The British pay more for their everyday groceries than do residents of any other country in Europe. The Americans pay more for their groceries than the British. And the Australians? They pay more than does anyone else.
What puzzles the British Prime Minister's former spin doctor turned new chief executive of the consumer advocacy group Choice, is why Australians remain so upbeat about their predicament.
Nick Stace has been in the country little more than a month.
But the differences he's already observed between the British and Australian consumer psyche are enormous.
British consumers feel a fatalistic resignation about being ripped off and must be prodded to the point of anger before taking action, but Australians display a curious, complacent optimism.
Mr Stace is here to give us a condensed dose of reality.
"Australia needs to get out of its comfort zone," he says. "You pay more for your groceries than [do people] in many other countries.
"The supermarkets here do not want to be transparent.
"That is incredibly irresponsible and incredibly worrying, yet there doesn't appear to be the desire to have a competitive market."
The Australian supermarket duopoly, the big four banks and the telecommunications industry is a three-headed hellion, Choice has pledged to do battle with under its new chief executive. These sectors are looking unusually vulnerable in the face of a steep economic downturn, Mr Stace says, and he has past form in goading consumers into belligerent activism.
Before the 37-year-old's brief incursion into politics last year - when he served as Gordon Brown's head of strategic communications - he had spent almost a decade working for Britain's Consumers Association, now known as Which?
The motor vehicle industry was the first sector to feel the pressure from Mr Stace's particular brand of consumer activism.
The industry had long argued it should be exempt from European Union competition laws.
Easy cross-border access kept dealerships competitive across continental Europe, but the English Channel provided a protective barrier to the British car-making industry and its exclusive anti-competitive contracts with local dealerships.
Despite consumer focus group evidence of widespread fatalistic apathy, in 2000 the association sabotaged the London Motor Show with print journalists and television crews in tow to launch its Great British Car Rip-off campaign, culminating in the call for a national boycott of new-car dealerships.
Three months into the campaign, the Bank of England was forced to put an interest rate increase on hold, such had the dramatic drop in car sales affected the economy.
It subsequently took the EU three years to close the anti-competitive loophole which in turn forced down the price of cars in Britain.
As Britain's representative of the European Commission's European Consumer Consultative Group for the past five years, Mr Stace cultivated a distinctly British brand of patience when it came to negotiating consumer laws from Brussels, which must be relevant and practical across 30 different countries.
Armed with this experience, grappling with Australian consumer law spread across multiple states and territories does not faze him.
Nor does doing battle with multiple fair trading, consumer and competition and primary industry ministers.
After 11 bruising months in politics, where Mr Stace became one of the central suspects in a series of damaging leaks over the Prime Minister's lacklustre performance and waning popularity, the lessons learnt were brutal but not terminal. (He insists he was not the source.)
Dodgy plumbers and household appliances are the only leaks Mr Stace expects to be investigating in Australia as he pledges to alter the consumer landscape and whip Australians out of their complacency.
"Choice is a household name," he says. "Now we need to move from being a household name to something that is essential to every household."
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