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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-12-04 Daily Xml
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Shop Trading Hours

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (15:36): It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We have officially ticked over into December and we now start the mad rush towards Christmas, the mad rush of working through your inbox, the rush to figure out what to buy and feed your family, friends and loved ones, and the rush of getting through all of this so that you can stop, reset, and enjoy time with your family and friends.

This is a common story for South Australians, including Tara, who is not only rushing to juggle Christmas preparations for her young family but also for the hundreds who will be walking through the doors of the retail store she works in. Tara will spend time helping mums, dads, grandparents, sisters and brothers pick the perfect gift for their loved ones. Tara will help bring joy to many this Christmas. Tara will work most weekends and late night shifts in the lead-up to Christmas, all in the hope that she will get time, time to bring joy to her family, time to not be on her feet. Simply, Tara would like to have the thing we all crave: time.

This will be the same story for most South Australian retail workers who work around the clock in the lead-up to Christmas Day to help others prepare for Christmas. Whether you are a teacher, an accountant, hairdresser, politician or retail worker, this is a busy time of year. However, unlike the teacher or the politician, retail workers will again, this year, be the ones missing out on watching the cricket. They will miss Christmas Day leftovers, and they will miss the most precious thing of all, time with their families.

Premier Steven Marshall and this government lost their short-lived battle to deregulate shop trading hours 24 hours, seven days a week in this state. They lost the battle to take away public holidays and they lost the battle to take away Boxing Day. However, the Liberal government decided to disregard the will of the parliament, decided to disregard the calls of hardworking South Australian small and medium businesses, and decided to disregard the calls of over 50,000 South Australian retail workers.

The Treasurer has claimed he does not believe in economic modelling, but he has been out and about quoting the Commonwealth Bank report that looks into Boxing Day trading in South Australia. You would be right to think there is nothing wrong with doing that, a Treasurer quoting from a report written by one of the big four banks, the Commonwealth Bank, but the report was commissioned by—you guessed it—the government.

It gets worse. This Liberal government used taxpayers' money to compare 2017 and 2018 Boxing Day sales. Not surprisingly, the report found Boxing Day expenditure was 42 times greater in the suburbs compared with 2017. This is hardly surprising, given that large suburban stores were not open on Boxing Day in 2017; the Boxing Day sales were held on 27 December.

Perhaps if the government had compared the 26 December 2018 sales with the 27 December sales, it would have shown that workers having a two-day public holiday does not have an impact on Christmas sales. Conveniently, neither the Premier nor the Treasurer have ever reflected on the fact that retail sales were higher in 2017—a year without suburban Boxing Day sales. As this government's commissioned report is not glowing, I am surprised that they actually refer to it. It is made clear throughout the report that:

…there is a heavy decline for regional SA resident visitation and expenditure on 2018 Boxing Day, while figures show that retailers in the City had a small increase in customers, there was a decline in expenditure.

Small businesses were slashed by big national businesses opening in the suburbs for the first time. The regions missed out on visitors as families were unable to travel on their only two-day public holiday. Sales were down and workers missed out on time. This outcome was predicted by the industry, predicted by unions and predicted by the Labor Party.

The Treasurer made claims in the paper this week that the industry players are on the move towards his direction for trading hours in South Australia. I would be very surprised if he could say who they were.

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