Kelly questions retail referendum

The man who put Western Australia on the path – nearly 20-years ago – to adopting Australia’s most liberal retail trading hours says the forthcoming two-pronged Gallop referendum is incorrectly worded.

Former WA chief industrial commissioner Eric Kelly, who headed a statewide retail trading hours inquiry during 1984-86, has told WA Business News that voters only need to be asked one question at the election day referendum.

And the question is: “Should retailers be free to decide for themselves when to trade?”

The double-barrelled Gallop approach ensures regulations will survive into the distant future, whereas the suggested 11-word Kelly formula, if backed by most voters, would mean removal of regulation of the retail sector forever.

Western Australian shoppers would at long last be free to buy whenever sellers opted to open their premises’ doors.

Only the Kelly wording, therefore, has any real or lasting meaning.

An AC Nielsen survey commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry early last year showed that, of 706 people interviewed across WA, 73 per cent backed shops being permitted to open on week nights and 65 per cent favoured allowing all shops to trade on Sundays.

Dr Gallop’s wording, on the other hand, simply tinkers with a perennial issue on which politicians fear taking a reformist approach, thereby ensuring regulated trading hours remain on WA’s political and business landscapes.

The historic April 1986 Kelly Report recommended WA adopt full deregulation of trading hours from July 1 1993, while Dr Gallop seeks to introduce weeknight shopping and six hours of Sunday trading.

If the Burke Labor Government – which commissioned Mr Kelly in 1984 to inquire into the on-again-off-again issue – or the Dowding, Lawrence or both Court coalition governments, had heeded his advice, WA would have blazed a trail in retail trading nationally.

Instead, WA failed to qualify for $11.3 million this year since the Gallop Government forfeited National Competition payments available for implementing liberalising reforms.

Mr Kelly’s report also envisaged an interim Retail Trade Tribunal (RTT) that would oversee, for a five-year adjustment period, any unforeseen outcomes as the State’s retail sector moved towards full deregulation.

Under the liberalising Kelly plan the RTT would have reported, in writing, to State Parliament in July 1992, “and unless both Houses of Parliament in that year resolved otherwise all trading hours limitations to cease from 1 July 1993”.

Mr Kelly said he had recommended the creation of the interim RTT so that government was removed from tinkering with trading hours, which meant politicians could no longer be lobbied behind closed doors by various retailing pressure groups trying to get a jump on competitors and inconveniencing shoppers.

The RTT would have assessed the impact of full deregulation to protect retailers from unfair practices.

It would have been empowered to issue ‘special orders’ to combat predatory business practices that may have emerged.

“As long as we have regulated trading hours governments will be subjected to lobbying and other sectional interest pressures to dabble in this issue,” Mr Kelly told WA Business News.

“The forthcoming referendum is simply a response and reaction to such pressures.

“Once communities institute full deregulation such pressures are automatically removed; they wither away, because there’s no longer any need for them.

“Shopping is an absolutely harmless activity – we all need to do it – so the idea of someone being punished for selling something at a particular time is outrageous.”

A letter Mr Kelly attached to his report to the then industrial relations minister, Peter Dowding, said: “The proposals I have made are those which I think will, for most in the short run and for all in the long run, be best for retailers, employees, consumers and the State.

“I say that notwithstanding my belief that they will be received with less than universal acclaim.

“Despite that I am confident that once the dust has settled deregulated shopping hours will be as popular here as they are in other places where they exist.

“I have given the most anxious thought to the many difficult questions which were inherent in this inquiry.”

The Kelly inquiry attracted nearly 600 written submissions and heard evidence in all major regional centres.

He also investigated retailing legislation and practices in the US, Canada, Sweden and the UK.

“In each of these countries I met with government people administering retailing, unionists involved in this sector and retailers,” he said.

“The United States does not regulate retailing and union leaders there are horrified at the thought of retailers being told by governments when they can or cannot trade.

“American union leaders and unionists want retailers to maximise their profits so employees get a slice of a bigger cake.”

Mr Kelly said the worst outcome of WA not having adopted his full deregulation recommendation was not that there hadn’t been progress in the deregulation direction, but rather that the progress that has eventuated has been made in an ad hoc manner.

“Government has been inching towards what I recommended but in such an ad hoc manner that retailers have been unable to properly plan for change,” he said.

“I believed five years was adequate time for all retailers to have been able to make the necessary adjustments to a fully deregulated market.”

Mr Kelly said he’s never regretted recommending that WA adopt fully deregulated retailing.

In fact, the more political lobbying and party intrigue he sees in this area, the more convinced he is that the advice he gave in 1986 was soundly based.