Should we kick Coles executives in the gooch?

I think yes.

It is time, I think we can all agree, that the Coles and Woolworths executives were rounded up, brought into some kind of public arena, and then dealt a sturdy kick in the gooch.

In all honesty, I didn’t want it to come to this.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll enjoy the show. But I was hoping that market forces would prevail. That the outward hostility of the shopping experience would push people away from the most evil duopoly since those creepy twins in The Shining.

But that’s not the case. So let’s go medieval-style with some public shaming. Say what you will about the ethics of using humiliation as a form of punishment, you can’t deny its efficacy. Probably. I’m no historian, but I am a woman who likes to see sturdy boots in deserving raisins.

And surely there are none more deserving than the slugs running the major supermarkets?

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, my loathing of Colesworth won’t be new information. Personally, I’d like to see both brands sent to the depths of hell, where they’ll be barbecued like $12 chooks. I hate the self-service machines. I hate their unfounded accusations of theft. I hate being recorded and tracked like a criminal.

I’m not the only one. Upsettingly, I think the increasing rate of retail worker abuse is testament to that.

Of course any from of staff harassment is unacceptable. But I believe it’s also a sign that the shopping experience has become so unpleasant it’s pushing normal people over the edge.

In fact, it’s gotten so bad that last year Victoria introduced retail legislation “that brings serious consequences to those who do harm and assault retail workers.” New South Wales and Western Australia already put similar laws in place a couple of years prior.

While I agree with the principle, I would like to see much tighter legislation for enormous, unavoidable corporations that impinge on the everyday dignity of Australians. Corporations that inflate food prices, replace workers with machines, make shopping an ordeal, and then post billion-dollar profits.

Specifically, I would like to see legislation that says every time Coles or Woolworths do something unconscionable, it’s one boot in the gooch for every person involved.

You’d better start tightening your shoelaces. There are at least two bootable offences I have become aware of this week.

The most alarming story comes from the Coles camp. For a couple of years now, they’ve been using the cartoonishly evil company Palantir Technologies in their stores. These guys are in the business of surveillance. Essentially, they pull data from thousands of sources — government entities, social media, mobile phone networks and the like — to make sophisticated, traceable profiles of civilians. Recently, they won a $30m contract to work with America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, otherwise known as ICE.

To the credit of Coles, this extremely troubling partnership hasn’t been hidden from the public. It was announced in 2024 and given somewhat cursory coverage by the press. The story is only gaining traction now because GetUp! has decided to run a campaign against Palantir being used in Australian shops.

This reminds me, in a manner, of the dystopian movie Soylent Green. The twist in that film was that the food everyone was eating was made from humans. “Soylent Green is people!” the protagonist Detective Robert Thorn famously shouted in the final scenes.

It’s an absurd premise. If a company wanted to sell Soylent Green today, its ingredients would be listed right there in the press release. There’d be some mild outrage, probably. Maybe a couple of half-arsed think pieces penned on the ethics of eating humans. But soon enough everyone would just move on.

If you see anything enough — preposterous corporate evil included — it eventually becomes passé.

And let’s be clear. These guys are evil. Their name is a riff on evil. If Palantir sounds familiar, it’s likely because you’ve read The Lord of the Rings. Sauron, the bad guy, used an ancient, corrupted “seeing-stone” to view distant events. They were called palantíri.

You might want to take a generous view of this name choice. That an all-seeing orb is a reasonable name for a surveillance company. That the stones themselves weren’t evil, they just fell into the hands of evil. Or that it was a funny coincidence, because obviously no one would want to align themselves with the very unlikeable Sauron.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Peter Thiel — the man who co-founded PayPal and Palantir — hasn’t precisely expressed ideological alignment with the orc-tycoon, but he’s come close. In a 2011 interview Thiel spoke of his admiration for The Last Ringbearer — a Russian book written in the late ’90s that reimagines Tolkien’s universe.

In that novel, “Gandalf’s the crazy person who wants to start a war,” Thiel explained. “And Mordor is this technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it’s all sort of mystical and environmental and nothing works… it’s really clever.”

Of course a tech bro would enjoy that edgelord contrarian spin on a literary anti-war masterpiece.

Military-grade surveillance technology recording your face and movements while you shop for bog rolls is deeply troubling. But what makes it particularly upsetting is that we aren’t told precisely what they’re doing with this collected data. Are there computers with images of my face and my shopping habits saved on them? Is that information staying in Australia? Being moved offshore? How can I find out?

“Haha, fuck you,” is the answer.

Perhaps you find this situation so enraging that you’re now motivated to shop at the only other viable alternative in town, Woolworths.

Well, get ready for this shitfuckery to greet you at the door:

So now your shopping trip begins with a hazing ritual straight out of the Masonic playbook.

Copping a paddling to my thighs and hips is annoying. But it’s a whole lot worse if you’re very short or, say, in a wheelchair. But Woolworths isn’t in the business of giving a shit about these things, so it’s the turkey-slap gauntlet for them.

We now have two options. Either we accept this escalating behaviour until we’re being cavity searched and chemically deloused before entering stores, or we demand change.

We press for the government to tighten our privacy laws, break up duopolies or — my personal pick — put in place laws that mean guilty executives will get kicked in the gooch.

That, I think, would mean a better world for all.