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Radio Interview
Kleenex supermarket action, Townsville QLD, July 1997.


4TO Morning program.
Friday ??? July 1997.

PRESENTER: Bernie Brookes joins me who is the State Manager for Woolworths. Bernie I do appreciate it but the reason we are having you on the program this morning is not one of the better stories of the week, perhaps you can tell me exactly what happened, I understand some protestors, presumed to be from the Students and sustainability conference being held currently here at the James cook university, invaded would be the best was of doing it, your store at Stockland last night.

BERNIE BROOKES: Yes is was unfortunately a very irresponsible and unnecessary action which resulted in 80 to 100 protestors entering the store taking a range of  products off the shelf, putting them in trolleys, and really making an absolutely menace of themselves.

PRESENTER: They had no intention of obviously buying the products?

BERNIE BROOKES: No, that was part of their so-called protest on the basis of providing an inconvenience to our staff and our customers and I think one of the unfortunate fall outs of this is that they grossly underestimate the stress and threatening aspect of their protest where our staff  and particularly young customers can be most concerned and distress by this kind of thing happening I mean, you see vision on television  of parliament house protests Pauline Hanson violent protests, fortunately people can be quite scared and threatened by even the smallest protest that takes place at our stores.

PRESENTER: Now, they were making the point about the a particular product or company?

BERNIE BROOKES: Yeah they were arr... advocating not to purchase products that were made by a company that supplies a range of toilet tissues to /for us.  We sell an enormous range of recycled products and non-recycled products and provide the customers to offer to purchase as they want. But they (protestors) seem to take it upon themselves to pinpoint one or two brands or products that weren’t recycled that they were trying to persuade people not to buy but unfortunately any message that they had were lost in the unnecessary and irresponsible actions that they took.

PRESENTER: Now what …err did you as the store or what did the store do and …err were they, can I say it …err curtailed in some sense when obviously causing disruption to the,... to the rest of the people going about their normal Thursday night shopping?.

BERNIE BROOKES: Yes we had our own security staff fortunately assist us and the store management were required to come back in some of which were already on their way home or at home.  To make sure we had security precautions fortunately the Townsville police were most supportive we asked their support in removing some of the people that ..err were menacing our shoppers and we had them moved or asked to leave the store and fortunately the police were on hand very quickly and provided exceptionally support as they always do in Townville for us .  That helped but I think the whole episode was an inconvenience and unnecessary for customers and staff and I’m sure the police would rather use their time rather than having to remove protestors from a supermarket.

PRESENTER: Did They deface the product or the shelves or anything?

BERNIE BROOKES: No, there was no damage to product except the inconvenience of having to employ staff that evening to come and put all the product back on the shelf. And added to that of course the lost sales from customers that just err couldn’t  get down aisles or couldn’t walk through the section or more importantly couldn’t buy products on show and I think those sort of inconveniences are a commercial loss although it’s small it’s still significant but it’s a damn inconvenience for our customers and are threatening to a lot of the people who shop with us.

PRESENTER: Are you considering laying charges?

BERNIE BROOKES: We certainly will be taking the strongest possible action that we can which means at this stage making sure we have extra precautions in place and making our wishes known to the James cook university students and sustainability conference you know we really question that fact that we all pay adequate taxes to help university funding and you really question whether the government’s move to remove subsidies on …err university are in fact quite apt when you look at the responsibility that they’ve taken over the past couple of days.

PRESENTER: Do you think that as the reseller you are probably the victim of all of this?

BERNIE BROOKES: Yes, there’s a very good old saying “don’t shoot the messenger” and in some cases we only respond to what our customers purchase and from our point of view if customers want to buy products we’ll sell them at the end of the day.
Arrhh… we can’t be an arbiters as to what we should and shouldn’t sell we’ll sell products that we are legally able to sell whether they are recycled or not if the customers don’t buy them we’ll stop selling them so unfortunately we’re the middle person in all this and we bore the brunt on it last night.

PRESENTER: Has this happened before in any of your stores in Queensland?

BERNIE BROOKES: No there I’m unaware of any other protests we’ve had of this nature and in fact I certainly hope and pray that it’s not …arrr a further things to come it’s not the way to get a message.  I think any empathy towards any environmental issues that they were trying to raise was really lost in the way they delivered the message.

PRESENTER: Bernie Brookes State manager for Woolworths thanks for your time.

BERNIE BROOKES: Thankyou.

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PRESENTER: It’s nine past 10.
 
PRESENTER: I’m join by Simon Birrell from the Otway Ranges Environment Group and I gather Simon that you and your cohorts were responsible for last night’s fracas at the Woolworths supermarket?

SIMON BIRRELL:  Hello?

PRESENTER: Hello.

SIMON BIRRELL: G’day

PRESENTER: G’day.  Were you responsible at last nights little incident at Woolworths supermarket?

SIMON BIRRELL: Arrh I wasn’t responsible, a lot of people were there protesting against about Kleenex and the company Kimberley Clark and their use of native forest

PRESENTER: Yeah but were you there?

SIMON BIRRELL: Yes.  I was there.

PRESENTER: And what about 80 odd protestors?

SIMON BIRRELL: Oh there wasn’t that many, there was about 50.

