Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart sneaker
Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode, just say play
Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, July eighteen.
Speaker 1: Australia is accepting Israel's explanation for the airstrike that killed
Speaker 1: aid worker Zomi Frankom in Gaza. Franklm and her colleagues
Speaker 1: from the World Central Kitchen charity died instantly on April one,
Speaker 1: in what the Israeli Defense Force said was a tragic accident.
Speaker 1: The Albanese government sent former Defense chief Mark Binskin to
Speaker 1: investigate the debts, and today The Australian reveals Binskin will
Speaker 1: recommend new protocols for international aid organizations working in war zones.
Speaker 1: The Greens want Labor to overrule the Reserve Bank of
Speaker 1: Australia if it tries to hike interest rates again. That
Speaker 1: story is part of the Australian series on the Small
Speaker 1: Party with Big Ambitions, and it's live now at the
Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au. If you live in the Bush,
Speaker 1: you're probably listening to the Front via satellite like Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's Starlink network, which has become a crucial part of
Speaker 1: Australia's food belt. In today's episode, we'll dive into the
Speaker 1: big issues for the Bush, including patchy internet and why
Speaker 1: you might be eating mince for dinner tonight. I'm willing
Speaker 1: to bet you're cooking dinner at home much more often
Speaker 1: these days, and I reckon you've cut back on takeaway
Speaker 1: coffee times are tight and at the supermarket we're buying
Speaker 1: stuff in tins and stuff on special. But here's the twist,
Speaker 1: many Australians are also buying more expensive supermarket products. Here's
Speaker 1: Cole's chief commercial officer and a Croft.
Speaker 2: Definitely a trendom frozen in bulk as customers become ready
Speaker 2: savy around how they shop.
Speaker 1: Croft is speaking of the Australians Global Food Forum, a
Speaker 1: gathering of farmers, manufacturers, retailers and investors we hold every year.
Speaker 2: But we are seeing customers trading into the premium tees.
Speaker 2: So there's nodar as customers are eating more at home
Speaker 2: that premium section across lots of our brands coming through
Speaker 2: and with seeing that and our calls fin ess up
Speaker 2: kind of twenty percent.
Speaker 1: At the independent supermarket chain IgA Richies. They call it
Speaker 1: the mincemeat Index.
Speaker 3: We're finding out mid sales beef min's chicken mince is
Speaker 3: through the roof, and that's an indication that people are
Speaker 3: trading down, perhaps from a steak and instead buying the
Speaker 3: cheaper cuts of meat.
Speaker 1: This is the boss of Ida Richies, Fred Harrison. He's
Speaker 1: talking at the Food to Our retail reporter Eli Greenblat
Speaker 1: but I don't.
Speaker 3: Think people are making a lovely specific meal five nights
Speaker 3: a week. I think people are making big batches of food.
Speaker 3: We know now our pasta sales are through the roof,
Speaker 3: and the ingredients are going the pasta sources, etc. People
Speaker 3: are making big batches and might put it in the
Speaker 3: fridge or the freezer and use that two or three
Speaker 3: times through the week.
Speaker 1: And that twist again, we're buying a nicer kind of mints.
Speaker 3: It is a little bit more of the premium into
Speaker 3: not just the cheapest means some of the premium minss.
Speaker 3: But that category is going strengths to strength.
Speaker 1: So we're shopping more. But we are not loving the
Speaker 1: supermarkets right now. Allegations of price gouging and excessive market
Speaker 1: power have coals and woolies under pressure. But the retailers
Speaker 1: are suffering with the cost of living too, as manufacturers
Speaker 1: push up prices and the cost of fuel and energy
Speaker 1: saws and so are suppliers. Jeff Kennett is the former
Speaker 1: Premier of Victoria and now chair of the original Juice Company.
Speaker 4: Right now, the public are looking around more than ever
Speaker 4: before for value, and that's tough on all the supermarkets,
Speaker 4: small and large. But there is a point which the
Speaker 4: public says, I'm not going to pay more than this
Speaker 4: price for a liter and a half of juice. So
Speaker 4: we're getting squeezed. One end, the public understandably is squeezing,
Speaker 4: as is the end, and I'm drinking more whiskey.
