From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli

COLES’ chief executive, Leah Weckert, has urged Premier Jacinta Allan to legislatively target shop-lifters as retailers prepare for Christmas trading.

Ms. Weckert was one of some two-dozen retail chief executives who last month signed a letter requiring the government to implement urgent reforms addressing the state’s retail crime. While lacking specificity, they contend the problem has reached an unacceptable level.

Risibly, they are calling for the establishment of a police unit dedicated to retail theft. Police are paid from the public purse. They have more urgent issues than a litany of retail petty pilfering. While there may be merit in tightening legislation, the theft of a bottle of alcohol — or a trolley of food — should not be a priority for police, or the community. Police hours are a strictly finite commodity. They have a financial worth and should not be gifted undeservedly, or wasted needlessly on greedy, dominant retailers. Police supermarket commitment should be restricted to serious crime.

The majority of Australians would object to mandatory, unwarranted, police participation in the everyday methodology of supermarket security — and at a financial cost to the taxpayer. Public support for supermarkets is scant. The distrust and antipathy is linked to their disproportionate profits which are directly proportional to the over-pricing of their goods. For the financial year 2024, Coles reported an after-tax net profit of $1.1–billion — a 2.1% increase from 2023. The illegal and profoundly shameful staff underpayments total an estimated $1–billion and date from 2013.

Axiomatically, all sales staff should be, and feel, safe in their work environment; verbal assault is unacceptable; however, the problem is more nuanced. While their security dilemmas are challenging, the solution requires a more stratagised financial commitment on the part of supermarkets.

The providing and cost of security for supermarkets is the sole responsibility of the retailer — not the police — or the government. However effectual technology proves as a deterrent it cannot replace the presence of security staff. Categorically, research based evidence has concluded a lack of visible security staff results in theft. Prevention is better than cure — reduce the ease of access and increase the risk of apprehension. Patently, to achieve more effective levels of prevention, retailers should employ more full-time security staff. Shop guards are commonplace in London and with a degree of success.

An Australian security expert highlighted the glaring paucity of trained staff as an obvious failure in Victoria’s supermarket protection procedures. He posited stores should, during all hours of trading, have no less than two security personnel and two loss-prevention officers patrolling the aisles. Coles has 850, Woolworths 1100, stores nation wide. Jointly, salaries and wages for 15,000 security staff would cost approximately $12–$14–million annually. Empirical evidence suggests a return of $3–$4 for every $1 invested.

The richest companies demanding a specific police security team takes limited valuable resources away from the community’s most vulnerable. The proposal and presumption of police acting as a free, on-call, quasi security service to safeguard their over-priced stock is hubristic and suggests a disquieting sense of entitlement – a greater concern for their profits than community safety which includes family violence, road trauma, and serious, drug-related crime.

If shop-lifting is running rampant its prevention is a challenge which sits squarely with the retailers!

Roland can be heard with Brett Macdonald radio 3BA — Monday 10.40am. Contact: [email protected]