QVM claims the cost of operating the market has gone up significantly over the past 10 years, roughly in line with inflation at about 30 per cent, while rent increases for traders have been about 12 per cent.
Traders say that there used to be 60 fruit and vegetable traders at the market, and now there are 35, and they are worried that number will drop if the waste and cleaning cost is imposed.
During the strike Pontelandolfo carried a sign reading “A fresh food market not an event space”, highlighting his concerns that the Queen Vic’s primary purpose as a place to buy and sell fresh produce is being increasingly neglected.
“Queen Victoria, gave the land to the Melbourne people for farmers to sell their veggies and for families to run their businesses,” he says. “That’s not happening any more. Now we’ve got corporates in, we’ve got food vans that we don’t need.”
Pontelandolfo points to the roster of regular events held at the market, from a sake festival to an Indonesian festival.
“They don’t bring people to us, they just suck money out of the market,” he says. “They’ve changed the ambience of the market. It’s not a produce and clothing market any more – it’s an events market.”
Closed stalls during the Queen Victoria market strike.Credit: Jason South
Rosa Ansando is the third generation of her family to run a fruit and vegetable stall at the Queen Victoria Market. She says it’s a tough life being exposed to the elements and working 12- to 15-hour days, but one she does not want to change.
“We really physically cannot pay another dollar because we’re not getting the visitation [from customers],” she says.
Ansando accuses QVM of “double-dipping” by imposing the waste and cleaning charge when traders already pay a fee to rent their stores.
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“There is no support from management,” she says. “They do everything they can to make it harder. My view is they want us out.”
Other areas of the market, including the dairy and deli hall, traded through the strike, but when the fruit and vegetable traders marched through the market with their placards, there was applause from other traders.
In the deli area, traders are opposing an additional cost to be imposed on those who sell takeaway food for the set-up, clean-up and pack-down of chairs and an eating area in Deli Lane.
Some deli traders are opposing a proposed additional charge for those that sell takeaway food.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“What happens when you lose another five or six traders, then it’s going to be a museum, you’re not going to have a market,” Fontana says. “You don’t know what you had until it’s gone.”
Mary Lou Howie, president of the Friends of the Queen Victoria Market, says the market has lost a third of its traders in recent years as QVM has undertaken its renewal program, pointing to the empty sheds in the upper market.
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Howie says the Franklin Street storage sheds have been earmarked to be annexed from the market and retrofitted as fine-dining restaurants if the Gurrowa Place development at the southern boundary of the market is approved.
The development will comprise an office and retail building, about 560 built-to-rent apartments and a student housing tower accommodating 1100 beds.
“This place is on the National Heritage register,” Howie says. “It is a really iconic place for all of Australia, and it’s treated really badly.”
QVM chief executive Matt Elliott says markets are always evolving, and the Queen Victoria Market is just keeping up with changing times.
“We’ve got a lot happening around us in the central city area in terms of changing customer profile, the way they live, who the residents are, as well as huge competition from the proliferation of supermarkets everywhere you go,” he says.
“We’re trying to help our traders, give them the ability to offer an experience that is very different to what you get in the supermarkets, and be able to give customers alternative products and ingredients they need to be able to create great meals at home, and so we see the market evolve and respond to those customers.”
He says festivals and events are important because they bring different customers to the market and give people a reason to visit the market.
“People want to blend their leisure time with doing other tasks, like shopping, for instance,” he says.
Elliott wants to see Vic Market shoppers snacking on sushi or oysters and then feeling inspired to buy a piece of fish and take it home to cook it.
When it comes to the traders’ complaints, Elliott says the waste and cleaning charge is the fairest way to pass increasing operational costs onto traders, and will encourage traders to manage waste more efficiently.
“Instead of just putting everything into the bin like strawberries in plastic punnets, which then has to go to general waste, if you separate the plastic from the actual berries themselves, then they’re both recycled, and the costs are far lower,” he says. “That’s the kind of behaviour we’re trying to foster.”
In the dairy and deli section, Elliott says, a small number of traders have been paying for the Deli Lane set-up, servicing and pack-down of tables and chairs for customers eating takeaway food, and this charge will be expanded to all traders in those sections selling takeaway.
Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece declined to comment on whether the traders’ strike would make the City of Melbourne and QVM reassess its plans for the market.
“Work to improve the market experience has been backed by extensive consultation with traders and the wider community,” he said.
Reece pledged to freeze fees for traders in his election campaign. However, this promise has not yet gone before the council and will not be considered until its draft budget in May.
At the City of Melbourne’s council meeting on Tuesday night, it accepted a report confirming $171 million had been spent on the Queen Victoria Market renewal.
Marcus Spiller, principal at SGS Economics and Planning, says the City of Melbourne had more ambitious plans for revamping the market but was unable to get approval from Heritage Victoria.
“The whole thing was, to an extent, frustrated by resistance, by some stallholders, as well as by a relatively small group of people who wanted the market to be kind of preserved in aspic,” he says.
Spiller says the broader question is whether the Queen Victoria Market is a business or infrastructure for a vibrant and sustainable city.
“Yes, the storekeepers should be required to to to meet their utility costs, and it should be done on a fair basis,” he says. “But at the same time, it’s inappropriate, in my view, to treat the QVM as a simple business. It is part of the food distribution infrastructure of the city, and it is part of the cultural heritage of the city … It is a treasure of global proportions.”
