek revenge on the government.

A $25 million ad blitz was dropped from the heavens.

TV screens were filled with warnings of the sky falling.

If the government proposal goes through, jobs will vanish, investment will flee and the economy will be ruined.

The public was mortified and meanwhile mining industry lobbyists work the corridors of government.

Within months, the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went from a 70% approval rating in the polls to being thrown out of the government.

Internally, his party thought that his image had deteriorated so badly that he was a risk to them all.

There was a lot more political drama surrounding this incident, but let's not get into that.

For many observers at the time, however, this was a benchmark case.

It showed that when the stakes are high enough, corporations can shape policies and more importantly, the direction of political leadership itself.

For Australia, it's sad because what politician would ever challenge the mining companies for the benefit of the average Australian again as boldly so if you think that's nuts, it's just a taste of the wildness here.

Australia turns into an absolute clown show when you look at our banking system.

The dominance of four banks have sucked all the money out of the productive economy and thrown it into the housing market.

A 2022 S&P Global estimate says that these banks have cornered 72% of the market and newer estimates say 75%.

It's an abnormally high concentration and it's resulted in some absolute buffoonery within our economy because there's no competition.

They all have the same business model that virtually does one thing, lend money to buy homes.

In contrast, in many other countries, banks loan to a whole range of sectors, businesses, agricultural and consumer sectors.

Meanwhile, in Australia, 70% of those four banks entire existence is to just finance buying homes, all in lockstep.

It's gotten so bad that it's twisted and distorted our entire economy.

The end result is that the Australian economy is less complex than that of Botswana.

Australia ranks 105th on the Harvard Economic Complexity Index behind countries like Botswana, Zambia and Pakistan.

That's something I learned about when I first arrived here and it's always stuck with me.

Before anyone starts yelling hey Sepo, go home.

Let me explain what it means and why it matters.

The quasi monopolization of big retail brands makes it even more difficult for smaller competitor brands to gain a foothold in the market.

Likewise, two aviation firms rule the skies.

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