Russell Broadbent (Monash, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It's great to hear this. I commend the member for Spence for bringing this motion forward. However, I've been around long enough to have heard a lot of these discussions before. I take you back to the Rudd-Gillard government. In the run-up to the 2007 election, the person who was to become the Prime Minister said: 'We're going to drive down your grocery prices and your fuel prices. We're going to have an inquiry, and then we're going to have GroceryWatch and FuelWatch.' The minister charged with that responsibility during that government was Minister Chris Bowen, who is now the energy minister. The minister who then took over from Chris Bowen was a minister named Craig Emerson, who saw the farce of GroceryWatch and FuelWatch and knew that it wasn't working at all, and he just dropped it and wiped it away.

So it is rather interesting to consider. I have the greatest respect for the minister and Craig Emerson in his capacity and appointment. He certainly has the ability to come up with a very good inquiry. But I think also that, deep in his heart of hearts, he knows that he will not be able to make any difference whatsoever, as my mother used to say, to the price of paint. You won't make any difference to the price of groceries.

What we have is a market in Australia dominated by two main players. No government—not this government, not the three governments we had, under three different prime ministers, while we were in government, or before that the two governments, under two different prime ministers, on the Labor side—have made any difference to grocery prices. No. They just keep going up and up and up. And the sizes of the products—as the shoppers who are watching this debate will know—get smaller and smaller and smaller. My wife happens to like a certain brand of marmalade, and the jar used to be about that big. Then it went to that big and got dearer. Now it's down to that big, and it's dearer again. So we're losing at both ends. We're not only seeing the prices increasing, but the size of the product and the volume are decreasing.

After all the fine speeches here today around reducing prices at the supermarket, with investment by government to do that—so we will direct—I put it to you that not one thing will change with regard to the structure of the grocery industry in Australia. Things will only change when the buyer, the shopper, decides to be very clear and concise about their shopping and, rather than taking the convenient Woolies store or the Coles store—

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