Former Woolworths boss Brad Banducci has admitted he avoided leaving his home for a year after his controversial Four Corners interview sparked nationwide outrage over supermarket price hikes during the Covid pandemic.
In his first interview since stepping down as Woolworths CEO in September 2024, Mr Banducci told Joe Aston on his Rampart podcast on Sunday that the ABC interview wasn’t his ‘finest moment’.
The now-infamous segment, where Mr Banducci appeared dressed as a store assistant, became one of 2024’s most talked-about media moments, fuelling a national debate on supermarket price gouging.
Reporter Angus Grigg put it to Mr Banducci that Rod Sims, former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, had described Australia as having one of the most concentrated supermarket industries in the world.
Mr Banducci replied ‘that’s not true’ and attempted to argue the industry was in fact ‘an incredibly competitive market’.
He also pointed out that Mr Sims is ‘retired’.
When Grigg asked the Woolworths boss if he was ‘impugning’ Mr Sims’ integrity, Mr Banducci asked: ‘Can we take that out? Is that OK?’
Grigg then said: ‘We’re on the record, you’ve said it. Let’s just move on.’
Brad Banducci (pictured) speaking to Rampart’s Joe Aston about his time as Woolworths CEO
Seconds later, Mr Banducci said, ‘I think I’m done guys,’ and walked out of the room.
The ABC aired the original footage anyway, cementing its place as a defining flashpoint in the debate over supermarket price gouging.
Days after the program aired, Mr Banducci announced his departure from the supermarket retailer.
‘There was a series of things that happened that we weren’t made aware of. And if I pulled out the ABC Editorial Code, I would question whether Four Corners lived the code that the ABC publishes as their manifesto of how they want to treat people,’ Mr Banducci said.
‘I was told we could stop. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I own it. It’s not my finest hour.
‘I could have done a better job of representing Woolworths. I shouldn’t have done it at seven o’clock in the morning in Parramatta on the Friday before the Australia Day long weekend. I was really tired.’
Mr Banducci said: ‘Technically, I didn’t walk out.’
‘I was allowed to stop it, and I stopped it to speak to our team,’ he said, adding that he phoned Sims afterwards to apologise.
Woolworths boss Brad Banducci (pictured) asked ‘Can we take that out? Is that OK?’, then seconds later said ‘I think I’m done guys,’ and then walked out of the interview
Mr Banducci’s final year at the helm of Woolworths was overshadowed by controversy, with public backlash effectively killing his social life.
‘I didn’t go out for a year,’ he said.
‘I never went to a party because I felt if I went to one party, I would (then also) need to go to someone else’s.
‘My poor wife had to represent me at all functions. I went walking with the dog.’
Mr Banducci said he avoided social situations so he didn’t get sucked into ’emotional conversations’.
‘I just thought I’ve got to be calm and unemotional and not get drawn in, sucked in,’ he said.
‘Because you go to friends – they don’t mean to do it, but you get sucked into these conversations, often with great empathy, but you get sucked in and they become emotional. And so I just did a lot of good walking.’
The embattled boss also spoke about the public backlash over Woolworths’ decision to dump Australia Day merchandise from all its stores and its public support for the yes vote on the Voice to Parliament.
Woolworths copped backlash over its decision to no longer stock Australia Day merchandise in the lead-up to 26 January
The move provoked widespread fury, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton calling for a boycott of the supermarket chain.
Some shoppers demanded Mr Banducci’s resignation, while Woolworths staff bore the brunt of the backlash after they were subjected to abuse from customers and some stores were vandalised.
Mr Banducci admitted that, in hindsight, he would have taken a different approach.
He was visiting American retail giant Walmart stores to better understand inflation when he received the phone call from Dutton who labelled the merchandise decision an ‘outrage’ and that the ‘vast majority of Australians’ would agree with him.
‘I was in Dallas Airport, just changing flights when he phoned to confirm a few facts before he went on 2GB,’ he said.
‘You could easily have assumed…that somehow we were being un-Australian.
‘Quite the contrary, we’re trying to be modern Australian, but it sort of unravelled.’
Mr Banducci is now the CEO of ticketing giant TEG.
