From Townsville and Cairns bureaus
A new Woolworths grocery store will soon open in the Atherton Tablelands town of Mareeba leaving the recently-renovated independent IGA store in a precarious position, based on evidence from other towns across the nation where Woolies has moved in.
Local farmers supplying produce to IGA are expected to take a hit as Woolworths Fresh Food Market does not buy any goods locally, preferring to ship all its fruit and vegetables from farms and markets in southern Queensland, NSW or Victoria.
Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has long warned against the supermarket duopoly and first took aim at the predatory Coles and Woolies cartel many years ago for driving independent grocery shops and family corner stores out of business and monopolising farm produce and grocery prices.
The new store will be built on the long-vacant Rankin’s sawmill site which has frontage to the main street and is opposite the well-established Coles supermarket.
Bob Katter pleaded with shoppers not to support the cartel but to take into account local jobs and Tablelands farmers who are “screwed down on price” with Coles and Woolies supply contracts.
“I plead with every Australian to understand this. I know it’s easy to go to the bigger store, and when you think “food”, you think “Woolworths and Coles”. But it’s because you’ve been brainwashed; you see it on your TV over and over again: morning, noon and night,” Mr Katter said.
“People think more competition in the market is a good thing, but Woolworths and Coles don’t compete against each other and that’s one hell of a difference.”
Mr Katter said government needed to empower people against the corporate might of the supermarket oligopoly by legislating proposed laws the KAP has put to Parliament that make it illegal to hold more than 20 per cent market share, as well as a maximum 100% markup on the price of food.
“But don’t expect any mainstream MPs from the corporate-controlled major parties to be interested in concentration of market power where small businesses are being wiped out and the consumer pays five times as much.”
“The division I called last year on the Reducing Supermarket Dominance Bill 2024 saw the National Party abstain and the Liberal/Labor party oppose. So what does that tell you?!”
“It seems to me that you have a octopus like figure that wherever it sees a little freedom fish, it will grab it and squeeze the life out of it. And that is what is happening here. We are working hard on legislation that will force a maximum mark up on the price of food.”
Mareeba consumers should look hard at Woolies predatory business model which will see their ‘mystery shoppers’ visiting IGA and Coles two or three times a week taking photos of their specials and noting the prices of other goods.
Woolies then drops their prices below their opposition’s and can keep them down on common lines for months if necessary and continues the attack for however long it takes for the majority of shoppers to desert the independents and flock to the duopoly.
Then prices revert to their required level.
Independent grocers have long complained about the modus operandi of the cartel and have presented this evidence to Claytons government inquiries but the political duopoly will not rule against this massive market power.
IGA is about to close its supermarket at Kirwan in Townsville which had been in business for 20 years.
“The business is not a viable business to keep open. It is still early days after the announcement so we have not had much feedback but our regular customers are not happy,” Cornetts Supermarkets chief executive Graham Booysen said.
Woolworths and Coles have supermarkets close-by and the IGA store had been losing money for some time.
Staff have been offered positions in other stores.
Woolworths largest shareholder BlackRock controls over $12.5 trillion in assets under management (AUM) as of 2025, making it the world’s largest asset manager. This figure includes the firm’s management of private market assets and represents a record-high for the company.
Blackrock is a substantial shareholder in the Australian Woolworths Group (ASX: WOW), holding a 6.63% stake in the company as of July 31, 2025, representing approximately 80,972,196 shares worth around AU$2.2 billion. This positions Blackrock as one of the largest institutional investors in Woolworths, alongside other major firms like State Street Corporation and the Vanguard Group.
Why does Mareeba need such a monstrous financial oligarch to be controlling its food market?
Cairns News understands the shopping complex developers, Girgenti Group, has to submit final documentation regarding a $100,000 bank guarantee to allow Mareeba Shire Council to recommend freeholding of a 1100 sq metre block of land within the site and to comply with a condition that the foundations must be poured before October 27, 2026.
The current council does not oppose the project which was given original approval before the de-amalgamation of TRC and Mareeba shire councils in 2014.
Mareeba Mayor Angela Toppin and President of the Mareeba Fruit and Vegetable Growers Joe Moro have been contacted for comment.
Hey folks,
The concentration of corporate power into all these monopolies is the LEAST of your worries.
Doesn’t matter WHICH so-called supermarkets and retail outlets have established themselves in your local area once AnAL’s bum-friendly Trusted Digital ID is rammed up all of our hapless clueless collective ARSES, to be followed swiftly with a massive douche they like to call CBDCs, followed by a hot steaming enema known as the 15 Minute Cities, already baked into the “vision for our future development” supposedly spontaneously and independently conceived by every single BS corporate “local council” across the length and breadth of our entire country.
Because you DO know that all the relevant legislation has ALREADY been rudely THRUST into BS fake corporate “law” with neither our consultation nor consent, right?
And it’s all happening right across the entire world right now in LOCKSTEP, folks, so you know who’s pulling all the strings and calling all the shots…
[ https://www.bitchute.com/video/fvrccAbuq-0 ]
Hint – it ain’t Santa, but they work for someone with a very similar name.
Yep JB2, the tomatoes from Woolworths, Coles, Aldi etc are a disgrace in taste apart from them going rotten before you can eat them.
