On Your Bike Woolworths CEO

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci has announced his retirement after a series of, how would you say, bad decisions I would suggest. First, his company openly supported the divisive Indigenous Voice Referendum. Regardless of the result of the referendum, he split his customer base right down the middle.

Second, he made the awful decision to do away with Australia Day by refusing to sell Australia Day merchandise, but yet pushed heavily the traditionally Asian celebration of Lunar New Year. Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping must be having a great old laugh.

And then without having seemed to learn anything from the Voice disaster, they started talking about flying Indigenous flags outside their stores, which they later denied, but it’s in their Reconciliation Action Plan p. 31. Take a look for yourself. “Display Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags outside stores, sites and support offices where practicable”. I mean, the only debate is what they mean by “where practicable”. Is it not practicable to hoist a flag outside a supermarket? I’d suggest they just changed their interpretation of their own policy after the massive Voice defeat, which they probably weren’t expecting when they drafted their Action Plan.

And finally, the disastrous interview that Mr Banducci gave to Four Corners on Monday regarding Woolworths pricing practices where he walked out, before being pulled back by his minders. Here’s what happened: “It is an incredibly competitive market. The risk people have is that… I’m sorry, the former head of the Competition Commission said says… His words are… Retired, by the way. I don’t think you would impugn his integrity and his understanding of competition law. I’m just saying the world has got much more competitive… He retired 18 months ago. He’s not… OK, let’s… We’ll… Can we take that out? Is that OK? I should… I mean, he is retired, but I shouldn’t have said that, Angus. Are we going to leave it in there? If we are… Well, I mean, if we’re on the record. You said it, I mean… You know, let’s move on, but… Yeah, no, I think I’m done, guys. I do this with intent. You know, I do this with good intent. You know, I don’t do this with bad intent. What, you’re walking out, really? No, no, no. Can we just talk through with Brad for a sec? Can we just have a minute? Let’s keep going.”

Even the ABC hosts were a bit shocked at the end there.

But the final nail in the coffin as reported by the ABC today, Woolworths announced a $781 million loss. Remember when Woolworths said they weren’t going to stock Australia Day merchandise because: “There has been a gradual decline in demand for Australia Day merchandise from our stores over recent years.” So he suggested they were going to save some money by not stocking Australia Day goods, but did he take into account that by pissing everyone off he’d lose millions? Save a few bucks not selling merchandise – lose millions! Smart choice.

Here’s this year’s Woolworths share market performance with a massive drop right at the end there. It’s not looking too good. This series of events surely has to be included in a business textbook at university under the chapter, “How to F**K up Your Business, by Brad Banducci”.

To be fair to Mr Banducci, the $781 million loss was mainly driven by one-off accounting write-downs and, excluding those, the company posted a 2.5% rise in underlying profits.

Amanda Bardwell is set to replace Brad Banducci as CEO in September with a reported base salary starting at $2.15 million. Hopefully she doesn’t f**k up the business anymore by pursuing divisive political and social issues and dictating which holidays people can and can’t celebrate. Anyway, Brad is on his bike, as I kind of expected. Attack Australia, attack Australia’s values. What do you think was going to happen?

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn