When general store management fails, remote Indigenous communities pay the price

This is part three in a series. Read the full series here.

“What’s the time?” Kaltjiti’s Mai Wiru general store manager Rick Kowacz asked from his position on the floor next to a growing pile of full cereal boxes destined for the bin.

“Shit, it’s 10am, I’ve got to be at the airstrip now. Ride with me and we can talk,” he told Crikey and reporting partner Indigenous Community Television (ICTV).

From behind the wheel, a very stressed Kowacz began to unwind about the “disastrous” three weeks he’d had as an “emergency transplant” store manager for the remote Indigenous community of Kaltjiti, home to fewer than 300 people 514km or so south-west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Midway through a story about dust-covered goods, broken biscuits and a continuous battle with mice, he rolled into the “domestic terminal” to meet a plane carrying, among other things, the store’s weekly community cash tin. But the plane wasn’t there.

Kowacz had no communications with aircraft operators — an electrical storm the night before had knocked out power and phone service across the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. But shortly after arriving, a Regional Anangu Services Aboriginal Corporation (RASAC) airport manager drove up to inform Kowacz that, according to his latest intel (from yesterday), there was an hour delay. That said, he caveated, there was every chance the plane wouldn’t come at all.

“Where’s your sat phone? I need to make an urgent call,” Kowacz said to the RASAC manager. “I had to put a food order in yesterday and I haven’t been able to submit it. If I don’t, it’ll miss the deadline and miss the truck, and that means a week without groceries in the store.”

But the RASAC satellite phone was only programmed to connect to certain numbers. As Kowacz jumped back in the car and raced to the store — Crikey and ICTV in tow — he conceded the morning’s mayhem succinctly summed up his three weeks on the job (parachuted in out of retirement): “Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.”

Dennis Bate, CEO of Mai Wiru Regional Stores Council Aboriginal Corporation (the Aboriginal-controlled and -owned company that manages general stores in the APY Lands), said head office was very aware of what went on “out there” and insisted that tales of mishaps didn’t mean things weren’t working. He maintained sat phones were “easy to access through other service providers”, backs-up were in place and no food order was missed.

But Crikey/ICTV’s four-day, on-the-road-reporting trip through six Northern Territory and South Australian remote Indigenous communities and an equal number of general stores (both Mai Wiru and Commonwealth company Outback Stores) found things were not working. At odds with the company line, the lack of resources and emergency communications were putting stress on already stretched store managers, and that dysfunction was being absorbed by communities.

Back in the Kaltjiti store, Kowacz showed Crikey and ICTV security camera footage and photos of repeated break-ins and violent in-store outbursts. He said the process for dealing with any disruption — for example, someone throwing rocks across the cash register into a glass cabinet — was to immediately close the shop and just “wait it out”. Although fleeting, he said staff were “shitting themselves”, didn’t know what to do, and came away “traumatised”. In these situations, Kowacz said police were of little use because they knew it was “only a momentary raging incident” and therefore of low priority. The first and last time Kowacz called triple zero, the call-out took four days. 

“The thing is no-one in the community stands in between us and the perpetrators and says, ‘Look, it’s not the store’s fault, calm down.’ They just sit there and watch people get physically bashed and sworn at and abused.”

Ngaanyatjarrra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council CEO Liza Balmer — one of the partners who set-up Mai Wiru and is now independently involved in monitoring food availability, price and nutrition in its stores — told Crikey and ICTV that it was not uncommon for local Indigenous people (Anangu) to be both fearful of and emotional towards store managers (particularly those they didn’t know).

“People are hungry — that’s not a flippant comment — and without a functioning store and without food security, it leads to a whole lot of other damage and trauma in the community,” she said, adding that there was a huge amount of harm done from inserting culturally untrained staff into vulnerable communities.

Balmer was clear that store managers were neither expected nor qualified to play community salesperson, handyman, financial adviser, police officer and counseller: “They should be working in partnership with all the organisations that do have those responsibilities, but they don’t.”

