Dialogue: Open-all-hours decision a choice of shop-owners

Legislation regularising shop trading hours is not only a victory for common sense but a triumph for MMP, writes PATRICIA SCHNAUER*.

There are at least two great things about the proposed bill to rationalise shop trading hours.

First, the public can truly see MMP working. Politicians caused the countless anomalies and geographic discrimination that have plagued this legislation for years. Only politicians can put it right.

Labour, the major coalition partner, has shown courage by crossing the political boundaries and voting with a bill introduced to Parliament by Act, a minor centre-right party.

Secondly, it is a victory for common sense. The present law permits garden centres to sell plants on Easter Sunday but prevents other shops, such as the local bookshop, from opening and selling. The proposed law will remedy that anomaly.

Shop trading hours laws arose from an era when Parliament saw itself as a major regulator of economic activity. Some politicians still adhere to this view. They believe a collectivist approach is best, that Parliament should decide when we can open and close our own shops.

That view says: thou shall not open your shop on the days Parliament decides.

Those who oppose the collectivist approach say that shop-owners should be given the responsibility to decide when to open and close their shops. It is an issue of personal responsibility and decision-making.

Suggestions that shops will be forced to trade against their will to maintain commercial competitiveness are ill-founded. All shops can now open on Sundays. Walk down the main street of any suburban town and see how many shops are open for business. In many areas the answer is few.

But importantly, it is the shop-owners who decided to close. They have not closed because of some parliamentary decree, but because, as individuals, they decided not to open.

Originally, the legislation presumed that all shops should close on weekends and public holidays. Pressures arose for two exemptions, one based on geographic area and one based on the type of goods sold by any individual shop. Exemptions followed, including those for petrol stations and garden centres. Also shops in some tourist areas, such as Taupo, could trade on those restricted days.

But if you did not have a geographic exemption, you were in trouble. Consequently, shops could be prosecuted for opening and trading in Queen St on Easter Sunday but got off scot-free for trading in Parnell Rd.

In 1990 Helen Clark, as the Minister of Labour, and as part of the exiting of controls on business activities, proposed a full abolition of the existing laws covering shop trading hours.

This bill was called the Shop Trading Repeal Act. In its original form it did, as its name implied, repeal all restrictions on when shops could open and close.

Then entered the political process. MPs changed the bill during its final stages with little or no understanding of what they were really doing.

Consequently, a bill introduced to repeal restrictions on shop-owners and opening hours imposed new restrictions on garden centres, which until that time had been free to open 365 days a year.

Our shop trading laws truly provide a microcosm of everything that can go wrong with law-making.

During the 1990s at least three private members' bills tried to improve our shop trading laws. When introducing a bill that virtually mirrored that presented to Parliament by Helen Clark in 1990, I was politically naive enough to believe that Labour might support it. After all, the public had signalled by voting for MMP that it wanted a new political era in which politicians stopped creating artificial barriers between themselves and put the common good first.

I was wrong. Labour and the National-New Zealand First Coalition voted against my bill. When it was reintroduced in 1999, Labour again rejected it, but the majority voted to send it to a select committee.

It remained in that select committee with little action for 18 months until Labour tried to throw it out and not invite public submissions.

This was defeated as the Greens joined other parties to comprise a majority vote for the public having a say.

The Government then adopted a band-aid approach to the problem. Instead of dealing with the issue fully, it rushed legislation through Parliament at the 11th hour before the last Easter recess and then addressed only part of the issue - garden centres opening on Easter Sunday.

That legislation failed to recognise the changed nature of shopping and its recreational aspects.

Today, hundreds of stores have a garden centre or the selling of plants as part of their general retail area. Just as we once shopped at supermarkets and could not buy wine on Sundays, last Easter Sunday people shopped at hardware stores and bought plants, but could not buy a hammer and nails to make garden boxes.

Full details of the final bill to regularise shop trading hours are still unknown, but Labour appears to have adopted a sensible and practical approach to our shop trading hours.

Hopefully, it will resolve this issue once and for all. It is a vote for common sense. It is MMP truly working at last.

* Patricia Schnauer, a former Act MP, is an Auckland barrister and solicitor.