The offensive reason you can’t shop at night

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The offensive reason you can’t shop at night

By Zach Hope
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An old trope, now in dwindling circulation, signifies a certain Brisbane backwardness. I last heard it outside a suburban Woolworths. It was 6.03pm on a Sunday and the shutters had just come down on Dan Torley’s vision of a chicken curry.

Torley, a 19-year-old apprentice boilermaker, had forgotten that the government forces Coles, Woolworths and Aldi to close early on Sundays, but only in the suburbs it deems unworthy. Supermarkets in the CBD, New Farm, Hamilton and on the Gold Coast can stay open ’til 9.

A suburban Woolworths closes at 6pm on the dot on a Sunday.

A suburban Woolworths closes at 6pm on the dot on a Sunday.Credit: Brisbane Times

“I guess I’ll order out, spend more money – probably pizza or something,” he says. “There’ll be nothing for lunch tomorrow, either.”

His mate, Tim, chimes in with the kicker: “Brisbane is just a big country town.” And there it is.

The productivity commission declared more than a decade ago that the regulation of retail trading hours was an “institutionalised and rigid form of non-price competition”. Yet in Queensland, we persist.

Victoria, NSW, Tasmania, ACT and the NT deregulated long ago, allowing non-liquor retailers to choose their own hours (excluding public holidays). Even the Woolworths in the remote town of Katherine stays open until 10pm on Sundays.

So why do big department stores (Big W and Target, for example) and supermarkets in suburbia have to shut earlier than in other parts of Brisbane? The answer is rather offensive.

The rationale is that tourists from modern cities have come to expect extended trading hours. Consequently, where they go, so too goes (modestly) later trading.

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The result is a series of state-ordained “tourist areas” considered more important to the image of Brisbane than the suburban enclaves of hillbillies presumed to know no better of how others live.

The LNP’s 2022 response supporting Port Douglas’s request to liberalise its trading hours put it bluntly: “Tourists, typically from large metropolitan areas, are accustomed to extended trading hours as part of their daily routine. Therefore, it is completely understandable for tourist areas like Port Douglas to support extended trading to cater for [their] expectations.”

‘Car and caravan dealerships have to stay closed on Sundays. This means you can buy a boat from a dealer, but not a vehicle to tow it.’

The system in Brisbane allows for stunning absurdities. The Coles at the Chermside shopping centre must close at 6pm on Sundays, but the McDonald’s directly across Hamilton Road opens 24 hours.

Then there are car and caravan dealerships, which have to stay closed on Sundays. This means you can buy a boat from a dealer, but not a vehicle to tow it.

Recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry into the very issue of trading hours last year “simplified” Queensland’s regulations, but they remain a farcical tangle of zones, exemptions and demographics.

In 20 regional towns, supermarkets and big department stores are not allowed to open at all on Sundays. Another 24 areas have the same restrictions as suburban Brisbane, but, inexplicably, have to close three hours earlier on Saturdays.

In case that was too simple, the section of Toowoomba visited by southerners can open earlier from Monday to Friday than its surrounding neighbourhoods for Queenslanders.

In Brisbane, supermarkets and department stores in the government’s favoured suburbs can open from 6am to 10pm from Monday to Friday, but in other areas they have to operate within 7am and 9pm.

The airport Woollies can stay open 24/7 because it’s on Commonwealth land, so the Queensland restrictions do not apply.

The state’s rules are couched as protecting small businesses, which is a noble aim. It is also a path of meagre political resistance. What minister wants to go in to bat for the billion-dollar supermarket chains and retail giants?

But deregulating trading hours is about consumer choice. Restrictions based on suburban profiles demean swaths of Brisbane. They also funnel residents through fast-food shops or, more perniciously, into politician-preferred modes of consumption that may be unfavourable to lifestyles and incomes.

These days, state government promotional material likes to lean into new descriptors like “New World City”. But in some issues, we remain stubbornly backward. Is it not just a little unbecoming? After all, Brisbane is not just a big country town.

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