Matthew was minutes into his break on a night shift at his job in regional Victoria when a woman approached him and asked for a cigarette. He refused.
It wasn’t until he was walking back into the store that he realised she had allegedly stabbed him.
“I didn’t even know I was stabbed until the red stuff started coming out – and there was a lot of it.”
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The woman allegedly used a utility knife, causing a severe wound. He was airlifted to a hospital in Melbourne, and underwent four operations.
The woman was later charged, with the matter is now before the courts.
Speaking under a pseudonym to protect his identity, Matthew says violence has become more common at his work.
“People come in, they’re wielding machetes and we have to let them do what they want, walk out with a trolley groceries or whatever.
“There’s nothing we can do.”
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, retail workers across Australia have faced a sharp uptick in abuse, violence and theft. But what began as occasional outbursts during lockdown has grown into a crisis, with social media regularly flooded with footage of brazen, daylight thefts.
According to a joint survey by the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) and National Retail Association, 70% of retailers reported an increase in theft in the 2024/25 financial year. Just over half (51%) said their staff had experience physical abuse at least once a month, with verbal abuse even more common, affecting 87% of workers.
The state secretary of the Victorian Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), Michael Donovan, says women are most affected as they as make up most of the retail workforce. More than a third are aged between 15 and 24 – often in their first job.
“They’re being screamed at, sworn at, spat on or shoved, they’ve had things thrown at them, dragged across the counters – right through to being slashed or stabbed,” Donovan says.
Major retailers are also speaking out. This week, Myer reported a 79% increase in incidents of threatening behaviour over the financial year – including both verbal and physical abuse. Super Retail Group, which owns Rebel Sport, reported “increased risk of retail crime, theft, harassment and aggressive customers”, saying it was becoming more difficult to attract and retain staff, while supermarkets Coles, Woolworths and Ritchies IGA have also expressed concern about rising crime.
In Victoria, theft from retail stores in rose to 41,667 offences in 2024/25 – an increase of 9,004, or 27.6% on the previous year, data released by the Crime Statistics Agency on Thursday showed.
The data showed incidents of food theft had risen from 4,229 in 2015/16 to 7,635 in 2024/25 – an increase of 80.5%. Cigarettes and liquor theft has also grown from 8,968 to 14,222 over the period – a 58.6% increase.
Who’s doing all the stealing?
Griffith University’s Prof Michael Townsley says retail theft has been “slowly creeping up” since 2010 – with the exception of the Covid-19 years
The rise of self-service checkouts and reduced staff-to-customer ratios have made it “easier to commit” theft “so there’s more of it”, Townsley says. At the same time, retailers have installed “more systems to detect and prevent theft”, making the problem more apparent.
In his 2024 ANZ Retail Crime Study, Townsley found almost 2% of turnover was lost nationally in 2023/24, costing $7.79bn.
But he says it’s harder to pin down exactly who is responsible for most of the offending.
At the more sophisticated end is organised crime, including “loosely affiliated” groups targeting supermarkets, bottle shops and shopping centres for expensive items such as alcohol, cigarettes and meat – or conducting ram-raids on designer stores.
“They are stealing things on a routinised basis, giving it to a receiver or a fence who then is getting rid of it,” Townlsey says.
Another rising trend is group theft by young people, in a method Townsley describes as “swarming”: targeting stores with only one staff member on duty, using distraction or intimidation to steal large quantities.
Then there’s the opportunists – including those exploiting self-checkout systems at major supermarkets. Townsley says many in this cohort find it “easy to rationalise” stealing from “big, faceless corporations”.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Ruth Liston, a lecturer in criminology at Victoria University.
“It’s part of our culture – people don’t love Coles and Woolies – because they perceive they engage in price gouging and other poor practices,” Liston says.
She says a reduction in staff has also played a role.
“You might have 12 self-checkouts and only one person monitoring them. If someone steals something, that staff member is left to confront the offender alone,” Liston says.
She also noted many incidents involve people experiencing mental illness, substance dependence or severe financial stress.
Victoria police’s deputy commissioner for regional operations, Bob Hill, on Thursday said 50% of those involved in retail theft in 2024-25 were first-time offenders, indicating that cost of living pressures were playing a role.
Victoria lagging ‘well behind’
Despite the rise in shoplifting, Townsley says many retailers report their “biggest problem” remains “Ken and Karens” – middle aged men and women who lash out at staff if they’re “having a bad day or not getting the service they’re expecting”.
At Labor’s state conference in May 2024, the Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, announced the government would introduce legislation to parliament for tougher penalties for people who assault, threaten or intimidate retail workers by the end of 2025.
She appointed upper house MP Michael Galea to overseeconsultation. A former SDA organiser, he says he represented several assaulted workers over his 11 years at the union.
“There was young woman who had a bag full of heavy groceries thrown at her head, a worker was stabbed with a hypodermic needle – but thankfully tested negative – several where customers were extremely abusive to young staff and intimidating them,” he says.
But the Victorian SDA has criticised the pace of reforms, with Donovan saying the state is lagging “well behind” other states and territories, including on penalties.
Along with the ARA, the Victorian SDA is pushing for workplace protection orders (WPOs) to ban known offenders from re-entering stores – a measure already in place in the ACT, with similar plans under way in South Australia and Western Australia. But there are legal and ethical concerns – especially around the use of facial recognition technology to enforce them.
Galea refused to say whether WPOs would be included in the final legislation but hopes the consultation group will “consider further measures” at its next meeting. While the reforms are “on schedule”he says he is “anxious for the laws to be introduced to parliament as soon as possible”.
As for Matthew, he says the government must act – before tragedy strikes.
“It’ll only be a matter of time until you have an incident at a store and the outcome is not so good,” he says.