NARGA Chairman John Cummings

Editorials

Retail World, November 2003 – Plastic Bags: the Story So Far

by Ken on November 19, 2003

NARGA Senior Policy Adviser Ken Henrick writes about developments surrounding the proposed restrictions on plastic shopping bags. Read Article (PDF)

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Retail World, September 2001: Something of Value

by Ken on September 15, 2001

It has been a time for introspection, for thinking about the nature of good and evil. The media have swamped us with indelible images, with speculations and musings, trying to understand what many regard as an epochal change, not simply from one millennium to another, but from the way we were to the way we [...]

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Retail World, July 2001 : Kyoto Protocol – Another Burdern for the Grocery Industry

12 July 2001

Here’s what you need to know about the Kyoto protocol: it could cost Australian grocery retailers and their customers a lot of money and ratification of the protocol by Australia would have no impact whatsoever on global warming. The biggest fixed cost in a supermarket is refrigeration. One of the biggest recurrent costs is distribution [...]

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Retail World, June 2001: Turbulent times continue

21 June 2001

Three events of concern to independent grocery retailers flowed together on Tuesday, 22 May 2001. The first was the announcement by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that it had given “in principle” support to the latest proposition about how the Franklins supermarket chain should be broken up. The second was the release of a [...]

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Retail World, March 2001: Will You Work For Food?

12 March 2001

Historians are very important. We need them to record the damage done by economists. Damage not only in strictly economic matters, but to commonly held attitudes, such as that people should be able to mind their own business and governments should by and large leave them alone. But in the interests of the economy, the surplus and the [...]

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Retail World, January 2001 : Who Speaks For You?

12 January 2001

ABC News Online ran an item mid January which quoted a United States environmental lobby, the Worldwatch Institute, predicting “the world is set to suffer more floods, famines, water shortages and other disasters in the coming decades.” You can never have too much futurology. Too bad they didn’t tell us something we didn’t know. Of [...]

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Retail World Editorial, Nov 2000: Organic food sales grow fastest in Fantasy Land

12 November 2000

A recent article in Retail World quoted an opinion poll by market researchers Taylor Nelson Sofres which claimed to have “found that half (52 per cent) of consumers across Australia are prepared to pay extra for organic foods.” That one sentence tells us a lot that is wrong with “willingness to pay” questions. Willingness is a state [...]

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Retail World Editorial, Sep 2000: Packaging Waste Management Issue Moves Towards Decision Time

14 September 2000

The following article was written by NARGA’s Ken Henrick for the September 2001 issue of Retail World magazine.   The time is approaching when many “brand owner” companies will have to decide whether to sign up to the National Packaging Covenant or opt to be covered by the National Environment Protection Measure (NEPM) for Used Packaging Materials.  This [...]

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Retail World Editorial, August 2000: Deregulation – the unintended consequences

12 August 2000

National Competition Policy still has a lot of supporters in Canberra, although at least some people are beginning to cool on the subject.    The Labor Party recently set the wheels of change in motion with an announcement that a future Beazley Government would not base policy or decision-making solely on economics; social aspects of issues [...]

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