Speaker 1: Here's a little example from IgA Richie's Fred Harrison says
Speaker 1: on July one, twenty three, the company's costs in Victoria
Speaker 1: rose by four million dollars in government charges overnight. That
Speaker 1: was an increase in payroll tax, a mental health levy,
Speaker 1: and work cover. That's just one.
Speaker 4: State governments are screwing the private sector. They're screwing them.
Speaker 4: Why is it always the poor bloody supermarkets for actually
Speaker 4: delivering the farmer's product, employing the people paying the taxes
Speaker 4: and charges who have been whipped to death.
Speaker 1: And here's another challenge staff.
Speaker 3: We're finding people want to come in and perhaps work
Speaker 3: in the store, but they don't want any responsibility, so
Speaker 3: to get management, whether it be store management or deli
Speaker 3: managers or produce managers. I just want to come in
Speaker 3: work nine to five, had no hassles, don't want to
Speaker 3: take on responsibility. Getting leaders is one of the biggest
Speaker 3: problems in Australia at the moment.
Speaker 4: And they want to serve in a supermarket from home,
Speaker 4: don't they thank you?
Speaker 1: Supermarkets are so unpopular right now that there's a strange
Speaker 1: double act the Coalition and the Greens both want the
Speaker 1: power to force the powerful duopoly Coals and Woolies to
Speaker 1: break up. It sounds good, right, more owners, more competition,
Speaker 1: hopefully lower prices and better deals for workers and suppliers.
Speaker 1: But and across from Coals totally like she doesn't think
Speaker 1: it would work.
Speaker 2: We're run eight hundred and fifty SUPs markets across office
Speaker 2: see their whole national footprint, and I think we have
Speaker 2: a very large fixed cost base. And if that was
Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty supermarkets, it actually wouldn't make a
Speaker 2: meaningful difference to our cost base, and therefore it would
Speaker 2: really impede our ability to fractionalize those costs across our
Speaker 2: business and to drive greater efficiency, and therefore, as a
Speaker 2: result of that that could or may lead higher prices
Speaker 2: for customers.
Speaker 1: Ida Richies has a different take. Asked if they could
Speaker 1: buy supermarkets in say, regional Queensland if Coals or Woolies
Speaker 1: was forced to sell them off. Fred Harrison said this.
Speaker 3: Look in the instance of Richie's, we probably could. However,
Speaker 3: it's not quite as simple as the government saying you've
Speaker 3: got to offload one hundred stores or slow therese. Landlords involved,
Speaker 3: and landlords have made decisions and borrowed money and have
Speaker 3: commitments and cap rates that are important to them, and
Speaker 3: a lot of these Coals Wooly stores pay significant rents
Speaker 3: that independents are necessarily in a position to mat set rent.
Speaker 1: Fred Harrison poses another solution, draw a line in the
Speaker 1: sand and accept the deewopoly as it is for the moment,
Speaker 1: but then plan for a future which gives shoppers more options.
Speaker 3: In other words, instead of having Woolish Coals on every
Speaker 3: second or third street corner, what we could possibly do
Speaker 3: before a new site is approved, whether it be a
Speaker 3: greenfield site or an acquisition, is to a competition test
Speaker 3: and say okay, in that market a five kilometer radius,
Speaker 3: say a metro, how many woolies or coals are there
Speaker 3: there now? And is there an independent or good independent
Speaker 3: in that area or anally? I think the more independence
Speaker 3: to get out there, the better it's going to be
Speaker 3: for competition in the long run.
Speaker 1: After the break, why frustrated farmers have turned to Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's space program to get reliable internet. The Global Food Forum,
Speaker 1: sponsored by Visi is part of how the Australian gets
Speaker 1: into the contest of ideas from the city to the sticks.
