I agree conceptually, dg. With the exception of this part: "Saying Australian law doesn't care seems a bit like saying the police don't care if you pay for your items or steal them, as long as you don't steal really high value stuff, though."

The police do care. I used to run a B&M shop and when we caught a shoplifter no matter how small the value I always closed the shop (with the shoplfter inside), rang the police, and waited for them to come. We must have caught hundreds of them. The cops came every single time, sometimes maybe they took more than half an hour but they came. One tried to challenge it and went to court, the cops came and gave me a subpoena as a witness and a $5 bill to cover transport. I went to court and the shoplifter changed his plea to guilty before the case was heard. The arresting officer was there too.