Max, there is one thing that has always impressed me about WA
rural types. When they have a problem, they are incredibly
good at finding a solution themselves. For the rest of
Australia simply treats WA as a cash cow for mineral
royalties, little else. They have no interest in our problems.

Now if your conspiracy theory of massive profits is correct,
rather then feeling sorry for you, I would suggest it
gives you a great opportunity in life, to help yourself
and your fellow Darwin residents.

You have people place their orders with you online and
ship it all up on the train from Adelaide, making a
profit for yourself plus giving your customers a bargain!

Its a win win situation Max, just waiting for you to make
it happen.

Geez Yabby, you’ve really got the conspiracy bug haven’t you?
To the point where anyone who states an honest opinion on the way the market actually works, rather than the way it’s claimed to, must be seeing a conspiracy. Shut your mouth, open your eyes, read my posts with an open mind (if possible), you’ll find my answer already there.
As for you rural sandgropers, yeah,I’ve seen their solutions, run weeping to the Gov’, state and federal, pocket the money and weep some more, the most common comment there is a kids wail..”It’s not fair”!
Give me a break! The rural sector is probably the worst hit sector in Oz, and has a long track record of surviving, but the reality is it’s largely corporate based these days, managers instead of owners, and there’s little unity or co-operation. You’re living in a fading echo of a proud past, and your sarcasm reduces any respect you may have garnered. Get with the 21st Century, get real, put aside your innocence, if that’s what it is, and look at what is actually happening. As it is, only Ol’ Iron-bar would agree with you, which is quite sad really!

Ah Maxi, I have read your posts and already think I know the
real problem. Your hatred of capitalism is the real problem it seems.

Just to check, I helped myself to find the answer :)

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/b/sunrise/6255/australias-cash-crisis

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/6ADAE064F981FA01CA2574EF001392B3?opendocument

both websites which look at grocery prices in Darwin. You pay a bit
more, similar to in Cairns, but I can't see any huge rip offs there.

So perhaps the real problem is the perception of the beholder,
in your case political ideology, which is distorting the facts.

Its common on OLO.

" ...political ideology, which is distorting the facts. Its common on OLO."

Yabby,

I plead a certain bias in my POV. While a student in the 80s, I used to work for both Coles and Woolies in Melbourne and Perth packing the shelves at night. It was head down, bum up work which involved wheeling your trolley down to the end of the aisle, stacking boxes from a pallet onto the trolley, roving up and down the aisle finding the right location for each item on the shelf, cutting the boxes, pricing every item with a Meto gun, clearing the shelf, putting the box in, facing up the goods so that the label was facing outwards and putting the excess cardboard into a trolley. The average carton rate expected was 38 - a box every 1 1/2 minutes. If you had a gun jam or you slashed a 2litre bottle of Coke which fizzed everywhere, you got slowed down and had to make the time up. The job got you a bit under $10 an hour - if you ask me, it was the 1980s equivalent of sheep shearing. Just like gun shearers, there were gun night fillers. Most of the staff were older men and women either working a second job or women working part-time to supplement their husband's income. They didn't do it for the love, but because they were mortgage slaves, basically. Most of us went home knackered.

I found it very much a job where the store managers exploited the staff (and the customers), so my view of Coles mainly is forever tainted.

Getting back to what you say about prices, you are right - C&W do drive the prices down. But they do it at a cost, mainly a human one on the people that work for them or are connected with them.

But you still don't answer the charge that there are a lot of other hidden costs and entities in the overall distribution network that are causing the price at the supermarket register to be higher than they could be.

RobP, welcome to the real world!

Yes, some people will do mindless boring jobs and do it for the
money. They would not be doing it, if they had a better offer.
The problem really is in your perception. All over the world,
people spend endless hours doing boring jobs. In relative terms,
Australians doing the same, are extremely well paid. Are you
suggesting that they would be better off with no jobs?

Selling groceries indeed has a lot to do with the logistics and
its costs. One of the reasons why Coles landed up being sold
up, was that the place turned over huge amounts of money, but
hardly earned a profit. American venture capital nearly bought
them, but I'm glad that they have landed up in Australian hands,
so that future profits stay in Australia.

Woolies run rings around Coles in terms of profitability,
because their computer systems and logistics systems are so
much more efficient. The price of goods at both stores is in
fact extremely similar.

Woolies landed up copying Walmart, Coles are now in the process
of reorgansing their logistics to try and be as efficient, for
its pointless turning over billions, if there is hardly a
profit in the end.

Waste is the big killer and cost driver, eliminating it benefits
both shareholders and customers.

"All over the world, people spend endless hours doing boring jobs. In relative terms, Australians doing the same, are extremely well paid."

Not compared with those higher up the food chain in this country, they're not.

"Are you suggesting that they would be better off with no jobs?"

No. What I would say is that people who do the boring, while still necessary, jobs should get paid more while the wheeler and dealer types higher up the food chain get paid less. Who decides that one person's effort is not worth another's effort. For me, it boils down to wage justice. There simply isn't any when you look at many modern industries and the breakup of work done versus remuneration.

Yeah, yeah I can just picture your response being that the market decides the wages, but the market is hardly just, is it? It is purely about most efficiently making a profit. The market always puts human aspects last in its list of priorities.