Filling trolley with good values

Since when did supermarkets become “bully pulpits” for managers to tell us what they think we should think? If retailers can’t sell Australia Day themed merchandise they should not stock it – which Woolworths and Aldi have both announced. Aldi wisely left it at that. But Woolworths could not resist credential signalling, adding this week that “there’s been broader discussion about January 26 and what it means to different parts of the community”. It was a pitch to the wide world of woke, all but ensuring a response from Peter Dutton, who called for shoppers to boycott the chain until it reversed the decision. The Opposition Leader weighed into Woolworths, saying “taking political positions to oppose Australia Day is against the national interest, the national spirit”.

Mr Dutton was criticised by business groups with Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black saying businesses shouldn’t be boycotted because they make commercial decisions based on demand for products from their customers.

However, Mr Dutton’s opposition to businesses politicising Australia Day will appeal to people who neither need nor welcome Woolworths telling them what it thinks they should think about the national day or any other issue. Perhaps management has forgotten what happened at subsidiary Big W last year, when an in-store announcement including support for the Indigenous voice to parliament was dropped “based on customer and store team feedback”. “We recognise and respect our team and customers have varying views and perspectives,” the company stated then, but apparently this applies not so much now.

The irony is that Mr Dutton’s complaint and the discussion it started is entirely appropriate in the lead-up to our national day. Being Australian is defined as much by our values as our geography, and that includes the inalienable right to argue about what needs to change in our country – particularly the circumstances, on just about every measure of economic and social wellbeing, of First Nations people. But it also includes what there is to celebrate, especially the way we are governed. The citizenship pledge of “loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey” is a statement that applies only in a minority of countries. The more migrants who can pass the citizenship test in their hearts as well as their heads and express allegiance in Australia Day ceremonies, the better for all of us. Nihilistic ideas that ours is a morally failed state, that a national day is an occasion for hand-wringing, not applause, are simply irrelevant to the Australian experience, which in this case Woolworths management appears to have missed. Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price set out the disconnect on Radio 3AW, putting the Australia Day merchandise decision in the context of the voice referendum: “They have taken a political position around Indigenous Australians before. I believe it is a continuation of that and they haven’t heard the Australian people at all.”

For Woolworths, which competes every day for every supermarket dollar, to make a judgment about customers does not seem sensible at all, as US businesses that have courted activists have discovered. The Wall Street Journal reports giant corporations that pitched their environmental, social and governance credentials are easing up on the “lofty pronouncements” in favour of specifics with achievable benefits. It’s an example for Australian companies that campaign on issues unrelated to their core business. Of course managements can brand a store on ideology, as well as product and price, at least until shareholders kick up. However, the morally superior campaigning comes with a message that customers who don’t agree with a cause are not really the right sort of shoppers. When it comes to celebrating Australia Day, merchandise matters less than our values and belief in the fundamental right and reason for all Australians to rejoice. In politicising the former, Woolworths demeans the latter.