Speaker 1: Check us out at the Australian dot com dot au
Speaker 1: and we'll be back after this break. Starlink, if you've
Speaker 1: heard of it, you might know this is one of
Speaker 1: the businesses owned by the world's richest man, Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: It's probably the business rather than Tesla or Twitter that
Speaker 1: makes Masks so influential. Starlink is a satellite internet provider
Speaker 1: fired by Masks SpaceX rockets.
Speaker 4: One contention and with a pad to have freeback so it.
Speaker 1: Mask's big innovation was to create reusable rockets which can
Speaker 1: launch into space, set satellites into a low orbit and
Speaker 1: then return to Earth to be deployed all over again.
Speaker 1: On the grim battlefields of Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers
Speaker 1: alike are buying Starlink boxes so vacant connect to the world,
Speaker 1: and in the Australian bush, anyone who wants reliable internet
Speaker 1: is also buying a Starlink box. They are about three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty dollars and then you pay around one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty dollars a month to connect. Starlink says
Speaker 1: it has more than two hundred thousand customers in Australia.
Speaker 5: We've had Starlink for quite a while. I still have
Speaker 5: my Mbian Skymaster. I'm big on having a bit of
Speaker 5: security and redundancy.
Speaker 1: This is Georgie Somerset. She's a farmer and a grazier
Speaker 1: and she's one of those powerful country women who was
Speaker 1: turned speaking up for the bush into her lifetime's calling.
Speaker 5: But our businesses have become very reliant on being connected.
Speaker 5: So it's not a it'd be nice to have mobile coverage.
Speaker 5: It's actually we rely on it for telemetry and observations
Speaker 5: and things like that. Now and when we we saw
Speaker 5: one of the satellites failed last year, that's directing our tractors.
Speaker 5: That's our data and our planting and our harvesting data,
Speaker 5: you know. So we're this is not a nice to have,
Speaker 5: it's a actual business operations one I one to have
Speaker 5: connectivity now.
Speaker 1: She's on the board of the ABC, a director of
Speaker 1: the National Farmers Federation and the general president of ag
Speaker 1: Force Queensland. For many farmers, local internet providers just aren't
Speaker 1: cutting it. Sales of the NBN satellite services have been
Speaker 1: in rapid decline, the number of connections falling almost twenty
Speaker 1: percent in the first quarter of this year alone. Starlink
Speaker 1: says it delivers between one hundred and two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty megabits of download per second across Australia. That's up
Speaker 1: to twice as fast as four G. While Georgie's keeping
Speaker 1: her Skymaster service, many others are not. It's not just
Speaker 1: connecting to the internet, which is fraught. Some regional areas
Speaker 1: could lose their phone in coming months. Telstra will shut
Speaker 1: down their three G services also known as their next
Speaker 1: G networks, in August. Optus isn't far behind with their
Speaker 1: three G networks to shut down in September. While most
Speaker 1: of Australia moved off the three G network to four
Speaker 1: G and five G long ago, some regional areas still
Speaker 1: don't receive those signals. For some this goes beyond being
Speaker 1: able to make a phone call or send a text.
Speaker 1: Older automated farming equipment which uses the three G network
Speaker 1: will also become obsolete. Georgie Somerset says the cost of
Speaker 1: living crisis in the Bush is a little different.
Speaker 5: And I think it's interesting when you hear that they
Speaker 5: talk about sort of twenty percent of people are chasing
Speaker 5: the specials. You often don't have that privilege of chasing
Speaker 5: the specials when you only go into town once every
Speaker 5: couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Are you seeing changes in the ability of families to
Speaker 1: remain on the land, to remain producing food.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying a diminution of that at the moment,
Speaker 5: but what I think will see is probably more families
Speaker 5: doing the labor, so less labor units required, which then
Speaker 5: can have a flow through in rural communities. And when
Speaker 5: those families go, it has a flow on to schools
Speaker 5: and things like that as well. It's a tricky conundrum.
Speaker 1: An artwork by the Australian's cartoonist Johannes Leek has prompted
Speaker 1: Green senator at Marine Feruki to threaten legal action. To
Speaker 1: see the cartoon and read Why Feruki is Upset, join
Speaker 1: ours subscribers at Beaustralian dot Com do AU