I was walking through Ashfield shopping centre at 10 o’clock last Sunday morning. Every shop was open. It could have been any day of the week.
If I had been on the west coast it would have been different. In Western Australia a referendum to deregulate Sunday trading was soundly defeated in 2005. Countries such as Belgium and Germany restrict Sunday trading, and others impose strict limits on hours and regulate the types of businesses that can open.
But the extraordinary thing is that children in most Australian cities must now be left without parental supervision for so much of the time. A Bureau of Statistics report this year on how Australians use their time confirms we are spending less time playing, sleeping, and eating and drinking, but longer working.
We can feel it and see it all around us. Hairdressers are often open into the night, international banks are conducting business on combined southern and northern hemisphere time, emails and text messages find us day and night, seven days a week.
Read the whole article.
William McKeith: Families pay the price in a world that never stops
I was walking through Ashfield shopping centre at 10 o’clock last Sunday morning. Every shop was open. It could have been any day of the week.
If I had been on the west coast it would have been different. In Western Australia a referendum to deregulate Sunday trading was soundly defeated in 2005. Countries such as Belgium and Germany restrict Sunday trading, and others impose strict limits on hours and regulate the types of businesses that can open.
But the extraordinary thing is that children in most Australian cities must now be left without parental supervision for so much of the time. A Bureau of Statistics report this year on how Australians use their time confirms we are spending less time playing, sleeping, and eating and drinking, but longer working.
We can feel it and see it all around us. Hairdressers are often open into the night, international banks are conducting business on combined southern and northern hemisphere time, emails and text messages find us day and night, seven days a week.
Read the whole article.