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. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murriol's Asie corresponds to us. Now, hey, mus get a heather.
You wouldn't want to cross your father, nor would you
if you. Now, well you're a boxer two. So it
could get quite exciting, couldn't it. Yeah, well that's true. Yeah,
yeah yeah. Now what are you guys doing? You're building lasers,
are you? Well? This is the news story out of
Canberra today and this is a company in Campra called EOS.

(00:24):
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 and apparently at least one NATO countries that
has bought it for delivering in eighteen months. It's faster

(00:45):
and cheaper. The current way to get rid of drones
apparently used to hit them with cannons or missiles. Now
that this drone, you know, like a standard warfare drone,
say a thousand dollars, but it takes a half million
dollar missile to bring it down. EOS says it's new
laser can killer drone for one dollar a shot, and

(01:07):
it can knock over multiples in a minute. Now 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 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

(01:28):
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. What is this retail chain
from the Middle East that's going to come and break
up your supermarket situation? Again, never heard of it until

(01:51):
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. Wilworth
controls almost forty percent of the supermarket business, Coals around
thirty percent. Eldie's been here, if I said a decade,

(02:12):
maybe a whisker longer, Heather, They've got nine percent. The oldie,
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 Wilworth 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

(02:34):
SEP markets anywhere in the world. So we're paying for
the nose for the privilege of shopping at Wolworths and Coals. Well,
there's may be another little stick the government can bash
the big ones with Anthony Albanez. He stopped over on
the way home from London, was given the red carpet
treatment there in the United Arab Emirates, and he's invited
in becoming set up in Australia. And have they seek years?

(02:58):
I think it's too early 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. Okay, let's see how that goes. I'm
quite interested in that. Now, what's gonna happen with Optus. Well,
Goodness knows, this is a company in buddy crisis. I

(03:21):
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, the triple zero
emergency call service was not working. The rest of the

(03:43):
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
outach on Sunday just gone. Now Optus is in a
mile of trouble, a mile of pain. Goodness knows what

(04:03):
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 you
know the government is insisting now on more transparency. It

(04:23):
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. You can't have people dying, Heather for

(04:44):
want of someone picking up the phone to a triple
zero call. That's a very good point that you make.
Miss thank you is always appreciate it. Murray OL's Australia
crosson him for more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive. Listen
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