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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2264 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The inquiry becomes a heap of nonsense. Knock the Bill off. I dare you; knock the Bill off if you are fair dinkum. I dare you. Do not persist with this nonsense of an inquiry; it is too late. Everybody knows that both you and the Liberals are running for cover on this issue. This will not cloud the issue. There will be a full and better understanding of your position from the Greens Party and your association with the Liberals on this issue.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, this motion deserves to be defeated, as does the Bill this afternoon.

Amendment agreed to.

MS TUCKER (12.42): There seems to be a misunderstanding by Labor and other members that we really are very uncomfortable with what is happening here today. If you think back you will remember that we have been talking about the issue of regulation of trading hours for some time, and we have done a lot of research on it. We do believe that there are very strong links formed with trading hours. This has been proved. I will just read a small excerpt from one of the many thoughtful analyses of this. It is called "What hours should we trade, `Mr SuperStore'?: A review of the 1994 Australian experience" and it appeared in the well-respected journal Urban Policy and Research.

Mr Moore: But you are leaving superstores open. This legislation does not do it.

MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, we would like to get through this quickly. Could you make members be a little more orderly? I am speaking about trading hours, okay? It says:

Trading hours deregulation is primarily an application of the economic rationalist ideology to "when" and "where" consumers do their shopping. There is a fundamental interdependence between time, location in space and retail ownership. Therefore, the implementation of this policy is having ramifications for the three tiers of Government in Australia. The whole issue on a State level appears to be apolitical because of the impact that a large retailer can have on the State economy and the promotion of the individual's freedom to shop is attractive to voters. In NSW, the RASTT model suggests that the trading hours should have only been extended by a maximum of five hours. This would have avoided a whole range of social, legal and economic issues now facing Local, State and Federal Governments. There is some hope that the message of complexity about this issue is finally being received by State Governments -

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