Hardware man gives up fight, The West Australian posted:

Peter Anderson concedes he's just tired - tired of fighting.

This Australia Day weekend, the 63-year-old will draw the curtain on his family's six decades in suburban hardware by closing his Mitre 10-aligned Anderson's Hardware store in Belmont.

He is not so much retiring as retiring from hardware.

Increased utility costs, deregulated trading hours, "draconian" penalty rates and restricted access to big hardware brands have all contributed to Mr Anderson's growing frustration as a small business owner.

Ultimately, however, the Belmont Avenue store opened nearly 50 years ago by his champion footballing father, Duggan, has become yet another casualty of big box retailing and changing consumer preferences.

In its heyday, the 600sqm store would attract 250 customers on a Saturday morning.

The numbers have been falling for some time but trade has been slower since Bunnings moved into the suburb eight years ago, relocating to a bigger site on Abernethy Road six years later.

Mr Anderson is adamant that despite Bunnings' marketing boasts, his and other suburban hardware stores compete on price and deliver better service. And while their product range isn't as big, it is filtered to give customers what they need.

The message, however, isn't being heard.

"I've been getting closer to the tipping point, and then in the last six months I've just had it," Mr Anderson says.

"I'm just tired of fighting."

He cites a recent encounter as an example of the customer mindset.

"This guy parked at the front door, bought some fertiliser and bits and pieces, and I solved his problems and worked out what he could do to make it cheaper," he says.

The bill came to $28, so low it surprised the customer.

"He said he'd just driven around Bunnings for a quarter of an hour but couldn't find a parking bay, so he'd had to come over and use us. Now, what do you say when someone says that?

"I said, 'you know the worst part, I gave you terrific service, you've got great pricing and convenience, and I've put the purchases in your car. But the next time you want hardware, you know what you're going to do? Go straight back to Bunnings'."

The store was the second established by Duggan Anderson, the Swan Districts and State footballer inducted into the WA Football Hall of Fame in 2011.

Building the family home in Belmont's Kalgoorlie Street in 1952, Duggan was struck by the lack of building supply com- panies between Midland and Perth.

Two years later, he opened a hardware shop in Epsom Avenue. In 1968, more land was bought in Belmont Avenue for his second store.

In the interim, Duggan had banded together with other independently owned operators to establish Australia's first hardware buying co-operative.

From beginnings in a garage, the venture grew from five to 150 stores with a purpose-built warehouse in Kewdale by the time it was sold to Mitre 10 in 1984.

Peter Anderson, who has worked full-time at Belmont Avenue since 1976, says the store is now reliant on pensioners who appreciate old-style service, but don't spend much.

And the lack of trade custom has also weighed on the business, particularly as Belmont's demographics have changed.

"Our (original) customers had quarter-acre blocks, but they move to a nursing home, their house gets demolished and five units go up on the site, fully gardened, fully reticulated, fully painted, fully everything," he says. "We don't get a look in."

It has also become increasingly difficult to source products, with Bunnings and Woolworths' Masters chain locking up popular brands via exclusive distribution deals such as that negotiated by the latter for Hills Hoists clothes lines just four weeks ago.

"I can't buy Hills, I can't buy British Paints, I can't buy Ryobi," Mr Anderson says. "We have a free trade agreement with China, but I can't source stock."

And penalty rates means he can't afford to keep his doors open to match the longer trading hours of his heavyweight rivals.

"Add internet sales to the mix with many products GST-free, and the writing is on the wall."

Mr Anderson, who is seeking to sell his remaining stock by a clearance sale but is lumbered with nearly $20,000 of fixtures and fittings, insists he is not bitter about the closure.

But he questions the viability of the traditional local store in the face of growing competition from the big chains.

And he believes a younger generation perhaps doesn't know what it has missed.

"If we have failed, it is in large part because the younger generation have not experienced service in the true sense of the word," he says.

I've been getting closer to the tipping point, and then in the last six months I've just had it. " Peter Anderson

Anidav posted:

Happy New Year Goons, kill all boomers!

starkebn posted:

So many reports and articles about "We could be getting sooo much more tax if we did this thing and this thing" and yet it never happens.

Go politics 2015! Mo money, mo bitches!

Anidav posted:

Happy New Year Goons, kill all boomers!

gay picnic defence posted:

A $500,000 donation to the LNP is a pretty small investment considering the amount of money a big corporation might save by successfully lobbying a beholden politician for favourable legislation. Also companies factor in the costs associated with breaking the law when devising business plans, for example a mining company a mate works for compared the costs of disposing of something legally versus just dumping it on Aboriginal land and paying the fine. I don't need to tell you which option was cheaper and eventually chosen

ewe2 posted:

IslamoNazi posted:

I know this is dreaming but it would be nice to see these sorts of people up on conspiracy charges. If you're conspiring to break the law like this it's a criminal enterprise and should be treated as such.

ewe2 posted:

"Guardian AU posted:

Welfare-to-work programs have failed to reduce unemployment, says report
ANU research shows proportion of Australian unemployed men aged between 25 and 54 has not changed in almost 15 years
Welfare-to-work programs promoted by successive governments have had no impact on unemployment as they fail to take into account the changing labour market, researchers have found.

