In a wide-ranging interview about his portfolio last week, Leigh said successive state and federal governments’ privatisation of assets had also stifled competition and hampered productivity.

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“Assets have been privatised with little thought to the impact on competition,” the assistant minister said. “It has just been about maximising the sale price. But you impose, effectively, a tax on citizens who end up paying more in the long run [because you have reduced competition].”

Earlier this month, in a review for the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Fels found Australians were paying too much for everything from energy prices to groceries and childcare. He noted a range of sectors were either not competitive or sufficiently regulated, leading to poor consumer outcomes and higher prices.

Fels said the federal government had an opportunity to reform the nation’s competition laws and bring the public on board amid heightened pressure over the cost-of-living crunch and interest in tackling industry monopolies.

“The planning laws and regulations need to include explicit priorities for competition questions,” Fels said. “Typically, they’re the opposite. They protect established property interests and inhibit competition.”

He also noted that when governments decide to privatise public assets, they should place competition ahead of maximising revenue.

In 2013, the NSW government privatised two of Australia’s biggest ports for $5.07 billion, with the deal including compensation for the new owners of Port Botany and Port Kembla if container traffic at the Port of Newcastle is above a minimal specified cap.

It was a deal Grattan Institute’s economic policy program director Brendan Coates has described as a government effectively greenlighting a monopoly that taxpayers would be slugged for.

“They set up a monopoly, so the new owner would be able to generate monopoly profit in order to maximise the profits of the sale,” Coates said. “Which means higher prices charged for consumers.

“We should think about whether the ACCC should be given a role in vetting privatisations. That’s been proposed by former ACCC chair Rod Sims and that would be a way to make sure governments are not maximising short-term budgetary positions at the expense of hurting taxpayers and consumers in the long term.”

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