Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

What we have always said is that we stand for any measure which gives consumers some more power. That means enabling consumers across the country to have access to information online which tells them which of the individual chains—Coles, Woolies, Aldi or others—offer the best deal over time against a given set of baskets of goods. There are, from memory, some 62 different regions sampling some 600 supermarkets on a regular basis and, again from memory, there are about six or seven baskets of goods. All this is designed to do is to provide a bit extra by way of consumer power and a bit more by way of consumer choice.

On the question that the honourable member raises about bringing down grocery prices, those opposite will well recall the ridicule heaped on the Labor Party, the Treasurer and I while in opposition by the member for Higgins when he specifically refused to provide such undertakings. They ridiculed us in opposition, and of course they have forgotten now that the tables have changed because it suits their political purpose to verbal us in a different direction. But if there is one key theme emerging from all of this—and I think the Minister for Health and Ageing got it absolutely right before—whether it is with the big pharmaceutical companies, whether it is with the very big private health insurance companies, whether it is with the big oil companies or whether it is with the big supermarket chains, we always know who is going to line up on behalf of the consumers and who is going to line up on behalf of big business. The Liberals cannot shake their age-old habit of lining up with big business, for which they stand.

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