Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Robertson might explain to me how GroceryWatch works for a person on Thursday Island—1,500 kilometres away from the nearest supermarket—or how it works for a person in Townsville—1,000 kilometres away from the supermarket in Mount Isa whose prices are checked. How does a person in Townsville go to Mount Isa to shop because there might be something a bit cheaper? Clearly GroceryWatch is a sham—an absolute sham. It is meaningless. In North Queensland, GroceryWatch is meaningless. That is the sad part about this. For such a large area of Australia, incorporating from Mackay north and west to the border, the information presented on the site bears no relation to what the prices really are in the supermarkets. That is hopeless.

When you go to the site, it tells you that it is solely intended to provide a general understanding of the subject matter to help people assess whether or not they need more detailed information. It is clear evidence yet again of a sham. The site also tells you that you may not reproduce, retransmit or distribute material without the written permission of the director of ACCC publishing. For goodness sake! It is a site that is supposed to help consumers compare grocery prices and the site itself says that you cannot tell anybody about it or distribute the information. It is public knowledge but you are not allowed to distribute it without the written permission of the director of ACCC publishing.

Consumers know that the GroceryWatch website is in fact a sham. They know they can go to the Coles website, the Aldi website or the Woolworths website and get absolutely up-to-date information on pricing on the spot. They know that they can go to the catalogues, which are put in our letterboxes with such great frequency, and get information on the specials that are available. Of course, that means that GroceryWatch does nothing to bring prices down.

The Labor government went to the last election promising to bring prices down and, of course, they sold us all a pup. When the electorate began to realise they had sold us all a pup, up came the smoke and mirrors—let’s have GroceryWatch. So we got GroceryWatch, and now the consumers are waking up to it being another pup. Kevin Rudd’s promise that he would bring down fuel and food prices in fact has not been delivered. Now there are all sorts of reasons why it has not been delivered, but it has not been delivered. He has done nothing, the government has done nothing, and GROCERYchoice changes nothing.

The GROCERYchoice website does not compare stores; it only compares regions. What is the point in comparing the North Queensland region with some other region? We get the information that something in Brisbane is $4 cheaper than it is in the North Queensland region. Are people really going to go 1½ thousand kilometres to Brisbane to save $4? Of course they are not going to do that. Despite the expenditure on setting up and maintaining this website, it is not worth a cracker. The money should be used for more meaningful things to help consumers with their choices, and GroceryWatch is certainly not one of them. I agree with the motion that is before the House tonight and I agree that GROCERYchoice has been an abject failure for this country.

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