Five Alice Springs IGAs facing closure, job losses in liquor licence tweak

A small change to the NT’s liquor licensing regulations could see independent supermarkets forced to close, costing hundreds of jobs. Read why the tiny tweak could be a ‘major problem’.

The Lhere Artepe Aboriginal Corporation owns three of Alice Springs’ five IGAs and employs about 130 people. Picture: Mark Brake

Five independent supermarkets in Alice Springs could be forced to permanently close their doors, resulting in hundreds of job losses, following tweaks to Territory Government liquor regulations.

The five IGAs are bound by law to restrict sales from their bottle shops to less than 25 per cent of total revenue, with the figure until recently averaged out across the financial year.

But chairman of the Aboriginal-owned Lhere Artepe Enterprises, which runs three of the five supermarkets, Peter Holden, said he was recently informed it would now be assessed at the end of each quarter.

Mr Holden said the change would be disastrous for the businesses and “a major problem for the town”, with his three shops alone employing about 130 people, who could all potentially be out of work.

“You might think ‘Yeah, so what, big deal’, but it actually is a huge deal because people buy alcohol on a seasonal basis,” he said.

“In Alice Springs there’s a lot of tourism during the September quarter, from July to September, and as they drive out of town they stop at one of our stores and they load up and they drive north to Darwin.

“But then you get into the March quarter, January, February, March, it’s summer, it’s hot, people leave Alice Springs and go to Adelaide or Queensland or whatever.

“The liquor sales go down quite noticeably and they stay that way really for the rest of the year.”

Mr Holden said his three outlets were “going to really, really struggle” to comply with the 25 per cent limit during the busy tourist season when alcohol sales were up.

“If we can’t and we get out licence suspended, or worse still, revoked, then that is going to be a massive problem for the town,” he said.

“I’m not saying this to sound hysterical or melodramatic, it’s true, if we lose our liquor licences the likelihood is those stores won’t be able to survive.”

Mr Holden said the change would benefit the major chains, which were easily able to stay under the cap, at the expense of independent retailers that contributed to the local community.

“Why would you be — I’m sure they’re not intentionally doing it, but this is the effect of it — damaging the small, locally-owned businesses that are employing a lot of people in favour of the big guys from Sydney and Melbourne?” he said.

“It’s a bit of a bizarre policy position that they’ve got and I don’t know whether they understand the consequences if it all goes pear-shaped.”

A spokeswoman for the NT government said the 25 per cent cap on liquor sales was “a licence compliance requirement”.

“It applies only to grocery store licences, and ensures that alcohol sales are subordinate to their primary business of selling groceries,” she said.