I'm with Misty on resenting the implication that it's our duty to buy Australian regardless of quality and/or price.
An example at this time of year is cauliflowers. Small, poor quality examples at $6.99 each. Insufficient to provide a vegetable serving for four people for one meal.
500g packet of frozen cauliflower florets, around $2.50. Good quality, ready prepared to cook and serve.
Frozen vegetables are often more nutritionally useful than 'fresh' vegetables which have been transported many kms, sat in warehouse, then more kms to point of sale. They are picked and snap frozen.
Not everyone lives in reasonable distance of farmers' markets. The one closest to me has absolute rubbish. Most of the stall owners must collect up the end of week supermarket left overs and sell these at cheap prices. Exceptions are citrus and bananas in season.
Another example is fresh pineapples. Where I live is a prime pineapple growing area but they are picked far too green, fail to ripen before going off at one end, and are sour and horrible. Why would you pay $3.99 for this when you can have good quality imported tinned pineapple for a fraction of that price? No, it's not as good as fresh, but it's a lot better than sour, woody fresh.
Ditto often asparagus: local, even in season, piddly little bunches of tired stalks at around $3 each. Imports from Peru half that price, twice the quality. Why buy the local product? It's just not competitive in quality, quantity or price.
Buy Australian? Why? If Australian manufacturers can't compete on the global market, they will gradually die. No use kidding themselves we don't operate in a global economy.
