Cassie Hanson interviewed NARGA Chairman John Cummings for the June 2010 edition of The Australian Retailer. These are excerpts from her interview report. Pictures by Tim Lofthouse, Subiaco, WA.

John is President of the Western Australia Independent Grocers Association and has been a director of the National Association of Retail Grocers for more than 10 years and Chairman for five years.

NARGA is a peak body consisting of state-based associations, representing approximately 4500 small and medium-sized grocery and liquor retailers. The group regularly lobbies the federal government on various issues to make it fairer for independent retailers to operate.

“My view is we’re a big part of the retail sector – the independents turn over some $17 billion a year and we have every right to have our own voice in government and we make sure we give people the equal opportunity to voice their opinion,” John says.

John believes it is NARGA’s relentless work behind the scenes that has placed it as a well-respected organisation.

“The first thing we pride ourselves on is the credibility of submissions that we put into government. In the last 12 month, NARGA would have put in 12-15 written submissions, anything up to 60 pages long – well researched, with credible argument. For the last six to seven years we’ve had politicians at all levels of government quote NARGA and quote a submission,” John says. 

NARGA Chairman John Cummings

 John believes the number one challenge in his work with NARGA is getting politicians to understand the retail industry.

“They do not understand. Here’s an example: the mining sector in Australia, even though it’s a large sector, direct employment is around 80,000 people. In the retail sector, direct employment is 1.4 million people. Of that 1.4 million people, the grocery sector employs about 400,000 and Coles and Woolworths only some 170,000 of those. So you have the independents, with only 20 per cent of the market, employing 230,000. It’s the driving force…Total income from resources from mining was somewhere around the $180 billion mark 12 months ago. Retail at that stage was $260,000 billion.”

Sustainability will be the key issue for NARGA in the coming years and the independent sector will play an important role. The association is currently working with the consulting firm Accenture in researching the whole economic chain ‘from paddock to plate’ as John describes it.

NARGA Chairman John Cummings

“If Australia is going to have this population of 35 million in the year 2040, how is it going to fit, who’s going to feed it, will we grow the food in Australia or produce the food in Australia? All those questions need to be asked. And we also need to ask, if you’re going to have that population, how are we going to deliver the food to where the people live? If you look at the major chains, they have specific requirements on the size of the town they are going to, they have specific demographics they need to build stores, and they range in a specific way. By having independents out there, we will deliver food to more remote parts of Australia, we’ll give credible, good opposition to regional areas. We will continue to do what we’ve done for years, which is buy locally when we can and we will continue to give choice to customers,” John says.

Submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics detailing NARGA’s concerns that the independent grocery sector is losing market share to the extent that their wholesaling and distribution networks will become unviable.

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Second NARGA submission to Senate Standing Committee on Economics detailing how other governments and jurisdictions support small business access to finance.

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Mechanisms aimed at reducing the volumes of packaging waste disposed in landfill or making packaging more resource efficient are rarely assessed in the context of their impact on the total supply chain.  The current [NEPM] RIS fails to do so, taking as a given the validity of the National Waste Policy and the need for an Australian Packaging Covenant – the need for the NEPM for Used packaging Materials seen only in that context.      Read More (Word document)

A review of current bank interest rates as regularly advertised in national dailies shows a substantial difference in the rates being charged to home owners as opposed to businesses.  This is in spite of the fact that business loans are often secured through mortgages on private property suggesting that the risk profile is not all that different.

We suggest that, in cases where such security is provided, any interest rate differential needs to be justified.

Letter to Senate Standing Committee on Economics – Download Now (Word format)

Comparison of factors that affect the ‘greenness’ of both plastic disposable and reusable shopping bags, demonstrating that reusable bags may not be as environmentally friendly as many people believe.

Plastic Bags Document

Submission to Australian Bureau of Statistics to outline the links between the Consumer Price Index and the practical issues confronting the independent grocery sector.

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Australian consumers will be exposed to increasingly uncompetitive market sharing by the two largest supermarket chains if nothing is done to address current trends. 

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Many other countries have legal prohibitions against anti-competitive price discrimination  -  where a company sells identical product to different customers at different prices.  Australia does not.

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