Put your hand up if want to go back to the six o’clock swill. What would you watch if your TV reverted to the test pattern at 5.30pm? And if you wanted to go out for tea on Saturday and found the last orders were taken at 5.59pm, would that kill your social life?
No-one wants to go back to the 1960s. No-one is calling for 24-hour trading for all retailers either, but deregulation is desperately needed for Adelaide’s shopping precincts.
Former treasurer Tom Koutsantonis has begun comparing the Liberal Government’s plans to deregulate shop trading hours to the ill-fated bank tax, and claiming Labor’s opposition is payback for the $370 million levy’s defeat. The two aren’t even in the same ball park.
Why would anyone want to stymie economic growth? Or prevent our students and casual workers trying to make ends meet from picking up extra shifts? We know thousands of people will gain extra hours through deregulation.
Comparing deregulation with an unpopular tax penalising mum and dad investors, harming international investment and tourism opportunities and putting jobs at risk is like comparing apples with Easter eggs.
Polling on both issues couldn’t be clearer. A Galaxy poll conducted last July found 80 per cent believed a bank tax was “a tax on everyone, and simply absorbing a tax is unrealistic”. On the other side of the ledger, UniSA’s Institute for Choice found three quarters of South Australians wanted deregulated shop trading hours.
It’s insincere and mischievous to say people don’t want deregulated shop trading hours, when research proves they do. It’s petty politics. The state needs upper house consensus and bipartisanship, not just games and obfuscation in retaliation for an unpopular tax’s defeat.
Mount Barker could hardly be considered a country town, but you can buy salad dressing at 9.30pm on Sunday night if you really want to. If Mount Barker can support deregulation, along with Port Pirie, Mount Gambier, Renmark and Ceduna, Adelaide is looking increasingly antiquated by not allowing retailers to open later on weekends, earlier on Sundays and on public holidays.
Deregulation wouldn’t mean holding a gun to the head of the local newsagency to open round the clock, it’s simply offering the choice to open and close when they want.
Deregulation would allow consumers to try on clothes or shoes in a suburban bricks and mortar store on the June Labour Day holiday, rather than resorting to online behemoths.
Deregulation would give more hours to teenage kids wanting to work in the local hardware store after school, or for the underemployed and casuals. The more people are working, the less they depend on the welfare system, and the more disposable income they have to spend. It’s a positive economic cycle.
And deregulation means tourists can wander through the streets of Adelaide and shop if they want to at night, dispelling our ghost town image.
Let’s wake up Adelaide, and let’s support deregulation.
This article was originally published in the South Australian Business Journal on Tuesday 27 March 2018.
Image: Shoppers in Rundle Mall (AAP Image/Brenton Edwards)