This article analyzes the ways that shopping center tenants deployed narratives to encourage government intervention in the Australian retail property sector during the 1980s. Tenants claimed that landlords were abusing their market power through a range of egregious and exploitative practices. Landlords responded with stories of their own, claiming that amateurish retailers were using isolated cases to make broad generalizations about the industry as a whole. Politicians retold retailers’ stories in Parliament, championed small business enterprise as a driver of economic growth, and produced retail leasing legislation aimed at protecting shopping center tenants. In the process, established conceptions of shopping centers were inverted. In the 1960s and 1970s they were seen as bastions of capitalist enterprise constructed by nation-building visionaries. Through stories, retailers captured the cultural legitimacy of entrepreneurship from their landlords, who were characterized as feudal barons blocking the free operation of markets they controlled. Exploring these developments offers new insights into the relational dynamics of preplanned retail environments, expands our understanding of postwar Australian retail history, and contributes to a growing historiography on the role of narrative in business history.

本文分析了购物中心租户在 1980 年代采用叙事方式来鼓励政府干预澳大利亚零售房地产行业的方式。租户声称房东通过一系列恶劣的剥削行为滥用他们的市场力量。房东们以自己的故事作为回应，声称业余零售商正在使用孤立的案例来对整个行业进行广泛的概括。政客们在议会重述零售商的故事，支持小企业作为经济增长的驱动力，并制定了旨在保护购物中心租户的零售租赁立法。在此过程中，购物中心的既定概念被颠覆了。在 1960 年代和 70 年代，它们被视为由国家建设梦想家建造的资本主义企业的堡垒。通过故事，零售商从他们的地主那里获得了创业的文化合法性，他们被描述为封建贵族，阻碍了他们控制的市场的自由运作。探索这些发展提供了对预先计划的零售环境的关系动态的新见解，扩展了我们对战后澳大利亚零售历史的理解，并有助于不断增长的关于叙事在商业历史中的作用的史学。