The Australian National University (ANU) research, reported in the Australian on Friday, shows that the proportion of unemployed men aged between 25 and 54 has not changed in almost 15 years, staying at 9-10%.

Professor Peter McDonald from the ANU’s Crawford school of public policy told ABC radio blue-collar jobs were disappearing.

“Full-time jobs for men under age 20 are almost all blue collar, but they’re getting very, very scarce. If you don’t have the skills in this new economy, you’re in trouble,” McDonald said.

He said there was a “fundamental structural problem” for low-skilled workers in the labour market.

“I’m not suggesting that welfare-to-work programs are not a good idea ... but we need to be looking at the longer-term issue of intergenerational transfer of disadvantage ... kids who leave school, often their parents aren’t working,” McDonald said.

The chief executive of Jobs Australia, David Thompson, said the government needed to shift the focus from welfare-to-work programs to reskilling the jobless.

“We need to invest not just in training, but also in work experience for these people,” Thompson said.

He said service providers were now unable to use government money to put people in training unless it was for a specific job.

“The government’s got to get the economy firing so that there are jobs being created,” Thompson said. “We need to be looking at where opportunities will be for training and future employment opportunities.”

He said the idea that unemployed people were “bludgers” was “far, far from the truth” and that most jobless people were desperate to find work.

Maree O’Halloran, from the National Welfare Rights Network said the welfare-to-work program was “morally wrong [and] doesn’t solve the unemployment problem”.

“[The program] is intended to have a shaming effect,” O’Halloran said. “It’s designed to have stigma attached to being unemployed.”

She said there were five people looking for every job advertised, and the government should focus on job creation rather than welfare measures.

The Greens want welfare-to-work ditched.

“The new [social services] minister [Scott Morrison] should study the evidence and abandon this government’s cruel approach and instead focus on investments in better employment services, skills development, case management, education, training and other programs … [That] would deliver far better results than an ideological commitment to work for the dole,” the Greens senator Rachel Siewert said.

The work-for-the-dole scheme was introduced in 1998 when Tony Abbott was minister for employment services. Labor scaled back the scheme when it took power in 2007, but never abandoned it.

In this year’s budget, Abbott’s first as prime minister, the program was expanded to include jobseekers up to the age of 50.

The government also introduced the Restart program, which gives employers a $10,000 inducement for hiring jobseekers over the age of 50. Senate documents revealed by Fairfax Media show that since July only 510 employers have taken up the scheme, which was projected to help about 32,000 a year.

The employment minister, Eric Abetz, told Fairfax the government “expects that take-up will increase as employers become aware of the program”.

A spokeswoman for the minister said the government never expected 32,000 to sign up straight away, but rather that the budget had allotted enough money to facilitate that number of participants.

She said hundreds of people had found jobs as a result of the scheme.

A similar inducement program offered under the Labor government, which gave employers $1,000 a year for hiring senior jobseekers, attracted only 230 applicants in its two years of operation.

“The Restart program has delivered triple the number of jobs in a quarter of the time compared to [opposition leader Bill] Shorten’s failed attempts with his Jobs Bonus Scheme”, employment minister Eric Abetz said.

Labor said its programs focus on training and support for jobseekers. “Tony Abbott has no plans when it comes to creating jobs and getting people off welfare and into work,” shadow employment minister Julie Collins said.

hooman posted:

Welp, that comes as not at all a surprise.

ewe2 posted:

Anidav posted:

Happy New Year Goons, kill all boomers!

hooman posted:

Welp, that comes as not at all a surprise.

Murodese posted:

Can't say I enjoyed my time in QLD late 2014 either, for similar reasons

Jumpingmanjim posted:

It doesn't seem fair to me either and I am looking back to when I started work in 1955 after my -gap year - that lasted from the Friday school finished to 0800 the following Monday morning when I started work. They say that hunger is the best sauce so perhaps the government could supply that sauce in quantity to those too busy, or too lazy to work. The whole nine yards sinks in when one, a person over seventy who still works part time, pays taxes, and has to pay seven thousand dollars less eight hundred from the health fund rebate for a set of hearing aids needed because of industrial deafness, sees the bloke in front of him, an immigrant or whoever we allow in to the country, get a similar set for free courtesy of our taxpayer dollars. My goal in life as was the goal of my parents and grandparents is to have enough to get by without resorting to a pension, and I remember when my grandparents who refused to take a pension, got one at age seventy whether they liked it or not, bitching about the government wasting taxpayer pounds. These days it seems to be the aim of everyone to stick their hands out for everything courtesy of a dwindling band of taxpayers, and we are dwindling.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Your right Natalie, people should be payed what there worth, unskilled labour is that unskilled, baggage handlers at Qantas are unskilled and on about $110k, People that worked for Holden and Ford on assembly lines were on $100k plus, teacher and nurses and police that go to University have a base rate of about $70k and can go to about $84k if they stay clinical how is that fair??..if anything the Unions have destroyed manufacturing in Australia with ever increasing wages and increasing demands.