PRESENTER: Do you think that was a fairly …ahh sensible and rational thing to do?

SIMON BIRRELL: Under the circumstances yes.

PRESENTER: Why?

SIMON BIRRELL: Because these companies that are destroying native forest have to be made accountable to umm… what’s in their products

PRESENTER: Look that’s fine but surely weren’t you shooting the messenger, Woolworths were just selling the product?

SIMON BIRRELL: But umm..  the product has a lot of misleading advertising about the nature of what’s in it.

PRESENTER: But does that give you the right to go into a supermarket on a key shopping night in this city when you basically visiting the city and I assume you don’t live here because you said you were from Otways in Victoria and then disrupt people shopping patterns?

SIMON BIRRELL: we weren’t disrupting people’s ---

PRESENTER: Oh that’s not what I heard and that’s what err Woolworths have said?

SIMON BIRRELL: But we did not go anywhere near the aisles.

PRESENTER: But didn’t you take the product from the shelves and put it in the supermarket trolleys and so forth?

SIMON BIRRELL: Yeah we took it off the shelves because we wanted people to know that we though the product was un-environmentally friendly.

PRESENTER: And as such caused some consternation from the staff,  I understand the manager had to come in the security people came in did they not?

SIMON BIRRELL: Yeah they came in and they asked us to leave and we left.

…… Part of interview missing from tape ….

PRESENTER: … it’s making the point and do you think that’s a responsible way of handling the protest?

SIMON BIRRELL: Ah yes because if we had have wanted to disrupt the customers we could have easily disrupted the customers but that wasn’t what we were for.

PRESENTER: But if you were so concerned about the message coming from Kimberley Clark would you not have taken a protest to the parent company, and not through a-- ????

SIMON BIRRELL: Yes we have, we have done many protests and we’ve asked them many many times to stop-

PRESENTER: And what has been their  reaction?  They’ve just gone about their business?

SIMON BIRRELL: They’ve just maintained that clearfell logging is an acceptable process and doesn’t have any environmental effects.

PRESENTER: Can I put it to you that your actions last night, probably for all intents and purposes couldn’t be seen as law abiding, for want of a better word given the comment that one of the local politicians says that guerrilla training was at your conference on the weekend and now you say there was some activeness on your part?

SIMON BIRRELL: Arrh… we’re not guerrillas in the sense that we did not damage any products and we didn’t hurt anyone.  It was a peaceful non –violent direction action.

PRESENTER: Well talking to the boss of Woolworths this morning they’re contemplating taking action against you?

SIMON BIRRELL: Well that’s for him to do and …umm as far as we’re concerned we didn’t break the law we didn’t damage any of his products and when we were asked to leave the building, we left the building. 

PRESENTER: But you didn’t put shoppers at risk?

SIMON BIRRELL: No not at all.

PRESENTER: And you didn’t …… ????

SIMON BIRRELL: In fact we made a point in trying to explain to customers who were concerned or interested to know why we were there and we talked to them about Kleenex and the detrimental effects

PRESENTER: And what was the shoppers reaction did they ?????–

SIMON BIRRELL: There was a lot of interest and a lot of them were quite enlightened to know exactly what was inside a packet of Kleenex.

PRESENTER: But you effectively for all intents an purposes may have discriminated because the people in the supermarket couldn’t purchase any Kleenex products.  Is that right?

SIMON BIRRELL: We weren’t like stealing the products and taking them away and the products would be back on the shelf,  and if people still want to still buy that product after they know that there’s clearfell logging to make that product then that’s their choice.

PRESENTER: So if that’s what occurred last night, what can we expect at tomorrow’s protest at Cardwell?

SIMON BIRRELL: Umm I don’t know the details about that so I can’t comment.

PRESENTER: But it won’t get out of hand will it?

SIMON BIRRELL: It’ll be a peaceful non-violent direct action as all protests organised by the environmental movement in Victoria arhhh Australia sorry

PRESENTER: Under our laws that’s fine you’ve got a democratic right to do and protest but surely I think that last night you may have taken it to the extreme?

SIMON BIRRELL: Well that’s . .. .

PRESENTER: For the shear inconvenience if nothing else.?

SIMON BIRRELL: Well it’s quite inconvenient for all the native animals in the Otways Sate forest to have their homes clearfell logged and for species to be destroyed for cool temperate to be subjected to die-back diseases such as myrtle wilt and other many other types of environmental problems.

PRESENTER: Well Simon I just can’t believe that given the publicity of the Students and Sustainability conference this week that and I think that you were harshly treated that emanated from the local politicians here but after last night’s performance maybe they were justified.?

SIMON BIRRELL: Well, I think that’s quite unfair considering that during the protest there were not confrontational …
 
SIMON BIRRELL: There was a point to ….

PRESENTER: We’re going to run out of mobile soon.  Simon thanks for having you on the program I do appreciate your time.  I think we’ll just have to wait and see what the management of Woolworths do

SIMON BIRRELL: Ok Thank you.

PRESENTER: Thankyou.  There we had Simon Birrell from the Otway Ranges Environmental Group and last night’s protest where they removed all the Kleenex product from the shelves at Woolworths in Stockland.

 

 

 

 

 
   
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