The Australian National Retailers’ Association (ANRA) has welcomed the recommendation to fully deregulate trading hours in Western Australia – revealed in the Economic Regulation Authority’s draft report into microeconomic reform today.

Margy Osmond, ANRA CEO, said today’s endorsement is an encouraging sign for the sector.

“Today’s recommendations are clearly sensible and show an understanding of the value of retail to the economy and its capacity to create jobs,” Osmond said.

“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.

“The deregulation of trading hours in Western Australia will enable consumers to benefit from the convenience of being able to shop when they want to.

“We are quickly losing market share to overseas foreign retailers and this will come at a cost to Australian jobs.

“Now it’s up to the Western Australian government to decide if the state is open for business or not,” said Osmond.

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 will continue its dialogue regarding retail trading hours with the WA government and will make a submission to the final report in May.