BEFORE we went on a six-week family visit trip to Holland, we took it on ourselves to check the credibility of the claim that due to the Coles/Woolworth 80 per cent monopoly, we pay 20-30 per cent more in our supermarkets than Western Europeans. We chose 30 items, ignoring the things we do not buy more frequently than every three months.

It was a pure grocery shopping exercise, buying things we need daily or weekly.

So as not to outstay our family welcome, we made it a practice to pay half of each grocery shopping bill.

The net result of our survey is that we are 27.34 per cent more expensive in Australia, for no good reason.

Our passage back through Customs was not exactly smooth, even though it looked perfect to begin with.

There was a kind of blitz going on because Customs scanned all passengers’ baggage. After scanning, we initially got the OK, but one Customs officer alerted the one who passed our baggage to the scanner screen.

Alas, we were called back and, after some delay, we were taken to a side table to have two cases inspected.

When we asked what they were looking for, it turned out to be two fly swats!?

The offending items were battery operated, but as they were not part of our carry-on baggage, they were not a terrorist threat (perhaps we were going to wave them at the cockpit door, threatening electrocution).

The offending goods were seized under the provisions of the Customs Act 1901, subsection 203B(2), being goods suspected on reasonable grounds to be specially forfeited goods.

Under the regulations, it was deemed that “the importer has not produced a permission from the Minister or an authorised person to import the goods’’.

We have it from extremely unreliable sources that the Customs ruling on battery-operated fly swats came from lobbying pressure by the RSPCA’s insect department. They considered the electrocution of flies cruel, and succeeded in having them declared a protected species.

Curious, since less than a couple of decades ago, Customs officers used to spray every aircraft inside after landing, probably killing more humans than flies.

DAVID KLEIN,

Golden Square