Life
Australians fight rearguard action against supermarket
By DPA
Oct 26, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Sydney - The fight captured headlines in Australia and stirred sympathy abroad and focused on the 4,000 residents of Maleny, who resisted tooth and nail the construction of a modern supermarket in their Queensland backwater.

It was a battle that Maleny, an hour's drive north of Brisbane, lost in April when the country's biggest grocer set up shop on the banks of Obi Obi creek.

For more than a year, protestors had camped out to protect the 30- strong platypus colony that lived in the creek. Hundreds heckled as the bulldozers moved in.

The state government had declined to intercede and stop the development, but its sympathies were with the townsfolk.

'I feel for these protesters who don't want a supermarket to change the village atmosphere in Maleny,' Police Minister Judy Spence said. 'However, the developers have a legal right to build on this site.'

They did - and they built. But what they haven't managed to do is get Maleny folk to shop at the supermarket.

A boycott means Woolworths won a pyrrhic victory. Most days there are more staff than shoppers.

Woolworths can afford to run at a big loss in the knowledge that consumer-resistance movements are usually ground down over time. The people of Maleny intend to ensure their Woolworths is the least profitable in Australia for many years to come.