Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, and also on behalf of Senator Fisher, move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes the Government’s GROCERYchoice website is:

(i)

not delivering any valuable information to consumers with website hits suffering a massive reduction from more than 3 million hits per month on commencement to 104 000 hits in October 2008 and only 54 608 on the last report,

(ii)

unable to produce a specific cost of a specific grocery item at a specific supermarket, and in some cases compares supermarkets several hundred kilometres apart,

(iii)

damaging to the best interests of independent supermarket retailers,

(iv)

wasting $13 million of taxpayers’ funds, and

(v)

fundamentally flawed and unable to be improved or upgraded so as to provide any consumer benefit or adequate return on taxpayer funds, irrespective of whether the website is managed and operated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or the consumer organisation Choice; and

(b)

calls on the Government to close the website down immediately.

Question put.