IMO refrigeration is not the problem, I owned a takeaway back 30 years ago, and they were always refrigerated. Nope, the mongrels are GMO’ing them!!!!
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unfortunately I have seen similar on Qld’sSSC hinterland.. only local shops until Woolworth’s opened…. and many small shops struggles and many closed..BUT IT IS NOT WW’s fault… guess who went for the cheaper prices and all u./ one roof????Sounds similar to a hardware ‘supermarket;’ most people also visit!!!
Who owns Australia’s Woolworths and what is driving its offensive against workers?
Like its duopoly partner, the Coles Group, Woolworths is substantially controlled by the world’s three largest US-based investment funds, BlackRock (6.43 percent of Woolworths shares), State Street Corporation (5.06 percent) and the Vanguard Group (5 percent).
These huge outfits, referred to as the “Big Three,” control over $US24 trillion in global assets between them, more than many governments. They scour the world for the highest returns on investment and can thus hold sway over large companies, governments and entire economies. Their priorities, which include privatising infrastructure, dominate the global financial markets.
h ttps://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/11/27/llzm-n27.html
BlackRock and Vanguard are taking over centralized food…
BlackRock and Vanguard are top shareholders in this company as well. BlackRock currently boasts more than $20 trillion in investments, all of which follow the ESG and “socially responsible” guidelines required by its CEO Larry Fink.
h ttps://www.naturalnews.com/2022-05-01-blackrock-vanguard-controlling-america-centralized-food-production.html
Why loyalty cards are Woolworths’ secret… – SmartCompany
“Coles and Woolworths on the other hand have strategy of maximising their share of what consumers spend. Not just on groceries – on everything. They offer financial products, petrol, liquor, health and beauty products.
h ttps://www.smartcompany.com.au/people-human-resources/why-loyalty-cards-are-woolworths-secret-weapon-in-supermarket-wars/
Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street are the 3 largest companies in the world – They own everything from pharma to media and have governments in their pocket. Oh they also sit on the board of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
https://www.civilianintelligencenetwork.ca/2022/03/15/wef-is-blackrock/
For almost two decades I have been building up the quality of the soil on my property. I don’t need herbicides or pesticides as the plants themselves take care of themselves. – It is the soil that feeds you, not the plants.
Besides my ‘food forest’, I have multiple raised gardens with different vegetables and a 50 sq meter greenhouse. That greenhouse provides lovely lettuce, tomatoes and other vegetables all through the winter.
Everybody agrees, the vegetables, like tomatoes, are far superior in taste than anything you get at Coles or Woolies. That’s because the vegetables are chock full of trace nutrients that are absent from the cheap crap you get out of the big commercial stores.
Find an organic farmer that is concentrating on building their soil and you will instantly recognize the difference – AND it is far better for your health!
As a resident of Mareeba this retail outlet is not required. Seems quite illogical that woollies would persist with this venture when directly across the road (Byrne’s St) is a long established Coles ( i dont shop there much). And a long established IGA . Mareeba has a cosy number of small independent food retailers who provide a lot of very good quality locally produced food.
Who really benefits from this apart from the landlord & local government area harvesting land rates.
Slim Dusty – Your country’s been sold.
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT2FFc-_R0g&list=RDMM&index=12
It doesn’t make sense to buy fruit and veg from Woolworths, it is left in the coolroom until it gets to the front of the queue then it is put in the shop where it is only a week from going rotten. Try growing your own tomatoes and you’ll see they are still good after a month or more in the cupboard, while the Woolworths ones have turned into a puddle with a lump of black mold in that time.
Woolworths leads the way in “convenience” packets of cooked up super-food which is overpriced biscuits and the like, none of it is worth even looking at. Their bread has so many ingredients it’s not worth looking at.
Worst of all is their GMO fruit lines, with hideous distended things which started out as grapes and now have a thin membrane instead of a skin, no flavour apart from fructose and no seeds. No skin no seeds = no vitamins. You are expected to go and buy grape seed oil and multivitamins to make up the difference. They are trying to make everything seedless so you get no nutrition and just get fat instead.
Occasionally I go into the Woolworths or Coles usually for some cleaning product or similar, I don’t even stop to look at the above-mentioned.
There are various traditional markets and farmers’ markets around the place and that’s where I gravitate. Why should BlackRock management in NY city get inbetween Australian farmers and the household consumer. Their brokerage service is useless. It just doesn’t make sense on any level.
As Coles and Woolworths slowly poison their customers and make them fat and sick, they will become customers for health insurance and the village quack, and get sicker and sicker until they die, this is the business model, similar to Covid injection.
Re Coles’ / Woolworth’s size of business – if I understand correctly, under US law such big corporations would have to divide into smaller organisations therefore limiting their unfair dominance in purchasing power and giving smaller, family oriented ones a greater chance of survival.
Woolies in Atherton is an uninspiring supermarket. I can’t imagine how I’d be tempted to try the Mareeba version. We took a look at the new Woolies in Cairns Central a few years back now. Boring. I will stick with my current preferences. And who would go past Atherton’s IGA – it has won Best IGA in the WORLD ! several times, including recently. Last wet, local Woolies ‘fresh’ food shelves were practically clear while IGA’s were mountains of really fresh – just like always. (When MP Shane put a photo of it in the paper, they got raided by hungry coastal shoppers.)
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