Well, at week's end surely the ACCC and the Federal Government are in disarray on this issue of big business exploiting little business. They simply don't want to know about it.
We've seen this week small petrol operators, independents, doing their own dough to the tune of thousands of dollars, just to highlight the problem they face that they are paying, for the same product, seven or eight cents a litre more from the oil companies than are Woolworths and Coles.
A criminal offence in other parts of the world and nothing being done about it, indeed not even a comment from the Prime Minister or the Treasurer.
But Mr Samuel did say this week that he would "crack down on big companies extending payment terms to small businesses".
In other words, making small business wait for payment owed to them.
Of course the biggest offender in this is government, the biggest business in the country.
Is the ACCC going to crack down on the Health Department in New South Wales for failing to pay millions, over $60 million in fact, to its suppliers?
Mr Samuel and the Government would most probably regard that as a stupid question.
But the notion that someone is going to crack down on big business on anything could only come from a government addicted to spin and stunts.
The problem of big companies delaying payments to small business has been going on for years and years.
And the ACCC have been watching on, cheering from the sidelines.
For example, here's an extract of a letter from Myer which says, on the 2nd of May 2007 to "Dear Sir or Madam", "Please be advised that as at the 1/6/2007 your settlement terms will change from 3 per cent 30 days to 3 per cent 60 days."
What's that mean?
I'll tell you what it means, Myer telling all their small business suppliers that their payment would be delayed another 30 days, extending payment out to 60 days, and they would still withhold 30 dollars in every one thousand they paid and call it a settlement discount.
Myer would decide that.
The outfit that owed the money.
I'll pay you, but I'll discount it by three per cent, even though it's taking me 60 days to pay and not 30.
What about Angus and Robertson, demanding a cash payment of $19,322.50 from a small business supplier?
They didn't want to only delay payment, Angus and Robertson, they didn't want to pay what they owed at all. And it was backed with a threat.
In other words, Tower Books were told to pay over $19,000 and "If we fail to receive your payment by this time, within 17 days, we'll have no option but to remove you from our list of authorised suppliers and you'll be unable to complete any further transactions with us until such time as the payment is made".
Tower Books took this to the ACCC; they did nothing.
The chicken growers in Victoria took their complaint of delayed payment to the ACCC, who found "Processors have delayed settling contract terms with their growers, set new fees at levels that do not compensate growers for unavoidable real cost increases and shifted the burden of risks onto growers without compensation".
But the ACCC did nothing.
And of course then there's Woolworths.
In 1997 Woolworths owed their suppliers 1.1 billion dollars which gave Woolworths a net stock position of $300 million.
So in other words, their total stock was only costing them $300 million because they were hanging onto $1.1 billion that should have been paid to their suppliers.
Fast forward to today.
Through the exploitation of their market power by forcing suppliers to wait even longer for payment, Woolworths now owe suppliers $4.8 billion and they've got a negative stock of $1.8 billion.
In other words, by delaying payments to suppliers Woolworths have $1.8 billion of suppliers' money sitting in their bank accounts earning interest.
This is money they've received for goods they've sold, but Woolworths haven't paid their suppliers for these goods.
And Mr Samuel is saying that he'd crack down on big companies extending payment terms to small business.
You've just got to believe he's kidding, or he assumes we are all stupid.
But you have to ask, where is this massive persecution of small business going to end?
