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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1358 ..

MS HORODNY (10.51): Mr Speaker, we are very disappointed that the Government has given up supporting small shops in the ACT, and that is what this issue is about, basically. It has never been just about restricting trading hours; it has been about addressing the domination of the retail market by the national supermarket chains and letting local businesses have a fair share of consumer spending. The Government has clearly failed in this task, as did the previous Labor Government. We always thought that the Government's response to the problems faced by small retailers in this town did not go far enough. The real problems faced by small retailers, which include oversupply of retail space, competition from large supermarkets in the group centres, the relatively high rents and costs faced by small retailers and the tenancy disputes with shopping centre managers, were never seriously addressed by the Government.

We supported the Government on its retail trading hours, because we thought that at least it did a bit for small retailers. But now the Government has given up even this small amount of support, for very weak reasons. If we go back and look at what the Government said it would do in monitoring the effectiveness of the Trading Hours Act, in its response to the Planning and Environment Committee's inquiry into retail policy measures, the Government said that it had undertaken to provide to the Commonwealth's National Competition Council the outcomes of monitoring of a number of factors from the time the Act came into force, including turnovers in town centres, group centres and local centres; the impact on growth and retention of businesses, other than supermarkets in the centres; the employment levels at all centres, encompassing full-time, part-time and casual employment; a major survey of attendance at local and other centres, to ascertain buying habits; and, particularly, any changes that may be attributable to the trading hours regime. The Government also said that it would conduct an open review of the legislation by June 1998 to demonstrate whether the benefits of the trading hours restrictions outweigh the costs.

However, what has happened now, after only eight months of operation, is that the Government has caved in, without undertaking any of the comprehensive analysis that it said it would do. The survey results that it has issued are very superficial, focus on community attitudes only and do not address any of the economic factors. The ABS survey of ACT shopping preferences issued in October last year is not very useful either, as it presents only a snapshot of shopping behaviour in October; and that was only one month after the trading hours restrictions were introduced.

Even when we look at the limited data presented by the Government, it is certainly not clear that the trading hours restrictions have not worked. The Government acknowledges that one in 20 people, or 5 per cent, had adjusted their shopping habits from town centre supermarkets to local centres. The Government thought this amount was not enough, but I am sure that a struggling shopkeeper in a local centre would think it was, if the increase in trade meant the difference between continuing on or closing down. Given that only 3 per cent of shoppers use local centres for their main shopping and only 41 per cent of shoppers use local centres for convenience shopping, a 5 per cent change in shopping habits across the ACT would have a major impact on local shops.

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