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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
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SHOP TRADING HOURS (RUNDLE MALL TOURIST PRECINCT) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Second reading debate resumed.

Mr PENGILLY (Finniss) (10:51): Madam Speaker, may I join the rest of the house in wishing you a very happy birthday. I rise also to indicate my support for the member for Adelaide's bill. My concern is, really, that people who want to go shopping cannot go shopping. I am actually with the member for Fisher on this. I am a free-trader, and I think that things should be opened up and that we should just let it go.

Where this has all come from, I think, is from a series of curves. This particular bill is in opposition to the M-curve, the M-curve being the Malinauskas curve (and we need to think about that one), but it probably has more to do with Paul Keating's J-curve. This is really all about the J-curve that is taking place in the Labor Party—the J-curve being Jay, John or—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Jack.

Mr PENGILLY: —Jack; that's it. Well done; you've got it! Currently, a huge argument is going on in the Labor Party over just where the J-curve is going to lead them. I do not think we can expect any sense whatsoever about shopping hours in South Australia until Jay actually wins the J-curve and we can move forward. The member for Adelaide is quite correct and most appropriate in bringing this bill to the attention of the parliament. She is clearly listening to her constituents and businesspeople. I know the member for Adelaide respects shop workers; there is no question about that. However, if you pick up on the—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson interjecting:

Mr PENGILLY: The member for Croydon can have a crack in a minute; it is my turn. He can get up and speak in a minute. I will wait for his pearls of wisdom. The member for Fisher is quite right: it should all be about free trade. If a shop wants to open, it should be able to do so and, if it does not want to open, for whatever reason, that is fine. We need to move forward from where we are. The member for Adelaide has done a good job on this, and I will be interested in the comments made, and I will be really interested in hearing what the member for Croydon has to say. However, the J-curve is the thing that is stopping everything at the moment—Jay, John or Jack. I reckon Jay will win.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (10:53): I am very enthusiastically supporting the member for Adelaide in this. As a country person, I have for many, many years come down to Adelaide for all sorts of reasons. I do everything I can to do, as much shopping as I can, in my local area but, as we all know, there are things you have to come to Adelaide for. I think I can speak quite comfortably for the vast majority of rural and outback-based South Australians in saying that as much flexibility as possible with regard to the times you are able to shop in Adelaide is very, very important. When you are travelling anywhere from a couple of hours to potentially 12 hours to get to Adelaide for all sorts of various reasons, it is important that you can do your shopping with as much flexibility as possible.

The member for Adelaide has been very respectful in regard to religious holidays and also, very importantly, ANZAC Day. I think that attending an ANZAC Day dawn service, if you are physically able, is something that every single South Australian and Australian should do. I believe very firmly that, when you have done that—paid your respects and actively participated in the ANZAC Day ceremony in some way—how you choose to spend your afternoon should be entirely up to you. If you choose to spend it with your family or you choose to spend the afternoon in some other public holiday fashion, you should be able to do so. If you choose to go to the RSL and enjoy a few or many drinks with your mates at the RSL, that is terrific and, if you choose to go shopping, you should be able to do that as well.

The member for Adelaide, in many ways, represents a very difficult electorate and I think it is a huge credit to her that she has won that seat so resoundingly. She is always balancing the needs of people who live in the electorate, people who live outside the electorate but work in the electorate, and people who own and operate businesses in the electorate. To her credit, she works extremely hard and she is doing a wonderful job.

The way she has put this bill together covers all of those different groups that she tries to represent, while clearly her focus is the people on the electoral roll who actually reside in the electorate. But she has a very important responsibility to the other people who have a strong connection with the City of Adelaide as well. I wholeheartedly support her in this.

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (10:55): The reason I decided to put my hat into the ring to become a member of parliament was because I wanted to make changes, changes that are for the good of Adelaide and for the good of the state as a whole. For too long the government has been run by minority groups and unions and it is about time we actually started listening to the people who voted for us.

I have ideas on how we can improve our city and on how to help business and stimulate tourism, which will lead to jobs, and I will put forward the views of those whom I represent. I have consulted widely, and even whilst I was a candidate it was quite obvious that something needed to be done to invigorate the centre of our city, including the Rundle Mall tourist precinct. It seems ironic and ridiculous that Glenelg would be deemed a tourist precinct on the basis of the number of beds, the number of tourism facilities and the number of festivals, when Rundle Mall and the City of Adelaide win by far on every single criteria that you can look at on how you determine a tourism precinct.

