The Australian National Retailers’ Association (ANRA) welcomed the recommendation of the Economic Regulation Authority’s draft report to fully deregulate trading hours in Western Australia.
“Today’s recommendations are clearly sensible and show an understanding of the value of retail to the economy and its capacity to create jobs," said ANRA CEO Margy Osmond. “There’s no doubt flexible trading hours benefit employees, consumers and the economy. Technology and the changing demands of shoppers means consumers want more choice."
Deregulation of trading hours is expected to enable consumers to benefit from the convenience of being able to shop when they want to. Osmond said this is a good move as retailers in the country are losing market share to overseas foreign retailers.
From a national perspective ANRA seeks a degree of alignment in retail trading hours across all states and territories, so that trading hours are unrestricted in all parts of the country with exceptions of Christmas Day, Good Friday and the morning of ANZAC Day.
ANRA said it will continue its dialogue regarding retail trading hours with the Western Australian government and will make a submission to the final report in May.
(Source: Retail In Asia)