The Spear and the Shield – When Safety Becomes Surveillance
Dedicated to my wife – who taught me that real safety is never achieved through cameras and algorithms.
Introduction: The Illusion of Safety
In 2025, a 13-year-old boy stabbed a 63-year-old female Coles worker in the back at the Yamanto Central shopping centre in Queensland. He was charged with attempted murder.
That same year, the retail sector recorded approximately 800,000 retail crime incidents across Australia – nearly one in ten involving violence. Woolworths alone recorded over 6,000 violent incidents in a single year.
In response, Coles introduced a striking solution: body-worn cameras for staff and a partnership with Palantir – a US defence contractor whose technology is used by the CIA and the Israeli Defence Forces – to “optimise workforce” operations.
As supermarkets claim to protect their staff, they are simultaneously turning them into data points and surveillance nodes. The question is: Is this protection, or is it control?
The Numbers: A Crisis of Violence
The data is stark.
Wesfarmers – the parent company of Bunnings and Kmart – reported 13,500 instances of customers threatening retail staff with violence or abuse in a single year, with over 1,000 cases involving physical assault. Over half (51%) of retailers say staff are physically abused at least once a month, and 87% of retail workers report experiencing verbal abuse. A survey of nearly 3,000 workers by the SDA found that 25% had experienced physical violence – double the rate from 2023 and three times the rate from 2021.
In Victoria, retail theft rose 27.6% in 2024/25, to 41,667 incidents. And the worst of the violence is directed at the most vulnerable: young women, often aged 15–24, working their first jobs.
They are yelled at. Spat on. Pushed. Dragged across counters. And sometimes – stabbed.
When a company with $1.2 billion in annual profits puts its lowest-paid, youngest staff on the front line of violence, is that an unavoidable “social problem” – or a direct consequence of corporate decisions?
The Roots of Anger: Who Creates the Enemy?
1. Price Gouging and Trust Erosion
In September 2024, the ACCC launched legal action against Coles and Woolworths for pricing products 15% above their regular price and then discounting them to “washed” prices. CHOICE found that at least 15 products had shrunk while prices stayed the same or increased. Between 2023 and 2025, Coles’ “value score” dropped from 34 to 18, and Woolworths’ from 35 to 13 – while Aldi’s rose from 43 to 45. By early 2025, Woolworths and Coles had become Australia’s most distrusted brands.
2. Reduced Staffing and Dehumanised Service
The SDA surveyed over 11,000 retail workers and found that staff shortages were the number one hazard. Fewer staff means longer queues, less interaction, and more frustrated customers. Young, poorly trained, and inexperienced workers are sent to the front line to face an increasingly angry public – and they are merely representatives of a system they have no power to change.
3. Systemic Pressure
The Service and Creative Skills Australia (SaCSA) report identified “broader economic and social pressures” as a key driver of customer aggression. Research confirms that cost-of-living pressures are a significant factor in the rise of customer aggression.
When an angry customer confronts a young worker – a low-status representative of a system that has exploited them – the violence is not random. It is a symptom of a broken relationship between corporations and the communities they claim to serve.
The “Solution”: A Tool for Control, Not Protection
1. Palantir: Surveillance, Not Safety
In 2024, Coles signed a three-year deal with Palantir to analyse “over 10 billion rows of data, comprising each store, team member, shift and allocation across all intervals in a day, every day.” Their goal: to “optimise workforce” and “redefine how we think about our workforce.” Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) expressed serious concerns, warning that Palantir’s data-driven approach ignores Coles’ statutory WHS obligations. This is not protection – this is algorithmic control.
2. Body Cameras: Deterrence or Escalation?
QUT research found that body-worn cameras may lead to a 40% reduction in complaints, but mixed results on aggression were noted. There was a risk they could “inflame an already tense situation”. Some staff feel safer; others worry footage will be used to discipline them. Privacy lawyer Jonathan Crass described the cameras as “an excessive step” and noted that “adequate consent” cannot be obtained from customers.
If a customer truly intends to assault a worker, a camera will not stop the assault. So who is the camera really for?
The Contradiction at the Core
1. The Corporations Create the Problem They Claim to Solve
Coles and Woolworths have created the conditions for violence – through price gouging, shrinkflation, and staff cuts. Then they use the resulting fear to justify a system of surveillance over their staff and customers.
2. Real Safety Is Human, Not Technological
The QUT research found that uniformed security guards made staff feel “definitely” safer. Yet corporations prioritise cheaper, scalable technological solutions – which ultimately serve corporate data collection and liability reduction over actual worker safety.
