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A nursery chain flouting the law in protest at Easter trading restrictions has promised further disobedience after being fined yesterday.
Oderings Nurseries says it is undeterred by a total of $2970 in fines and court costs it must pay as punishment for opening nine of its stores on Good Friday.
The Christchurch-based chain has been fined by the courts every year since about 1995 for the same offence, and plans to open its stores again next Easter.
The law requires all businesses to be closed on Good Friday unless they meet criteria for exemption that include supply of essential goods or meeting tourist demand. Nurseries and garden centres have been a contentious omission.
Oderings director Darryn Odering said garden centres had had the right to open any day prior to 1992, when the trading laws were liberalised, and garden centres were omitted from businesses given exemptions.
"We want to know why we can't open now. It's the best time of the year for us - it's when a lot of people do their planting on the long weekends," Mr Odering said. "I don't think there is any political will to change it, so I don't think they will."
National MP Jacqui Dean put forward a member's bill this year to try to change the law, but it failed. She called the existing law a "dog's breakfast".
"I have every sympathy for [Oderings] because there are anomalies within the law, and there have been a number of attempts to change the law which have been defeated."
The defiance of the unions was preventing the Government from supporting any change, Ms Dean said.
Department of Labour inspectors plan to continue to prosecute businesses according to the law.
