Page 4135 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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always, IGAs. By supporting these businesses to run, we ensure that locally operated businesses which are immersed in our local communities can continue to provide the local services in our local centres.
The other victim in unfair competition is suppliers. The market power of the supermarkets is so much greater than that of most suppliers, especially local farmers, that we often read stories about the prices paid to them being squeezed below the cost of production. The 2008 ACCC inquiry into the competitiveness of retail grocery prices found, and Mr Martin repeated, that zoning and planning-related regulations and decision-making processes can create barriers to new supermarkets entering particular market areas and recommended that decisions affecting additional supermarket space should take into account the impact on competition between supermarkets in an area.
Traditionally, the major chains—Coles and Woolworths—have only been present in town and group centres. Allowing Woolworths to open a larger supermarket in Giralang will have a significant effect on how supermarket operators view Canberra’s retail hierarchy. The existing retail hierarchy has been well entrenched in the ACT planning system through our territory plan, and it has been well and broadly accepted that it works well and delivers for both the retail sector and community needs of Canberrans.
Essentially, the idea is that town centres have a broad range of speciality shops, services and a full range of chain stores, group centres provide for local needs and cater for your weekly shopping needs, and local centres cater for your daily shopping needs. Canberra local shops are in the centre of suburbs, not on main roads like in Sydney and Melbourne, so it means that if your suburb loses its shops, it is inconvenient to go to another.
Local centres are also an important part of people’s local communities—a place you can walk or ride to from home to pick up a few things and run into your neighbours. The local shopping centre is often the backbone for community, especially when it is adjacent to a school and other services. With the impact of two-car, two-job families, the role of local shops has changed. However, as people age in their suburbs they are more likely to want to walk to their local shop as part of their daily exercise regime, or young parents may want to go for a walk to the shops incorporating that with their trip to the local park. A significant number of Canberra people have mobility issues, and they find that their local shops are the only practicable alternative.
As people who live in suburbs without shops, like Giralang or Downer—which is where I live—can tell you, it makes a big difference to have a local shop. Yes, a small Woolies in a local shopping centre could work. But, unfortunately, the Giralang proposal is not your standard small local centre proposal. At present, of all the local centre supermarkets, only two of them out of about 60 are over 1,000 square metres. On average, a local centre store is about 424 square metres. In comparison, the supermarket component of the recently approved development in Giralang is 1,500 square metres, which is much closer to the average size of a group centre supermarket, which is around 2,127 square metres.
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