Anthony Albanese’s crackdown on supermarkets has drawn scepticism from consumer advocates, with some questioning if the changes would tackle “shrinkflation” despite the Prime Minister promising they would.

Albanese was on Thursday spruiking his latest crackdown on Coles and Woolworths as the government looks to capitalise on public furore over dodgy discounts and high prices.

He took aim at shrinkflation – a practice where groceries get smaller in size while prices remain the same or rise, saying a new plan to overhaul unit pricing rules would tackle the problem.

But the policy is light on details and has drawn scepticism from consumer advocates and supermarket experts over how far it will actually go towards addressing shrinkflation.

The government says it will improve the readability of unit pricing labels, address “inconsistent use of units of measure” and improve use of unit pricing in “cross retailer price comparisons”.

But Choice’s deputy director of campaigns Andy Kelly said what’s needed is requiring retailers to label products that have shrunk without a reduction in price.

A March investigation by the consumer group uncovered 10 products at Coles and Woolworths that have shrunk without getting cheaper for consumers.

That included store-brand cereals, which shrank by 65 grams while the price stayed the same, resulting in consumers paying 14 per cent more for the product.

“If consumers were clearly notified of these changes, it would be harder for supermarkets to continue to get away with this sneaky tactic,” Kelly said.

Consumer expert Joel Gibson, who pays close attention to how grocery prices are changing, said the proposed unit pricing crackdown “won’t fix shrinkflation”.

“Unit pricing is fantastic and any move to strengthen it is good for consumers,” he said.

“But the only way this would prevent shrinkflation is if a shopper remembered what the price was a week ago and noticed a change.

“Most of us don’t have space in our brains for that sort of detail.”

University of Technology Sydney Associate Professor Sanjoy Paul agreed the reforms need to go further to actually address shrinkflation.

“If product weights change, they need to put stickers on labels so that customers can understand that from the packaging,” he said.

“You need price changes so that we understand what’s happened in the last month and over time – it’s absolutely crucial information.”

A spokesperson for Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones told TND the government will be consulting on changes to the unit pricing code and will welcome suggestions from advocates.

That leaves the door open for a more stringent crackdown that would require supermarkets to tell shoppers when a product has shrunk.

It would represent a significant expansion in the scope of the current unit pricing code, which focuses entirely on point-in-time price labels.

The Albanese government is also pursuing a wider supermarket agenda before the next election, with food costs and the market power of Coles and Woolworths front of mind for voters.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers is investigating allegations of “land banking” by the big chains, while the ACCC has been handed $30 million in new funding to investigate misleading pricing practices.

Paul said that while the government is doing the most in more than a decade to address policy issues in the supermarket sector, their efforts so far can’t be characterised as “high ambition”.

Gibson said much broader price transparency is needed to help Australians get the best prices at the supermarket.

“Make supermarkets share their pricing data like most states do with petrol stations,” he said.

“That way people can create apps that accurately compare pries and also show you the price history of a product. That would help shrinkflation.”