THE State Government has sought legal advice about interpretations of the Shop Trading Hours Act as speculation grows it may take action to challenge whether Millicent businesses are compliant with regulations.
South Australian Treasurer Rob Lucas has flagged examples in the region which could be tested, such as Millicent IGA excluding the cigarette counter from the 400 square metre calculations.
On the last parliamentary session of 2018, Mr Lucas said the State Government was clarifying the interpretation of the act with Crown law.
Mr Lucas said the government had started the process to enforce the act, but conceded a definitive determination would only be resolved by a court of law.
“The government will have its legal advice, retailers may well have their own legal advice, which disagrees with the government’s legal advice,” he said.
“Until it gets into a court and a judge decides one way or another what he or she believes the silly, antiquated, outdated laws that we have ultimately mean as to who is right and who is wrong.”
Mr Lucas drew attention to Millicent IGA’s interpretation of the 400 square metre calculation, which he said saw the store bringing fridges and freezers in from the wall in an endeavour to escape the requirement.
Mr Lucas said Millicent IGA, along with other retailers, had also sought to exclude the cigarette counter from the calculation.
“Some of the other lawyers are arguing because the cigarette counter is not displayed all the time and you can only see it when you open the door, it should not be counted,” he said.
“To us non-lawyers, that does seem to be a long bow.”
Labor parliamentarian Clare Scriven slammed Mr Lucas for taking legal action against local retailers rather than supporting them.
She said Mr Lucas had advised parliament he would not be providing legal information or guidelines to assist retailers before sending SafeWork SA to Millicent to take this action.
“Mr Lucas must immediately issue clear guidelines to these local small businesses so they know what is needed, instead of dangling threats of legal action over their heads,” she said.
However, Mr Lucas said it was impossible to issue clear guidelines “because the silly, antiquated laws are such a bloody mess”.
“Until some of these provisions are determined by a court of law, you have a different version of what the law does and does not mean,” he said.
He questioned whether Ms Scriven would be supportive of large retailers opening their store outside of the trading regulations.
“My challenge to Clare and her gang is should we ignore it if Coles or Woolworths opened 24 hours a day in Millicent contrary to the law?” he said.
“I suspect they would not be ignoring it.
“There is a process and the law is the law.
“There is a simple solution to all of this.
“Actually reform the outdated, silly, antiquated laws and allow people to trade when they want to.”