I have consulted widely. I have doorknocked all of Rundle Mall. I have thousands of signatures of support. I have spoken to workers, to the Tourism Commission, to the Tourism Institute, to the Australian National Retailers Association, to Business SA, to shoppers, to residents and to general businesses and people throughout the state and, overwhelmingly, there is great support for this bill.

I have even spent a great deal of time with the SDA union in person and on the phone, and have rectified any of their issues. The only issue that has ever come up as to why the Labor Party would be against this is concern for the workers. As a former retail worker of six years in Rundle Mall at Myer, I am very aware of what it is to be a retail worker. Had it not been for the ability to work at Myer, I would not have been able to pay for my university degree. So I strongly suggest that there are people who want the extra hours, at double time, who do want to work. Why are we discriminating against people who actually want to work and pay for university degrees, or to have the choice?

I have met with all the store owners of the larger stores—Myer, David Jones and Harris Scarfe—the ones that the unions are particularly concerned with, albeit that the union specifically negotiates their EBA, so if they are concerned why don't they put it into the EBA? In my bill I have specifically stated, 'No worker can be forced to work.' I have specifically stated, 'No shop can be forced to open.' Undeniably, I am here to protect the rights of the worker. When Malinauskas said that the EBAs—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: That's Mr Malinauskas?

Ms SANDERSON: When Mr Malinauskas said that the EBAs are federal law so therefore are not protected by my state law, I suggested to him a sunset clause to prove that if, as he suspects, the heads of these stores are going to force workers with children at home who do not want to work on public holidays to work, I will withdraw this bill, because this is not about forcing people to work who do not want to work. This is about invigorating our city and opening up our doors on the days most likely to have tourists in the area.

Long weekends are when the country people come down for all their sporting carnivals, their shopping trips and to do all their jobs and chores in the city. Why would you shut the centre of your city on the very day when you can make the most money? Do we actually want the jobs to exist in the future or do we want the shops to shut down and everyone just shop on the internet? That is where we are heading if we do not open when the people are here to do the shopping—we will not have an industry. I ask that members opposite listen to the people they represent—the 30,000 in each of your 26 electorates, not the 26,500 members of the SDA union who are currently controlling your decisions. I am appalled that I am part of a parliament where people are not being represented.

Every group, including probably the group in the gallery now, and every age group of people I have toured through this house (which is a substantial amount) are 100 per cent in support of this bill, from young people to the elderly. Opening the shops creates not only a safer environment but also energy and invigoration. It links Rundle Mall to the very important North Terrace boulevard, where we have the Botanic Gardens, Ayers House Museum, the State Library, the State Museum, the Art Gallery, the Festival Centre, and all the different festivals in the area. This should go ahead and it is, to quote the Hon. Terry Stephens, 'commonsensical'.

The house divided on the second reading:

AYES (19)
Brock, G.G. Chapman, V.A. Evans, I.F.
Gardner, J.A.W. Goldsworthy, M.R. Hamilton-Smith, M.L.J.
Marshall, S.S. McFetridge, D. Pederick, A.S.
Pegler, D.W. Pengilly, M. Redmond, I.M.
Sanderson, R. (teller) Such, R.B. Treloar, P.A.
van Holst Pellekaan, D.C. Venning, I.H. Whetstone, T.J.
Williams, M.R.
NOES (24)
Atkinson, M.J. Bedford, F.E. Bignell, L.W.
Caica, P. Conlon, P.F. Foley, K.O.
Fox, C.C. Geraghty, R.K. Hill, J.D.
Kenyon, T.R. Key, S.W. Koutsantonis, A.
O'Brien, M.F. Odenwalder, L.K. Piccolo, T.
Portolesi, G. Rankine, J.M. Rau, J.R.
Sibbons, A.L. (teller) Snelling, J.J. Thompson, M.G.
Vlahos, L.A. Weatherill, J.W. Wright, M.J.
PAIRS (2)
Pisoni, D.G. Rann, M.D.

Majority of 5 for the noes.

Second reading thus negatived.

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