Millicent crowd sends message

AN emotive pitch to parliamentarians to retain Millicent’s unique shop trading hours dominated the public meeting hosted by SA-Best on Friday night, with community members delivering a clear message to “leave the hours alone”.

Despite two other major events, close to 100 people turned out to the Millicent Football Club to support the continuance of the most restrictive trading hours in regional South Australia.

The open forum evoked an emotive response from Foster’s Foodland and IGA employees and community members, many of whom warned SA-Best’s Frank Pangallo and Member for MacKillop Nick McBride of the harmful effect of deregulation.

Foster’s Foodland employee Kathy Sporer said the impact of seven-day trading on senior staff would be detrimental, with store managers forced to work on Sundays in a bid to keep costs down.

“One of our co-managers has a young family, so he would not be seeing his children at all,” she said.

“I would not be working as it would cost too much for me to work.”

Millicent’s Sandy Bell led an impassioned plea to the Liberal MP to exempt the town from deregulation, warning a change to shopping hours would result in job losses and potential store closures.

“By doing what you’re going to do, the people that live on their own and work for these stores are at risk,” she said.

“This is our town and we are entitled to have what we want here.

“We’re not in Adelaide, we are not in Mount Gambier, we are here in Milicent.

“Our shops, leave them alone.”

Resident Christina Mowbray heralded Foodland’s long-standing contribution to community charities and events, saying the community would be “very sorry” if deregulation resulted in the store’s closure.

“They have been sponsoring events for years, it was in the 1960s when Foster’s started so it has been going on from 1960 to 2018,” she said.

“They are a wonderful family and they are very loyal to our community.”

Mr Pangallo, whose Connie Bonaros was unable to attend, told the crowd the pair did not support deregulation, adding moves to abolish trading hours would only benefit large traders.

“We have already made our position quite clear that we do not believe it will be of benefit of South Australia to suddenly deregulate and allow larger competition to come in here,” he said.

“No one is actually going to spend more simply because you have deregulated shopping hours.

“What the government do not tell you is they have not really consulted to many of the local community, I think they have just decided to give a free kick to their mates at the big end of town.

“It is just going to give them an opportunity to get a bigger slice of a pie that will not grow.”

The newly-elected Upper House member labelled the two community votes on the matter, including the February 2017 poll which found almost 80pc of respondents support the status quo, as a mandate.

“You voted to retain what you have here now and it was an overwhelming vote,” he said.

“It was quite convincing and it seems you delivered something of a mandate or a message to the political parties that you want things to remain as they are at the moment.

“It is very important we have independent supermarkets as it gives people a variety of shopping and it also creates additional employment.”

Foster’s Foodland manager Brian Foster said he was overwhelmed by the strong community support.

“It is very gratifying to see so many people here not just supporting us, but also supporting IGA,” he said.

“Millicent have voted to keep the status quo because the community likes it as it is.

“The community have voted twice on deregulation and it is clear that it is not supported.”