It would see supermarkets forced to freeze prices at January levels, for 30 items including bread, milk, cheese, nappies and period products.

Similar moves have been made in Europe.

Just last year, Croatia introduced a price freeze on 30 essentials, while France rolled out caps on 5000 items.

Hungary had price caps on basic food staples for two years but has since lifted them.

But critics are far from sold, saying it’s a short-sighted solution.

So is The Greens proposal a desperately needed lifeline, or a band-aid solution that will only make things worse?

Queensland Greens MP Amy McMahon told The Project a “fair prices authority” would be responsible for setting a list of 30 items.

“There would be one item from each of the categories that supermarkets are required to offer,” McMahon said.

McMahon said criticisms are the “sort of commentaries would love to tell us the only way to run the country is to let big corporations like Coles and Woolworths make huge amounts of profit”.

“To some of these criticisms, look at the example of France. France caps the price on 5,000 items. We're just saying 30. France hasn't seen shortages,” she said.

“They have seen food inflation has decreased.”

McMahon said that breaking up the supermarkets, and removing their industry power, would give farmers a fairer deal, but admitted that would take “some time”.

Despite concern capping prices would mean farmers are affected, McMahon said capping prices are still needed now to help “everyday people struggling to put food on the table.

“The alternative is that we let that get worse and worse, we let supermarket prices continue to go up, and more and more people are pushed into financial stress and food stress,” she said.

“Which is why we need to put in place these measures to cap the price of these basics, but also to start breaking up the supermarkets.”