Editorial: We all profit from Easter shopping ban

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is no longer actively prosecuting businesses that choose to open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

It’s a welcome break from commercialism and a line in the sand for societal sanity.

Customarily, retailers who flout the Easter trading laws have been content to quietly pocket their profits. But this year was different. After the weekend, several retailers lambasted the law that forces the closure of most shops on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

In this, they were supported by Retail New Zealand, whose chief executive, Mark Johnston, said the law did not "make sense" in 2015.

Clearly, something has emboldened the retailers. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is no longer actively prosecuting businesses that choose to open. It now waits for complaints from the public and in the vast majority of cases issues a warning, rather than pursuing a $1000 fine.

Retail NZ has interpreted this as the ministry's response to increasing public support for shops being able to be open.

Perhaps it also has something to do with retailers' view that the law is not only outdated but is filled with exemptions that render it meaningless. In some cases, they have a point. It makes little sense for people to be able to shop in Queenstown or Taupo, but not in Wanaka or Rotorua, which attract just as many tourists.

And perhaps, most tellingly, the retailers have come to believe that the popular demand for shopping over Easter has reached the point where they are guaranteed strong support for any campaign to overturn the law. A representative of Kings Plant Barn tapped into this when he noted that "we were very, very busy".

This is the crux of the issue. If there is to be a law change, it must be done with public assent. But that is a major stumbling block for the retailers.

In their favour, religious observance no longer carries great weight, a reflection in part of an increasingly multicultural society. Only a minority faithfully observe religious occasions and on that basis would rail against shopping on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day. t

But for many others, including agnostics and atheists, those three days are a haven from seemingly rampant commercialism. Theirs is not an argument built on logic. It is all to do with emotion and the need for some important time out, most likely to relax with family and friends.

It recognises that it cannot be a huge hardship for retailers to pause their activities for just three days a year, with a half-day on Anzac Day, and that it cannot really be torture for members of the public to attend to things other than shopping on those days. The law, after all, ensures they can buy the likes of baby formula and pet food, necessities which could not be put off for another day.

Further, it has been eased in cases of clear need. Garden centres, for example, are allowed to open on Easter Sunday for those keen for a last round of gardening before winter.

Retailers who want to open over Easter are really advocating an unfettered freedom of choice. They want to open their shops when they like, and want people to be able to shop when they like.

But they are yet to demonstrate a need for this. From the standpoint of societal sanity, it is to be hoped they never can.