Direct fire, 10:30 this morning! Large numbers of Chinese gathered on Box Hill Shopping Centre Walking Street! Hold parade demonstration!
Protest mall parking lot unreasonable price increase! Everyone is very excited, the mall gate a sound of protest!
Prior to this, some netizens also raised objections to the parade, and expressed their views on the Yiyi Forum. For details, click: to safeguard the image of the Chinese and to oppose the launching of the protest campaign on the increase in parking fees in the name of "discrimination against Chinese".
It`s less than ten! Some Chinese continue to come to support this parade demonstration activity! The police then arrived at the scene to maintain order.
According to the host of the event, the Australian White Horse Chamber of Commerce, the protest has four demands, first, suspend raising parking costs, and so on to find a win-win best parking fee standard and then negotiate the implementation; Secondly, send out the management team that can manage the Box Hill mall. Thirdly, the expense of the mall is transparent, and the tenants have the right to know all the expenses of the mall. Fourth, we all hope that the business can be successful operation and development, but the mall must maintain a real and feasible relationship with the business.
Close to 10:30, the scene was crowded to begin the parade signing ceremony!
Demonstration, hold up the protest slogan.
The entrance to the Box Hill mall is blocked by the demonstration team, and it is very difficult to get in and out!
Speaking with the support of the masses, Dr. Tang, Secretary-General of Australia`s White Horse Merchants, made the following remarks:
"this time protest, we hope to take into account the interests of the Box Hill customers as a whole before we will consider the interests of the merchants themselves."
Dr. Tang briefly introduced the reasons for the protest activity, and accepted questions from the public and the media.
The media asked: "is the jump in parking fees at Box Hill Mall a form of discrimination against Chinese people?"
Dr Tang declared: "our campaign is aimed at commercial equity and does not involve any racial discrimination!"
Chisholm constituency candidate for federal councillors, Ms. Yang Chien-hui also came to support! Against this commercial bullying!
"Box Hill Mall is a private enterprise, but that doesn`t mean they can ignore the voices of the people! If nothing happens after this event, change, we`ll come back! "
The organizer read out the protest book on the spot and put forward the demand of the merchant and the customer in an all-round way!
Hundreds of people who participated in the live protest event signed protest books! Organizers said before this afternoon to collect more than 3, 000 signatures, to the Box Hill mall management!
Since the increase in the price of the Box Hill parking lot, individual Chinese media have used this commercial adjustment to rise to racial discrimination against the Chinese community as a whole in Australia! In order to win the eye, exaggerate and provoke inter-ethnic relations in Australia! It also caused a great stir in the Chinese community in Melbourne!
"to oppose commercial adjustment on the basis of racial discrimination is simply to kidnap the Chinese community!"
"Business has been subjected to racial discrimination! In the future, foreigners may have dodged when they saw the "Chinese"! "
"do not support the use of business as racial discrimination, which will affect the image of the Chinese community as a whole!"
Some Chinese also pointed out the previous example of richmond: "the adjustment of parking fees will have a great impact on the economy of commercial districts!"
More than half of Melbourne`s Chinese feel that this is just a business act, according to a survey that has been circulated on the Internet, and that more than half of Melbourne`s Chinese feel about the change in parking fees. It`s not racial discrimination!
Event background: Box Hill parking fee increases
The charging standard after the increase in the price of the mall (figure)
Original charging standard for shopping malls (picture)
The increase in parking fees was mainly concentrated in the first three hours, compared with the original parking fees as follows:
$1 for 3 hours, compared with:
- 0 / 1 hour $1
- 1 / 2 hours $2
- 2 / 3 hours $3
For customers who live near Box Hill and often come to buy, the price increases have a big impact. In fact, Box Hill Mall is a shopping, catering, leisure as one of the multi-functional shopping malls, according to business statistics, the average stay of guests in the Box Hill Mall about 2. 5 hours. If their parking time is 1-2 hours, their single parking fee is doubled compared to the previous time; if the parking time is 2-3 hours, their parking fee is directly three times the increase!
If they are not to afford to double the price, they must complete a series of activities such as shopping, dining and so on within an hour. In fact, one hour is not enough for many family shoppers and middle-aged and elderly consumers, and for other consumers, time is tight.
However, for the mall operator Vicinity
As far as Centres is concerned, it looks like a simple parking adjustment notice allows them to make a huge profit. VicinityCentres, one of Australia`s largest retail asset holders and operators, has assets including Melbourne`s Chadstone Shopping Centre, DFO,Box.
Hill Central and so on more than 70 large regional shopping malls.
Some people have roughly calculated for Vicinity Centres, after the parking lot price increases, the Box HillCenter parking lot is expected to make about 4 million Australian dollars more profit. As a result, many merchants and customers have questioned whether, Vicinity Centers, a parking lot price increase, is a disguised act of commercial bullying and enrichment.
Incident investigation: naked business bullying? Why did the price increase meet the collective protest of many merchants?
In order to confirm this situation, at 2:10 on Sunday (16 September), the reporter counted the past 100 vehicles at the entrance of two different car parks in Box Hill, about 54 per cent of which were carrying children or middle-aged and elderly persons; Seventy-seven percent of drivers are Asian (most of them Chinese).
We also interviewed 10 car owners at random in the parking lot, eight of whom said they were dissatisfied with the rise in parking spaces, and only one owner said that the parking time was less than an hour; Asked if they would continue to shop at Box Hill after the price increase, six owners said they would consider other shopping malls. One of them, Ms. Qi, said, "it`s possible to go shopping in nearby Westfield Doncaster Shopping Center, just eight minutes` drive from Box Hill," she said. But the first three hours of the parking lot there are free. "
For the business tenants of Box Hill, the loss of passenger traffic will have a great impact on their turnover. Reporters visited catering, beauty, mobile phone operators, flower shops, optical shops, travel agencies, a total of 12 different types of shops. Almost all shops have expressed concern in this regard. Others complain that Vicinity`s Box Hill management team is not professional enough and that there are many problems with mall management, such as hygiene and security. In addition, one owner told reporters that parking fees for employees` parking spaces rose by 400 percent last year, from $1 a day to $4 a day.
