SENATE

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Page 6 Senate Friday, 21 October 2016 Mr Bradley: One way or another it does. The point is that we use it to charge a lower management fee than we would otherwise have to charge, if that makes sense. Senator DODSON: So long as you have good quality. Mr Bradley: Yes. Senator DODSON: How many local Aboriginal people do you employ in the stores. Mr Bradley: It is just under 300 across the stores. We have a very strong policy of employing local people. We set a wage figure that we would like each store to spend employing local people. I have to say that there are a number of communities where we are unable to employ as many people as we would like. In those rare occasions we employ external backpackers to do it. Our absolute preference is to employ local people. Senator DODSON: What is the proportion between the two? If you have 300 Indigenous— Mr Bradley: It is about 80 per cent Indigenous within the stores. Senator DODSON: I have questions on your policies regarding employing local people. I know the minister has an interest in trying to get people into jobs. I am trying to understand what your strategy is in terms of KPIs and moving Indigenous and local people through the ranks of your stores. Mr Bradley: We run retail training schemes and we train our people through the certification levels that you can do in retail. We have about 150 people in training schemes of one type or another at the moment. To put a bit of realism in this, though, I have to say that the turnover of staff in the communities is fairly high. The incidence of people starting training, dropping out and coming back in again is quite high. That is something that we just have to work with. Senator DODSON: Do you have a mechanism to report back to the community in relation to employment targets, training issues and other strategies? Mr Bradley: Absolutely. Every quarter, we report back to the community on the most important elements. That would include employment, fruit and veg consumption, sugar drinks consumption and so on and it would also include the financial results of the store. Senator DODSON: I want to come to the sugar drinks in a minute, if I can. You mentioned the challenge with getting local employment. What is the retention rate of those that you do get? Mr Bradley: We measure it as the turnover rate. Senator DODSON: That sounds like a negative factor to me. I want to know what the retention rate is. Mr Bradley: The turnover rate, as we express it, is about 200 per cent of people in stores. But they are people who come and work for us and then they might leave for three or four months—and we count that as leaving— and then they come back again and we re-employ them and we continue. We have to work within the way that people are prepared to incorporate it in their overall lives in the community. Senator DODSON: Do you find that pool widening, or it a sort of a recidivist shop assistant of some type? Mr Bradley: It varies community by community. Some communities have a strong track record of working in the store and supporting it—and that is great. In other communities we find it really hard to get people to work there. I would also say that it depends a lot on the quality of our managers. If we have managers who can really engage with the community, inspire them and get them to work there, that is a real positive. Clearly we have variability in the standards of our managers. Senator DODSON: What is the overall trend of the food sales in the last 12 months? Mr Bradley: In terms of sales growth? Senator DODSON: In terms of sales and I suppose the purchases from the wholesalers. Are you increasing the product on the shelf or are you diminishing the product on the shelf? Mr Bradley: In terms of range? Senator DODSON: Quantity and range. I want to know whether you are cutting back because of maybe income that is less available for expenditure in the store economy or whether you are increasing because the communities are flush with money. Mr Bradley: If you look at this financial year, from July to now, our sales have declined by about two per cent in dollar terms. That is the current trend rate with our sales. But, within that, are very big variances. The biggest increase in a store is close to 50 per cent growth and the biggest decrease is about 30 per cent. We find this very frequently. As community populations move around, sales jump up and down. So, overall, it is two per cent down. But, as I say, it is between plus 50 per cent and minus 30 per cent depending on the community. FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION LEGISLATION COMMITTEE
Friday, 21 October 2016 Senate Page 7 Senator DODSON: Moving around is one factor; what about income factors? Mr Bradley: Is this a question around the CDP and the impact of that? We cannot see anything in our numbers that shows specifically from CDP. But we also do not know exactly how CDP is being applied in a community and the impact on income. Senator DODSON: And you are not seeing that reflected in the nature of the product you are putting on the shelf like baby food? Mr Bradley: No, we are not. Senator DODSON: So you do not see any trends? Is this the normal situation or the medium situation or is this some anomaly? Mr Bradley: To have a reduction of two per cent across all stores is worse than it would have been for two or three years but it is not outside the bounds of normality. Something else that we struggle with is trying to understand what the population is in each of the communities that we operate in. It is very hard to know the number of people that are in the communities that we are serving relatively accurately. So for us to draw a correlation between the amount of money that is spent, we do not know exactly the number of people in the community and how much income they have got. We cannot see that link. Senator DODSON: Are there any observations on why the mobility is such? Mr Bradley: It has always been that way since we have been involved with it. I can talk about specific instances. You get populations fleeing communities when there are high levels of violence—it certainly goes on. We have people who choose to move around for family reasons, for cultural events and so on. I do not think we could say that the level of movement of people is any higher than it has been in the past but—in all honesty—we really do not know. Senator DODSON: I was hoping you might be able to touch on people going on to better jobs and better quality of life in some ways but that obviously is not a factor in your thinking. I go to the delivery of the food strategy that you indicated you have got. What do you think is the effectiveness of that strategy on community health or on individuals' health? Mr Bradley: We have not been able to measure directly the impact on health. We can measure the consumption of different types of product categories. For example, we track fruit and veg quantities pretty carefully. In the last year, that went up by about five per cent so that is a positive trend. I would say incidentally we track fruit and veg by weight rather than by value because we have done a lot to bring down the price of it. I would say we have seen good growth in fruit and veg albeit the amount that is spent in our stores on fruit and veggies is 4½ per cent of total sales. In mainstream retailing, it would be more like 12½ per cent or 13 per cent so there is a long way to go. If you talk about sugared drinks, we sold about just over 1.3 million litres of sugared drinks last year, which was a small increase on the previous year but, in fact, a reduction in market share. So of drinks, we measure the market share of sugared versus non-sugared drinks and the market share came down by half a per cent. Senator DODSON: What is your education strategy in relation to sugar with the community? Mr Bradley: We do a lot in different communities. It depends on the willingness of the community to engage with us in what we do. You could take an example that I know Nigel has gone to previously around Balgo, where in order to agree to loan to the community, pressure was put on them to increase their strategy for sugar reduction. They came to the party about that. The initial results show that sugared drinks consumption in Balgo dropped by about 10 per cent but other things that contain sugar such as fruit juice have gone up so the net impact looks as though it is around seven per cent. It is still a very constructive improvement. The amount of sugar drinks has dropped by about 11 per cent from the same period last year. That is an environment where total dollar sales are down two per cent anyway, and it is too early, I think, to draw any conclusions from it, but there are some encouraging signs there. Senator McALLISTER: Just a quick one: on notice, could you provide the committee with—it sounds like you have got some good data there and that you are tracking what is going on with healthy food purchases. If you could set out for the committee what KPIs you are using and what data you collect to measure performance against those KPIs, that would be very useful for us. Thank you. Mr Bradley: We can certainly do that. Senator LINES: Could you add to that to and give us the sugar drinks consumption across all the areas where you have got stores by state? Mr Bradley: Yes. FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION LEGISLATION COMMITTEE
Page 1 and 2: COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Proof Com
Page 3: SENATE FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTR
Page 6 and 7: Page 2 Senate Friday, 21 October 20
Page 60 and 61:
Page 56 Senate Friday, 21 October 2
Page 62 and 63:
Page 64 and 65:
show all

SENATE

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?