OPINION
CAN WE DO BETTER IN STRIVING FOR FAIRNESS?
While business and success is important, so is how we build a community for the better.
T
DARREN PARK CEO UCB Stores
he last year has been a year like no other, and we aren’t talking about the circumstances of living through COVID. In this opinion piece, I want to share some thoughts that I’m increasingly hearing spoken about within our industry – it’s fairness. I was staggered to read that the number of billionaires on Forbes’ 35th annual list of the world’s wealthiest people exploded to a new high of 2,755, that’s 660 more than a year ago! If my maths is correct that is almost two new billionaires per day for 365 days. In Australia, Gina Rinehart has an estimated wealth of $31 billion and Andrew Forrest has wealth estimated at $27 billion. This is not a piece on wealth envy, far from it. The good thing about our industry in general is that hard work, done well over time can be well rewarded. High incomes can be the reward for innovation or risk taking, which contributes to making our communities better off. For many convenience retailers, we know way too much about risk! Fairness is about more than just economics or who gets paid what. For me, inequality is a problem when it offers opportunity for some (whether through wealth or some government position for example) to have undue power and influence over others. For example, is it fair that the Queensland Chief Medical Officer can place at risk our COVID recovery, by talking down one COVID vaccine over another? Shouldn’t that be a doctor/patient discussion? There seems to be so
54 August/September 2021 | C&I | www.c-store.com.au
many different opinions from media commentators and political leaders which is very confusing to the general public. For politicians, it seems to be more about blaming each other than looking for a way out of this, whether it is the states blaming the Federal Government or the states blaming each other. What happened to us all being in this together? We now have health officers scaring people to make a headline. Queensland's Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young, said during a press conference: “I don’t want an 18-yearold in Queensland dying from a clotting illness who, if they got COVID, probably wouldn’t die.” “We are not in a position that I need to ask young, fit, healthy people to put their health on the line (by) getting a vaccine that could potentially significantly harm them,” she added. (Source The Australia 1 July, Natasha Robinson). Anyone listening to Dr Young’s comments would be left with the impression that a young person taking the AstraZeneca vaccine was a risky proposition. So how did the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation – the group whose advice Dr Young is insistent young people follow – quantify the risk? These comments don’t help us out of the pandemic. It's scaremongering allowing government to hold onto the ultimate power of closing the borders. Looking at the above numbers, we have done a great job at minimising the cases with minimal deaths, but at