Another woman, Ms. T, who is engaged in the beauty and sports industry, told reporters that because the items in the store are at least an hour from now, such a price adjustment is likely to cost her a large number of old guests, and her guests have already begun to complain to her. By doing so, the mall would "drive out" her many-year-old customers, and her rent would rise every year, worried that she would not be able to afford to pay for the high rent next year. But moving to other stores would also mean that she would lose more of her old customers and cost more. This makes Ms. T angry and helpless.
Vicinity Centres representatives said the price increase was mainly a solution to the shortage of parking, especially to control the long-term parking of commuters at nearby sites and other shopping malls. It is understood that during working hours, office workers park their cars in the parking lot for a long time, and move once in and out of the parking lot for 3 hours to avoid the step-by-step fee in the parking lot. Does this seemingly reasonable motive really make sense?
After the mall posted a notice of price increase, many customers complained to Mrs Lau of the Box Hill district of Baima, and some of the merchants of Box Hill found a solution for the White Horse Chamber of Commerce. Is such a "one-size-fits-all" price increase reasonable? Who`s really driving it out? Who will guarantee the passenger traffic of merchant tenants? Subsequently, Ms Lau and the White Horse Chamber of Commerce have repeatedly tried to communicate with Vicinity management. Three solutions were proposed:
- Option 1: free of charge in the first hour, $1 in the second hour, $2 in the third hour, and then charged according to the charging standard of the mall;
- Option 2: according to the standard of fees raised by the shopping malls, but the customers who come to the mall can reduce the fees on the basis of the consumption vouchers;
- Option 3: according to the previous standard charges, install recording instruments to maliciously occupy and use a three-hour parking vehicle, and refuse to re-enter the parking lot.
All three schemes could better reduce malicious parking and seizing parking spaces, but Vicinity Centres Box Hill`s mall management refused and insisted on raising parking fees. As a result, after the failure of negotiations, businesses and customers are more skeptical of the underlying purpose of the price increase.
One tenant said in an interview: "We didn`t say a word when the mail box was charged, we didn`t speak when the parking lot was going up, and we didn`t speak when the mall asked for a unified use of higher-priced power suppliers. "We used to be used to silence, coupled with the rapid development of business in the, Box Hill area, the supply of shops is in short supply, many businesses do not want to move away, so they have been able to swallow."
This time, however, under the leadership of the White Horse Chamber of Commerce, businesses and consumers have chosen to unite and be active in maintain legal rights, `s bold voice of protest as a commercial bully.
This "sparse" should not be "blocked", "lazy man management" can not solve the essence of the problem.
In response to this issue, we interviewed Mr. Chen Ying, executive vice president of the White Horse Chamber of Commerce, who suggested that the solution to this problem should be "sparse" rather than "blocked." From the overall situation, the essence of the contradiction between car and parking space is the contradiction between the rapid economic development and the incomplete supporting infrastructure. However, this contradiction gradually emerged, should not be a simple rough "lazy management" way to "block" it.
As a manager of shopping malls, Vicinity should actively listen to many opinions, bring along with the state government, merchants, and so on, to solve the problems from the essence, such as finding more parking spaces for consumers, more reasonable parking planning, and so on. Rather than simply let customers and businesses pay for this contradiction. "A good mall management team should think about how to bring people together, instead of pushing consumers out like Vicinity," Mr. Chen Ying said.
We protest are business bullying, not racial discrimination.
In an interview with White Horse Chamber of Commerce Secretary-General Dr. Tang Zhongwei, head of the, Telstra Box Hill store and general manager of Telstra`s enterprise users department, he repeatedly stressed that the protest was a forced voice of the merchants and had no choice but to do so. Because before the decision to hold protest parade, has repeatedly and Vicinity aspects of communication, but no result of communication. He also made it clear that the protest`s appeal was clear, a combination of Box Hill tenants and consumers, working together to combat unreasonable commercial bullying that had nothing to do with racial discrimination.
Mr. Zheng Yutang, president of the white horse business, also said that as one of Australia`s largest retail asset holders and operators, VicinityCentre`s management team at the Box Hill mall is too strong to communicate effectively and equitably. There is a tendency of "big shop deceit". This protest parade is also a formal way of business maintain legal rights, but also has notified government and Vicinity, to do a good job of filing. He also made it clear that the parade had nothing to do with racial discrimination and hoped that the media or individuals would not unduly escalate the incident into racist parade for reporting and dissemination.
How does the Chinese media speak correctly for the community?
Businesses, customers, parliamentarians, the media and many other parties united to speak out and will play a big role in promoting this protest march. It is reported that Springvale and Footscray have experienced similar price increases in the past two years, but their merchants are united and even threatened to finally defend their rights. Therefore, it is vital to unite and speak together.
But at the same time, the editor would also like to emphasize that the media should stand in a fair and fair perspective as far as possible objective implementation. "not adding to the oil and making things more serious," reasonable reporting, focusing on the focus, directly hitting the core, and helping the Chinese to fight for their rights and interests, is not for the sake of gaining eyeballs, ignoring the facts and creating sensational inside news.
At present, we do not know the specific protest results, what we know is that the parking fee at Baushan Mall has risen today, the impact on this prosperous Chinese business district has begun, the reporter will continue to pay attention to this matter, follow-up report for you.
