Murray Olds: Australian correspondent on Emirati retail giant LuLu Hypermarket being invited to set up in Australia

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently confirmed he invited LuLu Hypermarket to set up in Australia while on a visit to the United Arab Emirates.

This comes as Australia looks to develop a new free trade agreement with the Middle Eastern nation. 

Australian correspondent Murray Olds says a new player in the grocery market would help break up the current duopoly. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News talks'd be follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Muriel's as he corresponds to us, Now, hey, mus.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Get it either. You wouldn't want to cross your father,
nor would you if.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
You Now, well, you're a boxer two, so it could
get quite exciting, couldn't I?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yeah, well that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Now what are you guys doing? You're building lasers, are you?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Well?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
This is the news story out of Canberra today and
this is a company in Cambra called Eos. No one's
known much about it until today, and the story goes,
there's a brand new deal for Australia to sell a
homemade laser, a laser that's capable of destroying up to
twenty drones a minute, as I say, developed in Canberra

(00:56):
and apparently at least one NATO countries that has bought
it for delivering in eighteen months. It's faster and cheaper.
The current way to get rid of drones apparently used
to have hit them with cannons or or missiles. Now
that this drone, you know, like a standard warfare drone,
say a thousand dollars but it takes a half million

(01:17):
dollar missile to bring it down. Eos says it's new
laser can killer drone for one dollar a shot and
it can knock over multiples in a minute. Now there
is this too good to be true. So many stories
over here, as you well know how that have been
reported down the years about this new or this new widget,
or you know, some other little object that's going to

(01:38):
revolutionize Australia's defense industries. They all come to nothing. They've
hyped up beyond measure. But I'll tell you what, if
it's got any legs at all, it makes a nice
counterpoint for Anthony Alben easy to take to the Oval
office this month. Well in October, I beg your pardon
to tell Donald Trump we are doing a bit more
than you maybe are aware of.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
What is the retail chain from the Middle East that's
going to come and break up your supermarket situation.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Again, never heard of it until this afternoon, but apparently
Lulu lu Lu is the biggest player in the Middle
East in the supermarket business. Now you know it's over here.
It's basically a duopoly. Woolworth controls almost forty percent of
the supermarket business, Coals around thirty percent. Eldie's been here

(02:28):
for if I said a decade, maybe a whisker longer.
Heather They've got nine percent the old the German company,
and IGA's got around the same. So a new player
would hopefully drive down prices because, as I say, Coles
and Woolworths have got the whole joints sewn up very
very profitable. In fact, according to the Competition and Consumer
Commission over here among the most profitable submarkets anywhere in

(02:52):
the world. So we are paying for the nose for
the privilege of shopping at Woolworths and Coals. Well, there
may be another little stick the government can bash the
big ones with. Anthony Albanezi stopped over on the way
home from London, was given the red carpet treatment there
in the United a rememirates and he's invited in becoming
set up in Australia.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
And have they see years.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
I think it's too early, elbows on the way home.
So at this point in the afternoon, I'm not sure
if they've said yes or not, but it wouldn't surprise
because here's the thing. They've been involved in talks for
a while. This is like the cherry on top of
the cake with the icing.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Okay, let's see how that goes. I'm quite interested in that. Now,
what's gonna happen with Optus?

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Well, Goodness knows, this is a company in buddy crisis.
I mean this month right, they had a routine standard
security upgrade. It was getting driven out of India and
out of Australia and for some inexplicable reason, they think
it's human error. But for about thirteen to forteen hours,

(03:54):
the triple zero emergency call service was not working. The
rest of the network was working. The standard calls between
you and your husband, the children and whatnot, they were
all working. So it wasn't for quite some time before
they worked out the emergency calls weren't getting through and
three people died. Another outage on Sunday just gone. Now

(04:16):
Optics is in a mile of trouble, a mile of pain.
Goodness knows what consumers think of it. If they're not
running away at one thousand miles an hour, there's something
wrong with them. And the federal government saying listen, you're
a major carrier in the Australian marketplace. You've got to
do better. You can't do this. They had another big
outage back in twenty twenty three, another fourteen hour shutdown.
Now good.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
You know.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
The government is insisting now on more transparency. It wants
an external regulator to oversight the whole business, and it
wants a hell of a lot more robust system that
if Telstra or voter Phone or any other business is
upgrading their security systems and for whatever reason there's a blackout,
it automatically switches to another carrier with no webs or butts.

(04:59):
You can't have people dying, Heather for want of someone
picking up the phone to a triple zero call.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
That's a very good point that you make, Miss Thank
you was always appreciate it. Murraol's Australia Corresponding.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
For more from News Talks at b Listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio