Page 4067 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 17 November 2015
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However, for businesses to have to meet the wage costs associated with 14 public holidays, when other jurisdictions only have 11 or 12, is a significant burden. It will impact on their capacity to employ people and open on public holidays.
As this holiday falls on a Sunday, it won’t affect the working week, but it will erode business profits, particularly for those in tourism and hospitality.
It is those industries that will be hit the most. It is the small businesses, the family operations, those that only employ a small number of people but try to do their part in creating jobs, creating opportunity and creating wealth for people in our community. To put it into perspective, the Chief Minister has said on occasion here, “Look, if a restaurant or a cafe wants to open on a public holiday, so be it for them, but they have the opportunity to institute a surcharge.” Canberra is a well-off and fairly affluent city, and a surcharge for those of us that choose to go out or dine out is something we may be willing to accept. But many businesses do not have that luxury. I look at the retail sector in the ACT. So many businesses that operate in retail do so in large shopping malls. They are required as a stipulation of their leases that they open on every trading day.
The implementation of another public holiday particularly at Easter means it is going to be more attractive for people to travel. I do not think any of us begrudge that, but the unintended consequences are that there are going to be less people potentially in our shopping malls. These businesses are going to be required to open and pay penalty rates or, as we are seeing more and more often, the owners will choose to work the business themselves and give the staff the day off simply because they cannot afford to pay the wage costs.
For these sorts of businesses in retail that means there is no ability to implement a surcharge. If they do open their doors and they are open for business, if a product is any dearer on a Sunday to what it is on a Wednesday or a Thursday or any other day of the week, people will not buy it. Retail in this town is already on a hiding to nothing when you compare it against online marketing. The advent of online marketing has been great to give consumers choice and opportunity, but what we forget is that our bricks and mortar establishments have suffered as a result of this, and yet another policy change is making it harder and harder for these businesses to operate.
I have spoken to a number of small businesses about this change and what it means to them, and what they have been doing recently on public holidays given the tough economic position that they are in is that they are running the risk of jeopardising their tenancy positions in malls and closing their doors on public holidays because they fear the penalty they are liable for under their tenancy is less than the bottom-line loss that they will face if they do open their doors and do hire some staff under the penalty rates.
It is prudent that, as the Business Chamber suggests, we have a discussion to draw a line in the sand and say 14 public holidays—which is where we are at at the moment—is enough. If we do not like where they are allocated, let us look at
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