AN award-winning urban planning expert from the Australian National University has warned that Fremantle council’s latest move to combat illegal tobacco and vape sales from convenience stores could protect existing vendors from competition and push up prices.
The city, which currently rivals Tokyo in convenience stores per capita, amended its policy in February to require planning approval before stores could open. The latest change will now prevent any new convenience store 100 metres away from an existing one and from blocking windows or limiting visibility from the street.
ANU associate professor Noam Maitless raised concerns over the potential for existing convenience stores to become entrenched under the new policy, citing a parallel example.
“Australia’s pharmacy location rules restrict how close a new pharmacy can open next to an existing one, and both the Productivity Commission and the Harper Competition Policy Review reached similar conclusions on entrenchment; that the rules protected incumbents from competitive entry and kept prices elevated, with the benefit accruing to existing operators rather than the public,” Prof Maitless said.
“A 100-metre convenience store buffer risks the identical mechanism: it doesn’t discriminate between a poorly-run store and a well-run one, it simply forecloses any new entrant within the radius.
“The exclusion zone becomes a de facto property right for whoever happened to be trading first.”
Professor Maitless noted the presence of supermarkets in the city woujld help mitigate the effect, but not prevent it.
He also added that the policy appeared to be “more like health policy operating under a planning-law mechanism”.
The sheer number of convenience stores and their alleged illegal sales has been a contentious issue in council chambers, though as the latter issue falls out of the jurisdiction of local government, little can be done directly by the City.
A report prepared by the council’s city planning manager Chloe Johnston says that although the changes cannot stop the sale of illicit products, they allow the council to “monitor and limit the proliferation of convenience stores”.
This sentiment was echoed by councillor Jemima Williamson-Wong at the last Planning Services Committee, where the policy was passed unanimously.
“There [are] allegedly a lot of illegal tobacco sales that go on but that’s not something we can regulate … within the City of Fremantle; our role is really to put in the planning controls,” Cr Williamson-Wong said.
The council will have the discretion to approve convenience stores that fall within the distance restriction.
Professor Maitless said there were other alternatives to stem the proliferation of stores, such as a cap on the total number of stores allowed in particular zones, and adding a sunset or review clause to the distance restriction.
by ROSS SAPIENZA