Do the math.
I recall Coles and Woollies post a net profit of around 3%.

These bags will cost them around 5 cents to buy, sell for 13.6 cents ex gst, which will mean at a profit margin of some 66%, will make them one of the most profitable item they sell, if not the most.

Go figure! Who on earth would have thought the bag the items go into would be a best profit seller.

Of cause with dead mice, roaches, even a dirty nappy being found I shoppers used bags, its only a matter of time before someone get crook, or even dies.

You see bacteria, especially listeria, requires warmth and moisture to multiply, and can lay dormant in dried matter on the bag. Once moister is reintroduced who knows what could happen.

Only time will tell, but I sure hope we don't find out the hard way.

Meanwhile, the grubs of society, they being the ones who litter freely and disrespectfully now, will continue to litter, so all we are doing is punishing those who are already responsible citizens. Sound familiar!

The Sydney press, even this morning reminds me it was always going to be a problem this change from one plastic bag, to another that will take much longer than the one it replaces to rot, both along with the cotton and such ones, will in the end go in to land fill, no plan to recycle them will always work, none seems to exist, and no one can be sure current collected for recycle things are reused, and we pay for the new bags?yes dreamers and even true air heads want us to re use, surly we all do, but this is lip service, it is a fraud,a false fronted clean the environment promise no one intends to keep, bring back a greatly reinforced brown paper bag, sell advertising on it, charge us,even let us return our used ones to store and have them shredded and baled for re use but stop telling us this is going to work or even be worth while

Belly, I don't know if paper bags is the answer.
Even if they make them thick enough.
The tree huggers will tell you we are killing the planet because of the trees that will be needed to produce these bags.
I am reminded of the difficulty and physical dynamics of one over the other.
With paper bags we can only usually carry or hold two bags at a time.
One in each arm.
Sometimes more but usually two.
Whereas with plastic or otherwise, there is some form of handle, which greatly enhances the efficiency of the bag, meaning one can carry several bags, limited only by their strength.
The other point is that paper bags did not cope well with anything moist or prone to attracting moisture, such as anything frozen or normally stored in refrigeration or freezers.
I believe the most efficient and convenient answer, which would also be the most economical and the quickest to implement, would be the re-introduction of the single use plastic bags that started breaking down almost immediately and turned to dust days/weeks later.
This would automatically stop the practice of re-using them, thereby avoiding the possibility of someone becoming ill or worse due to bacterial contamination which was possible under the previous bags, and still is today with people being forced to use multi use bags, cloth or otherwise.
These were the ones issued when the plastic bag idea was first introduced.
Public pressure over the usefulness of the bags made the stores change the chemical structure of the bags to last longer, so they had other uses, thereby making them, 'recyclable', so they thought.
These new bags we use today were supposed to break down later, and they do, but the conditions have to be just right for that to happen.
So if we go back to the bags of old, we should be OK.
No more plastic bags floating around.

There's only one solution.
Were all just going to have to start stealing iteas via the self-serve checkouts to cover the cost of this extortion.

These people are complete idiots.
Next week they will try some new advertising strategy where they try to convince us they care about everyday low prices.
They have the memory of a goldfish, and everything's just a slick advertising campaign to sell us some morons BS.

Well the bag I speak of was in use till about 1960 here, and in America, yes it had no handles but in my shoping at least would go to car in trolley and to house one at a time,we need to think before bringing in another cane toad, plastic that rots quicker, or any thing like it, may pollute on a far bigger scale, how many remember the very first ring pull can? the ring came off and hundreds of millions of them littered our streets, that solution was found,basically, as in my view the until recently exported plastic to China proves, we may re gather but are we truly recycling?

Belly, do not fear.
It's people like me who are called upon to 'fix' a problem if necessary.
Just like the pull can, the 'fix' was to have the ring stay with the can, and hey presto, no more ring pulls defacing the Earth.
So this too will pass, and someone will come up with a solution whereby we can 'have our cake, and eat it too'.
I am convinced the solution lies with the bags of old that used to totally disintegrate into dust after a few days/weeks.
And fear not, the resultant 'dust' will be negligible in both volume and toxins.
And of course if the noisy ones still insist on pushing against these new/old bags, the bags can be 'tweaked' to accommodate even the most flaky of the antagonists.