Now we have social services demanding more and more money for people on the dole, and a gently gently approach to people of the DSP.

Frankly I have had a gut full.

Cartoon posted:

Yeah gently caress those people on the DSP I don't know why we aren't kicking them right now! loving government bleeding heart lefty waste election now!

Doctor Spaceman posted:

I see you've been reading the Daily Telegraph again.

Konomex posted:

gently caress... can I really earn that much as a baggage handler?

gay picnic defence posted:

Probably, although I imagine there is more to getting the job than simply being an unskilled bogan. They'd be looking for someone of pretty good character, attention to detail and work ethic because of the potential of serious accidents whenever aircraft are involved. Technically its unskilled but it isn't something Bazza from Frankston can drop out of year 10 and jump straight into. Ditto with the Ford/Holden workers. A bad worker can gently caress up hundreds if not thousands of cars before anyone notices, with pretty serious consequences for customer safety and the reputation of the company so they aren't exactly just giving the first high school dropout to put their hand up a job.

Laserface posted:

Middle-upper management (which is mostly inhabited by boomers) is also mostly 'unskilled' in that literally anyone can be placed into one of those roles and figure it out.

Or at the very least, every middle manager I have ever met has had less skills in the field than anyone else that worked under them, but got paid more.

TheBlackVegetable posted:

I.e., they're paid what they're worth, but only because unions fought for it.

Kegslayer posted:

Wouldn't you want them comfortable and well paid so they're less susceptible to bribery?

Jumpingmanjim posted:

teacher and nurses and police that go to University have a base rate of about $70k and can go to about $84k if they stay clinical how is that fair??..

Frankly I have had a gut full.

quote:

A WA schoolteacher has successfully sued his ex-wife after she lied about him in posts on Facebook.

In a state first, the Bunbury woman was ordered to pay her estranged husband $12,500 after the District Court found she defamed him on the popular social media platform.

In his decision published in December, Judge Michael Bowden said social media defamation had the ability to spread far and wide with the “simple manipulation of computers”.

The offending comments were posted on the mum-of-two’s profile page in December 2012.

“Separated from (husband) after 18 years of suffering domestic violence and abuse. Now fighting the system to keep my children safe,” the post read.

The man’s brother saw the post, took a screenshots and emailed them to him. It was removed in early February 2013.

During the civil trial last year, Judge Bowden was told by several witnesses that when they saw the post, it initially caused them to question the man’s character.

The woman denied writing the post and said it was doctored. She argued she did not know how to use Facebook properly and had it set up for her by another person.

She also defended the post by arguing she had been victim of physical and verbal abuse throughout her marriage to the 54-year-old private school teacher.

Judge Bowden was told the couple were in the middle of a bitter break up involving the Family Court and Department of Child Protection.

He found both spouses had framed evidence to suit themselves during the trial.

However, he said the woman failed to properly prove the domestic violence apart from one incident in 2010.

He also could not accept her explanation for how the Facebook post was created.

“She is simply reconstructing a version of events to try and deny publishing the disputed post which she admitted in written submissions forwarded to the court was seen by her on her Facebook site and which she removed after receiving the concerns notice,” he said.

Judge Bowden said the man had been defamed and deserved compensation.

“Defamatory publications on social media spread easily by the simple manipulation of computers,” he said.

“A public Facebook page is able to be viewed worldwide by whoever clicks on that page and the grapevine effect stemming from the use of this type of medium must be considered.”

In awarding damages of $12,500 Judge Bowden said he had “no doubt” the post had caused the man “personal distress, humiliation and hurt and harm to his reputation.”

“It did cause people to ‘look at him twice’ and be more reserved about their contact with him,” he said.

Interest at six per cent per annum from the date of the post was also ordered.

Lid posted:

This is new to WA but it sets a very interesting precedent in defamation law in Australia and reflects a change in the law given how quickly a claim can ruin anothers character through social media.

gay picnic defence posted:

The more worrying thing is if saying a product is crap could be a trigger to be sued by the manufacturer of said product.

quote:

QLD State election betting:
Coalition $1.28
Labor $3.50

Pred1ct posted:

What the hell is going on here? I thought pretty much all the polls have been negative since Newman gov. was elected.

Senor Tron posted:

Newman is looking doomed, but the QLD government has such a huge majority that it would take a massive uniform swing to ditch them.

Systematic posted:

I'm waiting for Newman to be parachuted into a safe seat, as he kicks the sitting back bencher under the bus on the way down.