“You cannot reduce the price of groceries, as Labor promised, by purely telling people what the price of some groceries were on a certain day. It may come as a surprise to Labor and Mr Rudd, but grocery prices change everyday and sometimes they change a number of times during the day. Telling people what the price of groceries are for one day in the month for 500 out of approximately 30,000 products is like having the nation’s weather report based on what the weather was for one day in the month in the Bunya Mountains in Queensland. That is, the analysis is made from an out of date sample that was too small, even when it was taken, to be reflective of what grocery prices were like at that point in time, let alone what they will be like four weeks later.

“As far as unit pricing is concerned, it may be of some assistance to know what we are paying for goods but if you really want to display more information put down the unit price of what they purchased the goods for from the farmer. Then we really will have a discussion piece at the checkout.

“The only way you increase the competitive nature of prices is by increasing the number of competitors. Australia has the most overcentralised retail market in the world and this is why we have the highest food inflation in the western world.

“There is nothing in this ACCC report that points towards increasing the competitive pressures in the supermarket field. In fact at exactly the same time Labor and Mr Rudd were releasing the ACCC report, trying to fool people FuelWatch style into a belief that they would reduce the price of groceries, they were trying to repeal the Birdsville Amendment to give the major supermarkets and oil companies more power to knock out the competitors that are left. This is typical Labor party politics, riding two horses in the same race, but I think this time people are onto them.”

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