Shop Trading Hours

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:34): Supplementary: will the minister use his discretion to deregulate shopping hours on days or weekends other than scheduled public holidays?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:34): I have announced that I am already doing that. Consistent with the decision that minister Rau and previous ministers under the Labor government adopted, we have announced, and will gazette this Thursday, extended trading hours in the days leading up to Christmas. The normal course of events is that there is extended trading on all the Sundays in December, and I have announced that I intend to continue with that, but former Labor ministers have used the power to have extended trading for three weeknights, so two Thursdays and a Friday in the week leading up to Christmas. Consistent with what minister Rau did, I have decided to extend trading hours.

There is the occasional example where traders have used one of those extended trading hours, which allows them to trade through to midnight; instead of closing at 9 o'clock on weeknights, to offer one night/day/night of 24-hour trading. Clearly, whilst they will have the power to do that for all three nights—and they had the power under minister Rau's use of the exemption—most of them did not do that, did not see that there was the demand for the 24-hour trading, but we have seen under minister Rau's exemptions the occasional use by a couple of the outlets to have, I think, one example of 24-hour trading on a weekday/weeknight in the period leading up to Christmas.

So the answer to the question is yes. Equally, because the member's question was broader than that—just not Christmas; he was asking the question generally—as the member would be familiar, Mr Roger Drake, a very successful South Australia businessman, with whom I met recently and had a very cordial meeting, requested an exemption for one of his stores on Goodwood Road to trade for extended hours for seven or 10 days during the Royal Adelaide Show, both on the Sunday and the weekend and through the week, so that would be consistent with the honourable member's question. I was very pleased to agree to Mr Roger Drake's request for extended trading hours, and I gave that approval under this particular exemption.

The member will be familiar with the example of the Thebarton Foodland, where again I used that power of exemption for trading, which was again through extended hours, not just for weekends but through the week as well, from recollection. The answer to the member's question is yes, consistent with minister Rau's previous use of it I propose to use the power occasionally, and consistent with my own practice in relation to Mr Drake and the Thebarton Foodland or IGA example that we have done previously, on a case-by-case basis I will make a judgement in relation to the potential use of that exemption power.