Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Allan Fels kicked off the union-commissioned review into price gouging by stressing the importance of hearing from a diversity of voices, including consumers.
"I want to hear about the actual impact on people's lives," he said in Melbourne on Thursday.
The inquiry was set up by the ACTU due to concerns excessive corporate profits were doing more to fuel soaring inflation than rising wages.
"I believe that price setting is a missing piece in the Australian story of inflation and cost of living impact on consumers," Professor Fels said in his opening statement.
Inflation started growing last year and has triggered a series of interest rate rises to bring it under control, with the higher borrowing costs and elevated cost of living putting Australian households under financial pressure.
The role of corporate profits in the inflation outbreak has been debated, with Treasury and Reserve Bank analysis suggesting profits were not significantly driving up prices, with the exception of the mining sector.
Professor Fels said there was a lot of resistance to any suggestion that price setting was driving inflation, which contrasted to the previous eras of growing prices where excessive wage increases were deemed responsible with "no hesitation".
It was time to dig into the matter, especially since the profit share of national income and profit margins had gone up domestically and around the world, he said.
The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work released new research ahead of the hearing showing salaries have not kept up with inflation as companies mark up prices and record sky-high revenues.
The evidence "couldn't be any clearer", the centre's director Jim Stanford said.
"Enormous corporate profits fuelled the inflationary crisis and remain too high for workers to claw back wage losses," Dr Stanford said.
Though Australian corporate profits also fell in recent months, thanks in part to the slowed pace of inflation, they remain well above historic norms and have driven the majority of inflation since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Stanford told the hearing there were three stages to the latest outbreak of profit-led inflation, starting with the "impulse stage' where key industries such as energy and logistics took advantage of supply chain disruptions after the pandemic to "push up prices well above cost".
In the second and third phases, other industries bought those inflated products and were in some cases able to more than pass on those higher costs and lift their profit margins.
Dr Stanford said there were a number of reasons some firms were able to do this, including a lack of competition and consumer confusion.
McKell Institute executive director Rebecca Thistleton told the inquiry price-gouging was poorly regulated in Australia.
The head of the progressive policy think tank said successive coalition governments had eroded the consumer watchdog's remit on price gouging.
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