3. “Safety” Is Becoming a Pretext for Control
The young woman at the checkout is not being protected – she is being managed. The camera is not a shield. It is a tether – part of the same system of control that has created the violence.
Conclusion: Real Safety Begins with Respect
The violence in supermarkets is not a problem of “bad customers.”
It is a problem of a system that has:
- Profited from price gouging that erodes trust
- Cut staff and training while pushing young workers into danger
- Deployed surveillance as a substitute for genuine safety
When an industry creates the conditions for violence and then sells the solution – the cameras, the data, the “security” – it is not solving the problem. It is profiting from the problem.
The spear is the shield. The threat is the product.
And the cost is borne by the youngest, most vulnerable workers – and by a community that has been trained to see a camera, not a human being.
Also by Dr Klein
The Grievance Industry: How One Nation profits from division while delivering nothing
Faith in the Age of Quantum – How the Resonance Speaks to the Traditions
The Sound of Silence: Australia’s Complicity in the Face of Evidence
The King’s New Clothes: A Royal Performance While Democracy Unravels
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Looking forward to the day we get a government that represents the people and not the corporations.We are utterly sick of the mealy mouthed bullshit.Wonder why people are looking at Hanson’s caravan of grievance.For Christ’s sake.
Dr Klein, thank you for another thought-provoking article.
Your point that technology cannot replace trust and respect really resonated with me. I recently made a formal complaint about my treatment at the Woolworths store at Westfield Strathpine. My concern was never with the checkout staff themselves. They are often young people working under difficult conditions with little control over company policies.
What concerns me is the growing corporate culture that seems to rely on surveillance, automated systems and rigid procedures instead of empowering staff to use common sense and treat customers with dignity. Cameras and algorithms may record what happens, but they cannot build trust or resolve the underlying causes of conflict.
As a customer, I have also noticed aisles frequently blocked while shelves are being restocked during busy shopping periods, empty shelves where products should be available, and a narrowing range of products compared with what was once offered. These may appear to be minor issues, but together they create frustration and reinforce the perception that efficiency and cost-cutting have taken priority over customer service.
If supermarkets genuinely want safer stores, they should invest in adequate staffing, better training, experienced managers who can resolve disputes quickly, well-stocked shelves, and business practices that rebuild public confidence. Respect is a far more effective form of security than constant surveillance.
The people on the checkout are not the problem. They are often the ones carrying the burden of decisions made in corporate boardrooms.
@ Harry Lime: Agreed. It is sad that the Albanese LABOR government has forgotten their roots among the workers.
An excellent observation of the Supermarket Crisis hitting all Australian families with higher prices making more profits to justify better salary packages for management executives.
Locally in Armidale the BIG 2 supermarkets dominate grocery sales with Aldi growing in popularity as shoppers enjoy the better value and lower prices.
There is a new third chain just established and growing in competitiveness, so our about 25,000 population is well supplied with groceries. However, there was insufficient interest for the IGA chain to remain after their commercial premises lease expired.
I am not amazed that shop theft has increased in response to the ”open shelf no staff” approach to retailing. The ”no staff checkouts” are deceptively easy to scam, the disinterested once check out staff, now ”self-check-out assistants” can sometimes drag themselves away from long chats with their rostered on colleagues to explain the dumb-headedness of the machines. The reduction in job opportunities for young persons is duly noted, along with the other staff exploitation practices.
I am reminded of the Maleny Qld situation when Coles announced with great fanfare that they were establishing an outlet there in competition with the long established IGA store. The people fought against the matter at every step, resulting in Coles getting established, but more staff in the shop than customers. A language that city based executives understand.
Meanwhile the much loved IGA store underwent a $3 million renovation and continued trading as before.
The moral of this story is ”customers create profits, so look after your customers to make profits”.
The corporate life, its ways, means, owners, controllers, media, finance, advertising, insurance and fat fast filth food has taken over the lot. We are enslaved to orthodoxies of consumption and ingrained habits. So, drinking not thinking, spending, not tending or mending, lusting, not trusting, watching, lazing, resenting, fantasising, that is the GO. (we could hunt, fish, gather.., no?)
Why bother with supermarkets? I buy very little from the supermarket that I choose – Aldi. Tea, coffee, milk, yoghurt, eggs that’s it, the rest from the Market.
Fresh Food Markets and Greengroacers are far superior.