An event happened earlier this month that sent a lot of people away with unhappy memories of their visit to Sydney. One of the many cruise ships that visit this port had the unpleasant experience of choosing Sunday as the day of a visit and for a few glorious hours hordes of international tourists came ashore with brimming wallets - to experience the joy of this " world city " !
What they found was a vista of shuttered restaurants and closed shops. The fact that our employment laws are still stuck in the distant 1950's is causing the Sydney scene to retreat. The fact that employees working weekend hours have to be paid a loading of twenty-five percent on Saturdays - and fifty percent on Sundays - simply makes opening the doors unprofitable.
We are a land of powerful trade unions who have a big influence on government policies - and clearly the unions just don't get it ! Penalty rates belong to an era when the laws prevented supermarkets selling red meat on Sundays. The reason was that it was considered unfair competition with butchers shops - which only traded on a five and a half day week. The absurdity of the situation was that chicken could be freely sold - and the ban only applied to red meat.
No hardware could be legally sold on a Sunday either, but such a raft of stupidity has long gone - and yet we are still stuck with these crazy wage loadings despite the world having evolved into a 24/7 trading mode.
The sad thing is that we have an unemployment rate of about 5.6% and vast numbers of people are being offered far less hours than they need to earn a decent living. Dump those loadings and there would be an incentive for longer trading hours and a lot more jobs offering. We actually have restrictive legislation preventing employers from giving jobs to the people who would gladly accept them.
We spend public money advertising Australia to people overseas as a nice place to visit - and then we send home a whole ship load of tourists to spread the word that Sydney is a " Hick town " that closes the shutters on weekends.
It seems that the unions are the obstacle. They stand squarely between the people who want to run a flourishing business and make money - and a vast number of people who need a job and would be quite willing to work for ordinary rates of pay during weekends.
To Sydney's shame - our " world city " status is on the line !
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