Australian retailers are calling for urgent intervention after recording a 66 per cent year-on-year increase in crimes involving a weapon, most predominantly knives and blades, last year.
New data from Auror, a retail crime intelligence platform, found that one in four of all retail crimes involved violence with the top 10 per cent of offenders making up for 60 per cent of total harm and loss across Australia.
Victoria, which earlier this month announced a ban on machetes, saw the largest jump in threatening events at 52 per cent last year.
It was followed by Western Australia at 48 per cent, New South Wales at 33 per cent, South Australia at 31 per cent and Queensland at 25 per cent.
Auror also found that incidents involving a knife or blade were up 40 per cent in 2024 compared to the previous year with edged weapons the top weapons used in retail crime across all states and territories.
Auror senior director of trust and safety Nick McDonnell said the data shows that retail crime is becoming “more brazen, more violent and more organised”.
“What’s confronting is, about one in four retail crime events last year involved some form of violence, intimidation, threats, physical or verbal abuse,” he said.
“Police do an incredible job keeping us all safe and there is no substitute for the hands-on work they do in our community, but crime in retail is such a high-volume crime type that it’s impossible to address it all.”
Late last year, Bunnings, Coles and Woolworths began rolling out CCTV and staff-worn body cameras to their stores across the country after experiencing a spike in physical, verbal and sexual assaults on staff.
Bunnings released a compilation of footage showing customers threatening staff with weapons and physically attacking them when the national hardware store came under fire for breaching privacy laws with its use of facial recognition technology.
The vision served as proof against findings of the breach published by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on November 19.
Today, the National Retail Association (NRA) and the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) are calling on the government to prioritise violent retail crime “as a matter of urgency”.
“Governments need to give retailers and police the right tools, whether that be funding, policy changes or even just political leadership, to effectively address this growing trend of violence in retail, and so repeat offenders can be identified and brought to justice,” NRA interim chief executive Lindsay Carroll said.
“Criminals have become bolder, and our system needs to keep up; this includes leaning into technology-based solutions that can deal with this challenge at scale.”
ARA chief industry affairs officer Fleur Brown added that there needed to be tougher penalties for offenders across the country.
“Retail crime has a profound and lasting impact on frontline retail staff and in some instances, customers. Everyone has a right to feel safe while at work or shopping,” she said.
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