Community groups say a report commissioned by Woolworths shows the supermarket group behaved “unconscionably” when pushing to open a giant Dan Murphy’s story in Darwin despite objections from local Indigenous people.
The review, ordered by the Woolworths board and headed by independent corporate lawyer Danny Gilbert, recommended Woolworths overhaul its government lobbying activities.
It also found the company failed to understand or properly engage with Darwin’s Indigenous community when planning the 2,000 sq metre liquor outlet.
Woolworths abandoned its plan to build the store, which would have been near three dry Aboriginal communities, after receiving a draft of Gilbert’s report in April.
In a joint statement, Danila Dilba Health Service, Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory, the Northern Territory Council of Social Services and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education said the report vindicated community complaints about Woolworths failing to properly consult or consider the full social impact of the store and complaints about the company’s lobbying efforts.
“This landmark report points to the unconscionable conduct of Woolworths in pursuing this store in the face of large community opposition and the way in which the Northern Territory government facilitated this,” the DDHS chief executive, Olga Havnen, said.
In the final report, released by Woolworths on Wednesday, Gilbert and his co-panellists – Neil Westbury, Heather D’Antoine, Nigel Browne and Roland Houareau – detailed the company’s lobbying efforts and changes to NT liquor licensing laws in 2020.
These changes watered down provisions designed to reduce alcohol harm and introduced a fast-track licensing system that robbed objectors of their normal right to natural justice.
Gilbert said the legislation bore “more than a passing resemblance” to aspects of a proposal put forward by Woolworths’ liquor arm, Endeavour.
It was legitimate for Woolworths to lobby government and there was no suggestion that the company had done anything illegal, but lobbying “can distort fairness and the processes of the legislature, as may be said to have occurred in this matter” he said.
“The panel also recommends that Woolworths group commits to reviewing the way in which it engages with governments on future business plans and the outcomes which it should, or should not, rightly pursue,” Gilbert said.
He said that “many in the Darwin community took the view that Woolworths Group exercised undue influence in encouraging the Northern Territory government to abandon, if not usurp, the important public policy considerations” formulated to reduce alcohol harm in the 2017 review by former judge Trevor Riley.
Asked about the lobbying efforts on Wednesday, the Woolworths chief executive, Brad Banducci, said that the company “should have taken a broader definition of our stakeholders and the community that we needed to consult with”.
Gilbert’s review also found that Woolworth’s attempts to engage with local communities, which included sending “generic” letters, were inadequate and its approach “in effect compromised the legitimacy of the consultation process as seen from the perspective of key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders.”
His panel made several other recommendations, including that Endeavour, which is to be spun off from Woolworths, should pay more attention to the link between alcohol and community harm, and that it should overhaul its governance and risk procedures.
Woolworths has yet to fully respond to the report but in a letter to Gilbert, released by the company, Banducci said it unreservedly apologised for its insensitivity towards Darwin’s Indigenous community and its own Indigenous advisory board.
“I do think we’ve learned a lot out of the process and we certainly plan to materially change the governance process,” Banducci told reporters on Wednesday.
“As in all things when it comes to Woolworths, the buck stops with me, and I’ve certainly learned a lot,” he said.
“And I do think we need to materially change our governance in how we empower our First Nations team members and our advisory board, to actually have a lot more courage in terms of their mandate to give us advice.”
