Editorial: Demand dictates opening hours

In days of yore, when John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress was to be found in every home, commerce bowed to the dictates of religious observance. Trading ground to a halt on Sundays and various other occasions deemed to be sacred. Today, however, Bunyan's Puritan outlook has been consigned to history and progress lies with the trader. Gradually, the hours and days available for shopping have been extended. And, remorselessly, pressure is being applied for further progress.

This year, garden centres gained the right to open on Easter Sunday. That alone did not satisfy the National Party. It wanted to widen the definition of a garden centre to include other shops. Almost inevitably, the relaxation sparked a chorus from another group of retailers - booksellers - for the same right. Progress, they said, demanded that if people could buy plants and spades they must also be able to buy books.

Logically, of course, they are right. Stopping the wheels of commerce for religious occasions which are faithfully observed by a minority of people no longer seems appropriate, especially in an increasingly multicultural society. Logically, all shops should be allowed to open on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas Day.

In this instance, however, logic is not the be-all and end-all. In many a heart, there is a feeling that the world of commerce should not be allowed to overpower every other aspect of society. As that world spins ever more quickly, does it not benefit everyone if it is halted for a few days a year, if only for the sake of sanity? Call it the "Stop the world, I want to get off" syndrome. In this argument, the likes of Easter Sunday and Christmas Day act as sanctuaries, irrespective of their religious significance.

It is an interesting commentary on society's present perspectives that shopkeepers are content that one of those sanctuaries remains. They have placed little such pressure on the ban on trading before 1 pm on Anzac Day. Anne Whelan, one of the Auckland booksellers pressing for the right to open on Easter Sunday, has no plans to flout the shop trading law on April 25. Respect for those who fought and died in the wars of last century has replaced the reverence her forebears reserved for religious occasions. For Anne Whelan, there is a new line in the sand which commerce must not cross.

Those who argue that religious observance should no longer thwart trading, point, of course, to the removal or relaxation of other artificial regulations. The sort of rules that used to tightly circumscribe when and how liquor could be drunk or what could be brought back from overseas. Today, they argue, we should have freedom of choice. The freedom to shop when we want to; the freedom for shopkeepers to open when they wish to. Those who cry freedom, however, cry in vain if the ideal they cherish is unwanted by the majority.

Therein lies the problem for the booksellers. There was a clear public demand that garden centres open on Easter Sunday. The combination of several days off work and a final opportunity to pot and preen before the onset of winter drew people to those centres. The numbers who ventured to them in past years, as the law was flouted, was proof of the demand. Booksellers are, similarly, in the leisure industry. But, as yet, they cannot point to a clamour for their opening.

Public sentiment, not commercial zeal, should govern whether bookshops are allowed to open on Easter Sunday. It is hard to imagine that demand for their product will equal that of garden centres, even on the wettest of Easter weekends. Nonetheless, the public may support the booksellers in sufficient number to encourage them to press their case. Drawing attention to their situation by flouting the law is one way of highlighting that case. But the best way out of their predicament might be to organise a petition to Parliament. A strongly supported petition would amount to irrefutable evidence of a demand for bookshops to be open on Easter Sunday. And if the demand is present, there is no valid reason to block the shopkeepers' progress.