Tony Abbott. Photo: Getty Images.

Politicians call it staying on message. Australian prime minister Tony Abbott was in a supermarket in Sydney today, spruiking the government’s plans for increased powers for the competition watchdog the ACCC, to deal with supermarket behaviour using the grocery code of conduct.

He was asked if he had any concerns about instability both in the Chinese stock market and Eurozone by a journalist during a media conference and gave a weird answer that suggested the world’s economic problems won’t effect Australia because the government has a code of conduct for supermarkets.

Here’s a transcript of what happened:

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, how concerned are you about the problems in China and Greece, those economic problems spreading to Australia and especially the plunge in the Chinese stock prices? PRIME MINISTER: Michael, look, the important thing is to do whatever we can to build a strong and prosperous economy locally, and again I get back to the Grocery Code of Conduct. This is about ensuring that we have the strongest possible local businesses to supply the strongest possible local businesses. We have a great supermarket system. That rests on the shoulders of great local suppliers and this is about ensuring that we continue to have very strong local suppliers, best possible product at the best possible price so that we get the best possible deal for consumers – and if we do that we will avoid the problems that we see overseas.

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