Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-11-06 Daily Xml

Contents

Shop Trading Hours

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:32): Final supplementary: the Treasurer mentioned in his original answer that the exemption for this current Boxing Day will be monitored. Who will be doing the monitoring and how will that be monitored?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:32): I will be personally engaged in monitoring, but SafeWork SA obviously are the agency of government that monitor—there will be public monitoring, clearly. In terms of the information we collect, I am sure there will be publicly available information from traders in relation to whether or not the government's view is correct—that is, that large numbers of people want to shop on Boxing Day—or whether the view of the union bosses and the Labor Party is correct in that there is no demand for Boxing Day trading in the suburbs. If the Labor Party and the union bosses are correct and no-one turns up on Boxing Day in the suburbs, I suspect that a lot of the traders and those who might support it might cool a little bit in relation to their particular position on this issue.

From the government's viewpoint, we are prepared to make that judgement. Ultimately, as the minister responsible and as the person who has the sole power to issue the exemption, I will need to make the judgements in relation to what information is available. I am very happy to accept any information that the Leader of the Opposition or the union bosses who control the Labor caucus are prepared to forward to the government in terms of how they see the merits or otherwise of Boxing Day trade this coming Boxing Day. We will collect all the information that we can and, ultimately, it will rest on my shoulders to make a judgement about the success or otherwise of Boxing Day trading in the suburbs.