12:00a.m. 29th August 2008

| Alan Lander & Toby Walker

Store manager at Maleny IGA Marcia Probert is angry about the snap inspection of the store. Photo: Nicholas Falconer/177954

An IGA supermarket retailer has received a snap visit from a state government industrial relations inspector a day after he criticised the power of the nation’s supermarket duopoly.

The day before the audit on Wednesday this week Maleny and Beerwah IGA owner Mr Outridge, in comments made to the Daily regarding the National Retailers Association bid to extend shopping hours on the Gold Coast, described smaller retailers’ competition against Coles and Woolworths as “David versus Goliath on steroids with a sub-machine gun”.

Mr Outridge said not only was the timing of the government audit suspect, but further claimed Nambour-based IR inspector Rod Whitson admitted to store manager Marcia Probert that he had been “urgently dispatched” by the director general of the industrial relations division.

“Certainly he was open about saying that he got a phone call from the director general to say that he had to do an audit and that it had to be done (that day),” Ms Probert said.

“He said ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s (to do) with your friends down the road’.”

Mr Whitson yesterday denied receiving the call from the director general.

“We’ve been doing audits right across the state and I just said to them in passing it seems to be a bit coincidental that we’re here on the same day Woolies and Coles have announced they’re going to try to extend trading hours,” he said.

“The mention of the director general was incidental to the conversation.

“The director general doesn’t call me, mate.”

But Ms Probert insisted Mr Whitson had specifically referred to the director general’s involvement in ordering the audit.

“He definitely said director general...I had no idea what a term like that would be used for and that it is the title for a head of a government department, I know that now,” she said.

Mr Outridge said he was now considering taking the allegation to the Crime and Misconduct Commission.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Department of Industrial Relations director general Peter Henneken denied the phone call had been made.

“There was no specific direction to audit the IGA in Maleny on that particular day,” he said.

“The specific direction has been to audit (all) supermarkets across the state.”

When asked if part of the day-to-day responsibilities of Mr Henneken’s job could involve ordering audits of specific retailers, he said “it might be, but I doubt that it actually happened".

Mr Outridge remains unconvinced the audit was merely coincidentally timed with his public criticism of Woolworths and Coles.

With the controversial history of Woolworth’s push to open an outlet in Maleny widely known, Mr Outridge continues to believe the audit had been enacted in the upper echelons of state government on behalf of one of the nation’s biggest supermarkets.

“Where there’s smoke there’s fire, there’s no such thing as a coincidence as far as I’m concerned,” he said.