Shopping hours bill ‘farce’

Press, 11 December 1989, Page 7

Shopping hours bill ‘farce’

PA Wellington The Opposition attacked the Government on Saturday for introducing a bill to Parliament to pave the way for Sunday shopping. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, said it was a farce to introduce legislation to allow Sunday shopping when it was already a reality. The Government should have introduced the bill six months ago to allow interested groups to have a say on it. “Instead the Government has panicked and is now repealing the existing law in a contemptible way,” Mr Bolger said. The Opposition supported liberalised shop trading and would have introduced an act allowing'

it “in the proper due process” years ago, Mr Bolger said. For years the Government had opposed liberalising shop trading hours but had suddenly “torn up the present law” because the Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, had realised the \ Commonwealth Games were less than two months away, Mr Bolger said. In introducing the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Bill, the Minister of Labour, Ms Clark, said it would help New Zealand to earn more from tourism. It would give consumers and retailers much more freedom to do their business at times convenient to both. The present legislation was unfair, cumbersome and riddled with anomalies, she said.

• Shop workers need legislative protections to avoid being exploited, the national secretary of the Distribution Workers Federation, Mr Paul Kimble, says. The federation represents 30,000 retail workers affected by legislation which will amend opening hours. Mr Kimble said the union welcomed the Government’s commitment to securing protections, but said they must be tight and should be incorporated in legislation and awards. They needed to cover areas such as the rights of existing workers, the question of avoidance of compulsion to work, security and transport. “Protection is a crucial issue,” he said.