Shopping Centres

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:24): Thank you for the opportunity to contribute a grievance today. Today, I want to talk about shopping centres. The very first shopping centre I remember when I was young in New South Wales is Roselands, which opened in October 1965, shortly before my mother passed away. I remember lining up in the streets around the shopping centre for hours with my family trying to get in to see this new concept of shopping in Australia and how amazed we were to see so many shops around a department store and the array of goods that could be purchased there.

Here in South Australia, I want to make some references following a story in Boomer by Jill Pengilly, and I want to pay particular tribute to her and all the work she does in this really amazing column that so many people in my electorate love and read every week. Kmart rose out of GJ Coles in Australia and an American company called SS Kresge. They first opened in Australia in Burwood East in Victoria in April 1969. I remember living off Anzac Highway near Kurralta Park when the Kmart opened there and the same sort of excitement as the days that were there at Roselands in New South Wales. But I particularly want to mention today one of the parts of my new electorate of Florey, which is Ingle Farm and the Kmart in Ingle Farm. I want to read directly from Jill's column:

ATTENTION shoppers, South Australia's first Kmart store opened 50 years ago next month. Premier Steele Hall cut a gold ribbon to open the discount department store at Ingle Farm on October 29, 1969.

Several thousand shoppers poured through the doors once the speeches were over and The Advertiser reported that roads around Ingle Farm had been jammed with traffic.

Spread over 9000sq m, the first South Australian Kmart offered 40,000 different items, across 50 departments. The selection ranged from groceries to clothing, shotguns and prams.

Fortunately, I do not think we sell guns there anymore. The article continues:

The Ingle Farm Kmart, with a mall containing 29 stores attached, was part of an expansion of the American brand across Australia.

I digress here: the deli at Ingle Farm was one of the best continental delis in the north-east and I remember going there specifically to get Maggie Beer's Pheasant Farm pâté in the very early days and a wonderful meatloaf they used to sell. A really important part of the shopping centre, indeed, was that deli. The article continues:

Mr Hall said it was an exciting example of competition in retailing.

With the article, there is a fabulous photo of Premier Steele Hall and the Coles deputy chairman in South Australia, Lance Robinson, chatting with a cashier Mrs Tony Lee of Ingle Farm. She is the only woman with five men in the photo—not that that is an important fact, but things have definitely changed now.

Through the good offices of Boomer, we have actually found the cashier, who now lives in Greenwith. She is going to be a part of the cake-cutting ceremony at Ingle Farm that we are going to have in a week's time, which I think is actually a really important event because shopping centres, as we all know, become the hub of our communities. People are often at the shopping centre two or three times a week, catching up with their friends, doing their shopping and keeping up with all the ins and outs of the local area.

I know the Ingle Farm Kmart has become central to many people's lives. We have a mall walking group there, who use the safety of the mall to exercise there a couple of times a week. The food court, of course, is a place where people catch up. The Kmart still exists, and the woman who is on the front security entrance there, Christina, has been there for many years I know of, so she knows everybody who walks in and out of that Kmart and is a really important cog in the network there.

Interestingly, our Ingle Farm Shopping Centre has two Coles supermarkets. I have not quite worked out why, but they both exist there and seem to do so happily. As I said, we have a large number of food outlets but an ever-diminishing number of banks and ATMs—of course, that is another story. I am very much looking forward to catching up with people at the Ingle Farm mall at 11 o'clock on Saturday the 26^th, which will be a family day. They will be having all sorts of activities.

I would like to pay particular tribute to Sharmila from the marketing department at centre management, which also looks after Hollywood Plaza these days, and also the wonderful Julie on the telephone whenever you ring up. I am hoping Coles will also be able to send a representative and I know that although Steele Hall cannot be there with us he will be sending a message of goodwill.

I would like to pay tribute to not only the retailers who have been in the Ingle Farm Shopping Centre for so many years but also the huge numbers of staff who have gone through Ingle Farm, where a lot of people had their very first jobs and obviously went on to bigger and better things, not only within retail but throughout the wider world. So well done, Kmart and Coles, and congratulations, Ingle Farm Shopping Centre, on your 50^th anniversary.