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Greater food variety
There is already huge food variety in Mullumbimby and most shops are happy to meet requests for new items.

“Smaller, independent grocers may be able to provide a larger variety of fresh, seasonal and often local produce ….whereas larger retailers are dependent on their nationwide distribution networks that may result in requiring longer travel times or complex long-storage techniques for fresh produce. As a result a possibility exists that the food has been nutritionally compromised by the time it reaches the consumer.” Wardle J and Baranovic M 2009 ‘Is lack of retail competition in the grocery sector a public health issue?’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. 2009 vol.33 no.5

As Bill McKibbin also points out: “every meal comes with a story’ and for a lot of highly industrialised, large scale food production that story is not a good one for the environment, for animals or for consumers”.

Convenient parking
While Woolworths will provide parking on site the spaces are actually captured by the development and won’t necessarily serve other areas. The parking is contributing to its own needs and not the current shopping centre. Mullumbimby enjoys great amenity in its ‘people traffic’ through the town. This is what contributes to its liveliness. Having people park out of the CBD and not walking down the main street will contribute to a loss of social interaction that is so much a part of its culture.
There are also many other ways to increase parking and reduce vehicle traffic in Mullumbimby which don’t require such a threat to the town’s fabric. One simple step would be to build the long-planned cycle and pedestrian bridge to allow residents across the river easier access to the town centre.

It’s inevitable
Other towns have objected to a Woolworths proposal in their town and have won – see www.mtevelynraw.com and www.vivasamford.org.au. Other communities, such as Newport in Sydney are in the process – see www.newportversuswoolies.org.
 

More jobs or less?
Research shows that large supermarket retailers, like Woolworths, do not provide more jobs - there is a net loss of supermarket jobs in the community. For example the Price Waterhouse Coopers report (‘The economic contribution of small to medium-sized grocery retailers to the Australian economy, with a particular focus on Western Australia’ June 2007) found that small independent supermarkets provide over five times as many full time equivalent jobs per unit of turnover as do the large players. That is how the large players like Woolworths make so much money – by cutting their ‘costs’, including employment. Research by the supermarket giant Tesco in the United Kingdom, quoted in The Guardian, found that every large outlet causes the net loss of 276 jobs. See the article ‘My town is menaced by a superstore. So why are we not free to fight it off?’ at www.monbiot.com <http://www.monbiot.com>

Cheaper prices
The larger supermarkets tend to have fairly cheap prices but our surveys of local stores and markets show that the locals are often competitive. In addition we must also take account of other costs in any assessment of value: “the deepest problem that local food efforts face, however, is that we’ve gotten used to paying so little for food. It may be expensive in terms of how much oil it requires, and how much greenhouse gas it pours into the atmosphere, and how much tax subsidies it receives, and how much damage it does to local communities... and how many migrant workers it maims, and how much sewage it piles up, and how many miles of highway it requires—but boy, when you pull your cart up to the register it’s pretty cheap.” McKibbin B 2007 Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future pp 89-90.
Fight back. Keep the magic of Mullumbimby

Mullumbimby Forum Inc is a small organisation of people who want to support the campaign against Woolworths by helping to celebrate how special Mullumbimby is and by helping to inform the community about the likely effects of a large supermarket in town.
Office Bearers: Martin Kantor, Garth Luke, Rusty Miller, Tricia Shantz.
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