Many suburban shopping centres in Canberra are in crisis. It is too easy to say that re-regulation is the answer. It may well be true that when shopping hours were more stringently regulated, the suburban shops had a more prosperous time. In particular, the local supermarkets which stayed open late attracted more business because the large supermarkets were not permitted to open all hours, either because of union-imposed labour restrictions or because of regulation about what things could be sold when. Nowadays the large supermarkets stay open 24 hours or close to it. The competitive advantage of the local supermarket of being open longer was lost. And as the larger supermarkets have a price advantage gained through economies of scale, the small supermarket has only one or two advantages left … the convenience of geographic closeness and perhaps intimacy of service and size. They have not been enough in a lot of Canberra local shopping centres.
However, the 24-hour large supermarket did not arise only because of de-regulation. There were other factors: mixed families; two working parents; greater mobility; more shift workers; societal demands for more goods and services to be available over greater time spreads.
The 24-hour supermarkets have been very convenient for these mobile, working families. But the cost is now coming through. Small business is suffering and people who are not mobile are inconvenienced. Older people, people on lower incomes and others who rely on public transport cannot easily go to bigger centres to shop at the larger super-markets.
Part of the problem has been Canberra’s planning. Planners created neat suburban shopping centres, rather than allowing the scattering odd corner stores next to residences. They could not predict the social, economic and technological changes that have made life hard for some businesses in the artificially created centres.
Petrol stations suffered. Technology made cars more specialised and require fewer services. As a result people went to the centralised service centre for their make of car. And high-turnover petrol stations in central positions creamed the petrol business.
Pharmacies suffered. They attempted to diversify, but their fundamental function became so dependent on indirect government money through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that some succumbed to government demands for efficiencies through closures.
There are no easy answers. However, the shopping centres that appear to be doing better are those that have retained the pharmacy, especially if it stays open late, and have several restaurants and some takeaways. Some individual shops are doing well by diversifying and mixing business, sometimes in an apparently odd way.
Perhaps the lesson for Canberra is that heavy government intervention through planning and regulation might have worked for a brief time two decades ago, but it has left an unfortunate legacy. It would be folly for government to repeat past mistakes with too much regulation and better to allow traders and shoppers to make their own judgments about present and future needs and opportunities in an environment that allows easy adaption, and therefore survival.