Page 4190 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 29 November 1994
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Mr Berry: You were out campaigning against them. It was your own - - -
MRS CARNELL: It was not, you know.
Mr Berry: You squeezed the $80,000 off them and closed down heaps of chemist shops.
MRS CARNELL: Your Federal Government closed down pharmacies in this country.
Mr Berry: At your insistence on the Federal council. Do not give me that nonsense. The buy-out was $80,000. Do you not remember that?
MRS CARNELL: I certainly do not remember - - -
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! Mrs Carnell, do not get distracted.
MRS CARNELL: Madam Speaker, the issue before us today is what we really want for the future of our city in terms of retail business and in terms of the community focus of our suburbs. The issue is that the proposed expansion of the Hyperdome will finally kill off local centres and make some group centres non-viable. We believe that that is possibly the case. The only way we can ensure that that does not happen is to look at what the retail needs of the valley are, and also look at what the social needs of the people who live in that part of the world are, what their job needs are and what their community needs are.
The proposal is for a Big Fresh supermarket, a Hong Kong owned conglomerate. These usually are set up on the basis of 5,000 to 8,000 square metres, which is about four times the size of the normal large supermarkets that we see in this city. For Big Fresh in the Tuggeranong Hyperdome to break even or to make a profit, they are going to have to turn over between $1m and $1.5m a week, Madam Speaker. That, interestingly, is half of the total food sales in the valley. Woolworths in the Hyperdome already turns over $1m a week. Now we have somewhere between $500,000 and $1m a week to spread around the rest of the valley, plus the Jewel supermarket in the centre and the Coles supermarket in the centre. No matter how you look at it, the group centres at Kambah, Wanniassa, Erindale, Chisholm and Calwell will have a huge amount of trouble making ends meet. What of the small local centres? They are absolutely history under this proposal. They are gone. They are out the door. Even the group centres are going to be in huge trouble.
If we were really serious about these sorts of proposals, maybe we would have looked at trend estimates for growth. What do the figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show about retail growth in the ACT? They show that we have the slowest growth in Australia. It was 0.2 per cent over the previous month, in September, and 0.2 per cent in August. What about in March, April, May and June? The growth was zero, none, gone, nothing. The situation is that the ABS statistics show categorically that there is no growth in the amount of money being spent on groceries and food in the ACT. So why, in heaven's name, would anyone even consider expanding the amount of retail space available in the valley by 16,500 square metres?
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