SHOPPING HOURS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 184, 5 August 1936, Page 18

SHOPPING HOURS.

STRICTER CONTROL. AN INGENIOUS PENALTY. AUTOMATIC « SELLERS." (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 30.

One of the last efforts of Parliament toward the close of the session was to put through a new Factories and Shops Act. The main object of the amending clauses is to prevent any selling after hours, and to achieve this end an elaborate series of regulations has been introduced. Every shopkeeper in a shopping district must register his shop, paying a fee which varies with the number of employees. Only shops in isolated parts of the State are exempt from registration. but the Minister may grant exemption on personal grounds when the shopk-eeper is a widow or an old or disabled person, or where premises occupied by the shopkeeper are already registered as a factory. The Minister of Labour has explained that the Industrial Commission is empowered to order a shopkeeper, upon the third conviction for after-hour selling, to observe an earlier closing hour for a period determined by the gravity of the offence. This ingenious penalty should certainly induce shopkeepers to keep an eye both on the law and on the clock.

Special attention is paid by the Act to the sale of tohaeeo and cigarettes for which a license is required; and the penalty for an offence under this clause may range as high as £20. Moreover, an attempt is to be made to control more effectually tlie sale of goods through automatic machines. Every such machine must be registered and stamped for identification by the Department. Penalties are attached to the selling of goods through these machines after the hours fixed for the sale of such goods by shopkeepers. For instance a tobacconist must close his shop on certain days at 7 p.m.; therefore, the sale of cigarettes through any automatic machine connected with his shop must cease at that hour. Altogether the Act is an interesting contribution to our commercial legislation and it seems to meet with general approval.