Shop Trading Hours

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:48): Supplementary: what you are saying, Treasurer, is that if Crown law advice comes back and says that these businesses are trading unlawfully, prosecutions would be undertaken.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:48): No, I am not saying that. What I am saying is that, firstly, parliament has the opportunity to fix the act. If the parliament says, 'No, you have to stick with the dog's breakfast of the legislation,' then the option that's open to the traders is to amend their trading hours behaviour; that is, to comply with the legislation. In those cases, it would mean restricting their trading hours from what they are currently offering. If they refuse to do that and continue to trade unlawfully, then the situation may well be that there might well be prosecutions in the future.

That was the position that the Hon. John Rau adopted, as the Labor minister for industrial relations, when he went through a process of allowing the complete deregulation of shop trading hours in a number of regional communities. He didn't go down the prosecution path. In essence, he oversaw a process that allowed complete deregulation in those areas so that these businesses could continue to trade when they wanted to trade, which was on Sundays when the law said that they shouldn't be able to trade on the Sunday.