The bigger picture

The political question of how a society organises consumption is one of the central political questions of any modern economy. The political conditions under which goods reach consumers, who profits from the reaching, who works to make it possible, and what political meanings attach to the goods themselves, have been politically contested across the modern era.

The American anthropologist Anna Tsing documented in detail how the political conditions of global supply chains, what she called the political economy of friction, shape what is on shop shelves and at what price. The political argument was that the chains connecting raw material extraction in one place to retail consumption in another are political achievements, with political consequences for workers, environments, and political relationships across continents. Australian retail sits inside that analysis whether anyone names it.

The American sociologist Viviana Zelizer has documented how money, consumption, and intimate relationships are politically intertwined in ways that economic theory tends to obscure. The political conditions of household consumption, of who decides what gets bought, of what consumption means as a social and political act, are political artefacts of long histories of household politics, gendered economic power, and the political relationship between consumption and identity, with operational consequences that reach contemporary retailers.

The colonial transfer

Retail in colonial Australia inherited British political settlements about commerce, shopkeeping, and consumer politics. The British distinction between trade and the gentry, the political conditions of small shopkeeping, the political assumption that retail was a respectable but middle-rank occupation, and the political relationship between shops and the communities they served, were all transmitted into Australia.

What that political vision excluded is part of the history. First Nations people had their own political traditions of trade and exchange, developed over millennia, that did not fit colonial commercial categories. The political project of dispossessing First Nations people of Country also dispossessed them of the political conditions of trade that Country had supported.

Migrant retailers reshaped Australian retail in successive waves. Chinese, Italian, Greek, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Indian, and African migrants opened shops, restaurants, and small businesses across Australian cities and regional towns. The political conditions under which they entered retail, including limited capital, family-business models, language-cluster client bases, and political marginality, all shaped what Australian retail became.

The department store and mass retail settlement

The department store, developed in late nineteenth-century Paris, London, and New York, transmitted into Australia through Myer, David Jones, Grace Bros, Anthony Hordern, and others. The political achievement of organising retail at scale, of producing what later critics called the dream-house of the collective, reshaped Australian consumer politics.

The post-war political settlement extended retail at scale. The supermarket, transmitted from the United States, reshaped Australian food retail. The chain store, the franchise, and the shopping centre all developed in this period, often with American political settlements about consumption, advertising, and consumer credit transmitted through trade flows.

The political conditions of retail labour reflected these settlements. The retail workforce, increasingly feminised through the second half of the twentieth century, absorbed political conditions that have shaped the industry ever since. The political project of casualising retail labour, accelerating from the 1980s, produced the contemporary workforce conditions that operators and workers absorb continuously.

The neoliberal turn and globalisation

From the 1980s, a different political settlement began to assert itself. The political idea that retail should be increasingly globalised, that supply chains should run through low-cost manufacturing in East and South Asia, and that domestic protection should give way to free trade, was developed in policy think tanks and rolled out through successive reforms.

The political consequences for Australian retail were significant. Local manufacturing of clothing, footwear, household goods, and many other categories declined sharply. The political conditions of women workers in source-country manufacturing, often documented as exploitative, became part of the political conversation about Australian consumer responsibility.

The political project of free trade reached the workforce as well as the supply chain. Award restructuring, the rise of large retail chains, the political conditions of the casualised retail workforce, and the political settlement on weekend pay, all reflected the broader political shift.

The platform turn and e-commerce

The political settlement that produced the post-war Australian retail landscape has been reshaped again by the rise of digital platforms. Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and other e-commerce platforms operating under political conditions developed in the United States have reshaped what retail in Australia is and how it works.

The political conditions of the platform turn carry political consequences for small operators. The platforms make political decisions about visibility, fees, return policies, and consumer protection that reach Australian retailers as conditions of operating. The political question of platform regulation, particularly in relation to small business, market power, and consumer protection, is unresolved in Australia and globally.

The present moment

Cost-of-living pressure on the customer base, supply chain ethics politics, and migrant worker conditions are reshaping retail now.

Cost-of-living pressure arrives through declining transaction volume and pressure on margins. Customers reduce frequency, downgrade purchases, and shift to lower-priced channels. Retailers absorb the political conditions of household budget pressure before any economic indicator catches up.

The political contest about supply chain ethics intensifies through documented conditions of workers in source countries, climate impact of global supply chains, and consumer expectations of transparency. The political conversation about ethical sourcing reaches retailers as a procurement question and as a reputational question at once. 

The political contest about migrant worker conditions in retail intensifies through federal regulation and reaches operators as legal as well as reputational risk. Labour-hire arrangements, visa-conditional work, and the political conditions of casualised migrant retail labour are politically contested.