Page 4833 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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The submission also refers to the retail climate. It says:
Over recent years the environment of the retail industry has changed dramatically.
Not too many years ago the industry was slower, more stable, less tigerishly competitive. There were the various levels of retailing of course; major corporate, smaller corporate and larger independent and then the smaller proprietor operated low staff stores.
Along the line the big corporates, for whatever reason, entered into an era of competitive aggression and through take-over, merger and new development, the big began to get very big.
The name of the game moved away from satisfying the needs of consumers to something more related to the building of monopoly type empires and a massive pursuit of market share.
In the transition the grab for bigger and bigger turnover, the richer of the major corporates were able to use their huge wealth to manipulate their presence in the market place. Their enormous buying power was used to push suppliers into more favourable (to the corporates) trading terms.
When competition in the market place was apparent, the majors were not averse to aggressively managing the market place through price 'cutting' and 'massive and expensive' promotional programmes to force the competitor from the scene.
This submission also says:
It is essential that as part of any inquiry into the deregulation of shopping hours we assess the social and financial costs to the community of losing neighbourhood shopping centres. One of the more obvious costs would be the need to provide extra bus services, at expensive off-peak times, to allow our elderly and socially disadvantaged access to shopping centres. It would also seem contrary to current trends to encourage the development of a city that is more dependent on cars rather than less.
My last quote from this submission mentions:
This doctrine of unrestricted freedom in commerce has been around since 1776. Through long experience, most governments and economists view it as simplistic and unworkable in the real world. The reasons are:-
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