How Woolworths overcame local opposition and set up a supermarket near Mullumbimby
June 13, 2015 - 12:15AM
Locals set fire to a box with Woolies signage during a protest in Mullumbimby against a proposal to build a Woolworths in town in 2008.Photo: Paul Harris
By MALCOLM KNOX
Supermarkets may seem to spring to life spontaneously. Six months after one has opened, who can remember what was on the site before? But they are not divinely ordained. They open after months – and years – of careful planning, and around-the-calendar work from strategists, researchers, property portfolio managers, business modellers and, copiously, lawyers. Every Coles and every Woolworths is where it is for a precise reason. Far from arising as part of some spontaneous natural order, many have had to overcome local opposition in order to exist.
If the march of the supermarkets were to meet a pocket of resistance, where else would it be but in the people's republics of northeastern New South Wales, the hinterland communities homegrown from the spores of 1960s counterculture? And yet, even in one of Australia's most concentrated pockets of anti-corporate progressive local politics, the supermarkets have held sway, albeit by a roundabout route.
While I'm sympathetic to a lot of Green causes, their doctrinaire elements were what did the damage to moderate causes.
Guy Mallam, former co-owner, Mallam's family Store.
In Mullumbimby, on the north coast of New South Wales, Woolworths prevailed not through aggressive expansion but by becoming the beneficiary of a Green–Brown impasse, capitalising when the opponents of big supermarkets became their own worst enemies.
With its timber/dairy/hemp heritage and cohabitation of old and new rural ways, picturesque "Mullum" is a centre of slow food and small agriculture – and yet on its edge it has a Woolworths, as picturesque as a besser brick dropped into an ant farm. The story of how it got there is unedifying.
Since 1904, the Mallam family had owned and run the general store of the town, which is set in the northern rivers behind Byron Bay. Mullumbimby had evolved steadily until the 1970s, when its dairy farmers went into a spin over the arrival of city refugees, post-hippie dynasties, new-agers, hobby farmers, retirees and surfers. Byron Shire, containing Mullumbimby and Byron Bay, now hosts a permanent population of 30,000 plus a transient and tourist community of another 5000 to 10,000. The majority live outside the two main towns. Mullumbimby itself is still home to just 3000 people.
In the 1990s, only Woolworths of the supermarket giants had gained a foothold in the shire. As the town of Byron Bay mushroomed, the Woolworths on Jonson Street became the unpickable knot of the town's daily traffic. While Byron had more than its share of organic and alternative food stores and farmers' markets, the Woolworths was soon overtrading, unable to keep pace with a population convergence accelerated by the construction of a freeway linking Byron to Brisbane. For supermarket competition, the Woolworths only had a small independent within Byron and a Coles in the town of Brunswick Heads, some 30 minutes to the north.
Locals march down the railway track with banners during a protest in Mullumbimby against a proposal to build a Woolworths in town in 2008.Photo: Paul Harris
In Mullumbimby, as the outlying population grew, so did pressure increase on the Mallams' store and their two bottle shops. Guy Mallam, a solicitor whose grandfather founded the store, says, "The crucial issue [by the 1990s] was that we were trading in an old family property, a general store that had been converted into a supermarket. It was trading well enough, but the premises weren't big enough or efficient enough for a modern supermarket, and we needed to expand to trade properly."
The family found land on Station Street, on the eastern edge of Mullumbimby where the railway passes the town, and proposed building an expanded independent supermarket. They took their plans to Byron Shire Council. "We had a sympathetic hearing and did our environmental reports," Mallam says, "but then there was a council election. The Greens got a majority and our proposal was knocked back."
In defence of small retail, the spirit of the community, as represented by Greens councillors, set about a drawn-out process of obstructing the Mallams' planned expansion. The councillors didn't want any bigger supermarket. But in obstructing the devil they knew, the Greens let in the devil they didn't.
A procession of locals march with banners during a protest in Mullumbimby against a proposal to build a Woolworths in town in 2008.Photo: Paul Harris
After Byron Shire Council's rejection of Mallam's development application, the then NSW planning minister, Labor's Frank Sartor, used his discretionary powers to consent to it; the state government's Far North Coast Regional Strategy had designated Mullumbimby a "major growth" town. After that decision, Byron Shire Council raised procedural objections and asked Mallams for fees that ultimately amounted to $1.7 million, according to Guy Mallam.
Meanwhile, Woolworths sat back and watched from a distance. Overstretched in Byron Bay, the company saw opportunity in Mullumbimby. "Woolworths came to us and said, 'If you blokes ever get sick of the council, we would be interested in talking to you'," Mallam recalls. "They were watching everything. Their intelligence on what was going on was pretty good."
The contest between the Mallam family and the council dragged on for six years. "We constantly had to recalculate figures, and the family was getting older," Guy says. "We didn't have the resources to fight the council indefinitely. And Woolworths were always there in the background, asking if we were sick of the council yet. We were worried that if this kept going on, they would come in as opposition and destroy us. We eventually agreed to talk to them and agreed to sell to them."
Woolworths bought Mallams out – the land, the development application, even the bottle shops in the town centre (which would become BWS outlets). It was at that late stage, realising Woolworths had out-manouevred everyone, that the community mobilised. Tricia Shantz, who was a member of the Mullumbimby Forum group, recalls organising "not with the intention of opposing Woolworths, but giving the people of the town the opportunity to make an informed decision".
The group placed weekly bulletins in the local newspaper, the
Echo, and conducted a telephone survey that found 50 per cent of Mullumbimbyites opposed the Woolworths, while 25 per cent supported it and 25 per cent were unsure. They wrote to the Woolworths chairman, the late James Strong, and its chief executive, Michael Luscombe, asking for a meeting. They did not obtain it, but were contacted by Woolworths' government relations manager, Simon Berger (a prominent Liberal Party member who would be sacked by Woolworths in 2012 for his role as master of ceremonies at the Liberal function where Alan Jones said Julia Gillard's late father "must have died of shame"). According to Shantz, Berger was open to the idea of a public referendum in Mullumbimby, if the community could organise it. Berger hinted that Woolworths would abide by the result. "We thought we had them on the run," Shantz said, but the cost of organising and mounting the referendum to the required standard ran beyond the community group's resources.
Woolworths eventually outspent and outlasted the community opposition and also outflanked the council, winning final approval from the state government in 2009 to build a 3000-square-metre shopping centre. Concerns about sewage, noise and traffic were addressed, against a background of rising local scepticism. In 2010 the new Woolworths opened. It was more than one-third larger than the store the Mallam family had proposed.
"We never wanted to sell to them," Guy Mallam says. "But the doctrinaire position of the Greens forced our hand. While I'm sympathetic to a lot of Green causes, their doctrinaire elements were what did the damage to moderate causes. They ended up getting the worst of all worlds."
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Any majors lurking behind MEL given the Government now in melt down mode?
A major would be seen as a white knight for the LNP Govt to save face, especially when they (especially Deputy Premier Troy Grant) are now trumpeting that STO has the support in Narrabri/Pilliga.
(20min delay)