From inside the Kaltjiti store office, Kowacz sighed impatiently as a local Anangu man and his family knocked on his door to ask why the EFTPOS was down and when it would be back up and running.

“See what I mean?” Kowacz said. “They don’t have patience. If you ask them to wait or you say, ‘I’ll be with you in five minutes,’ they won’t understand, they’ll just demand attention. They seem to think I should be able to do something.”

During his short stint as Kaltjiti store manager, Kowacz had forged few contacts and connections with local Anangu leaders. He said there’d been no introductions upon arrival because the previous store manager (usually charged with handing over the ropes) had upped and left after a week. The only resource he had was a double-sided laminated list of phone numbers on his desk, which he hadn’t bothered (or had time) to call.

“I hope that when people come into the store, they introduce themselves to me. That’s the way it generally works,” he said, insisting problems were rooted in the community’s unwillingness to “get behind the store” rather than training gaps or operational missteps from Mai Wiru company heads.

According to Mai Wiru’s 2022 financial report, its training budget was $0, axed from $176,079 the previous year. Staff training and development (listed as a separate expense) totalled $318 in 2022, down from $26,020 in 2021. Bate said community-appropriate training was done during induction and onboarding, but store managers were expected to come with “retail experience”, a good work ethic and a “desire to be in a remote location and serve our customers”.

By comparison, Outback Stores (privy to Commonwealth support) spent $317,540 on training in the 2022 financial year, on top of a government-subsidised $452,653. Cultural awareness was not included as part of “formal training”, but CEO Michael Borg told Crikey and ICTV that was set to be rolled out in “upcoming months”.

In terms of on-the-job, in-house support, Bate said Mai Wiru’s regional operations manager (his daughter) was available to assist (albeit being based in Townsville), as was the Alice Springs head office, which functioned as a remote sounding board and “buffer between the customers and the store manager to take the pressure off”. Bate estimated he received four to six phone calls a day on in-store issues: “At the end of the day, if you stand firm and you’re fair, then it isn’t really an issue, it’s just a painful process … no different to a kindergarten teacher with little kids asking the same question 100 times.”

Balmer told Crikey and ICTV that power plays from general stores were particularly problematic and only served to fuel greater instability in the community.

“These stores see themselves as the most important facility in the community and will often use that as a tool for community control,” she said. “It’s not always the best approach to shut the store because there’s fighting. That just makes more fighting.”

Although each Mai Wiru store has a local Anangu committee that’s (meant to be) consulted and contacted in case of trouble — be it disruption, break-ins or excessive humbug — the level of involvement is contingent on store managers’ willingness to engage. Crikey and ICTV found that appetite was low and strongly linked to a small (or non-existent) Indigenous workforce.

“It’s not Anangu in the front of the store,” Adamson said. “It’s outsiders. It might be Indians or Chinese working and no Anangu. And it’s a shame and a sad thing for us,” local Pukatja Indigenous leader (and member of the APY executive board) Trevor Adamson said, adding that it was so important for Anangu to see themselves stocking shelves and serving customers in store. Not only was there pride and power to be able to say, “This is my community and this is where I can work,” but store employment offered a solid foundation for young men and women to develop their skills and “learn how to step up to other jobs”.

Across Mai Wiru stores, there are no Indigenous store managers and few Indigenous employees. In Kaltjiti, there were none, with all staff either white or backpacker visa holders.

Comparatively, Outback Stores’ workforce is overwhelmingly Indigenous (88%), but Borg would not disclose the number of Indigenous staff in store management positions. According to the company’s 2022 annual report, there were 313 Indigenous employees nationwide (five full-time, 92 part-time and 216 casual) and 53 non-Indigenous employees (26 full-time, four part-time and 23 casual).

Balmer said that the lack of an Indigenous workforce — not just one or two but a “critical mass” — exacerbated power imbalances and perpetuated rifts between stores, store managers and community members: “You can’t just imagine that you’re going to have two Anangu staff members and that that will work. Of course it won’t. They will get humbugged and they will be considered unreliable.”