The emergency zucchini run took place at 4.32 p.m. on Eight Hours Day.

Being a public holiday, it was a high-risk strategy trying to purchase two zucchinis, an essential ingredient in our chicken and sweet potato curry.

The major supermarkets were shut tight, of course, given the ascension to the throne of South Australia’s Shoppie-In-Chief, Premier Pete Malinauskas.

But I struck zucchini paydirt at the local IGA, doing a roaring trade courtesy of citizens who until now obviously hadn’t noticed the change of government.

‘Where are the tomatoes?” the bloke behind me in the line asked frantically. He appeared on the verge of a breakdown. Sold out by the looks of it, I informed him, pointing to the empty shelf once occupied by the tomatoes.

Did you miss Eight Hours Day? It was last Monday, a public holiday now sadly rebranded around the nation as the infinitely less exotic Labor Day. This is a pity. Eight Hours Day has a nice ring to it.

The public holiday dates back to April 21, 1856, when stonemasons in Melbourne walked off the job after their employers, with hearts of stone, refused to grant them a shorter working day – the mythical Eight Hour Day.

“This brought the employers to the negotiating table and led to an agreement whereby stonemasons worked no more than an eight-hour day,” the National Museum of Australia tells us.

“It was the first of a long, hard-fought series of victories that led to Australia having one of the most progressive labour environments in the world by the early 20th century,” they say, rather too enthusiastically for an impartial museum.

If you need a reminder that our state is being run by an old-school, cradle-to-the-grave trade unionist, you need look no further than last Monday, when most of the shops were forbidden to trade in the ‘burbs of Adelaide.

South Australia’s shop trading laws are a joke. We haven’t moved much beyond the days when plastic trellis with fake ivy leaves was placed over the fresh meat aisle in supermarkets, to stop customers buying steak or sausages on forbidden days. Not for religious reasons, but to protect the jobs of butchers. This was actually a thing in Adelaide.

Shopping hours reform moves at a glacial pace in this town. The glacier is about to slide backwards.

The Malinauskas Government has unveiled its promised Shop Trading Hours (Extension of Hours) Amendment Bill 2022, an Act to amend the Shop Trading Hours Act 1977, and it is now moseying its way through state parliament.

It will allow shops to open two hours earlier on Sundays, at 9 a.m. instead of the present 11 a.m.

The Premier says it marks “a big step forward” on delivering Labor’s election commitment of shop trading “reform” which strikes the right balance for workers, small businesses and shoppers.

It’s a long stretch to describe this legislation as either a big step forward or a reform. While it might strike the right balance for Shoppies Union members and small business, it delivers naff all for shoppers and even less for major retailers, who employ thousands of workers.

An extra two hours trading on Sunday morning? That noise you hear is the sound of one hand clapping.

I’ve downloaded the Malinauskas bill. It didn’t use much printer ink as it barely runs to six pages.

The key “reform” simply states that in addition to the current trading hours the “shopkeeper of a shop situated in the Greater Adelaide Shopping District may open the shop … from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. on a Sunday”. Be still my beating heart.

Public holiday trading will remain a crime for most shops. Trade will be permitted on Boxing Day, however, “if the business of the shop is not wholly or predominately the sale of foodstuffs”. Break out the plastic trellis and fake ivy, folks.

The Bill leaves in place the ludicrous existing provisions that mean retailers in the Greater Adelaide Shopping District are exempt from the public holiday bans if they have a retail floor area not exceeding 200 square metres or 400 square metres for a supermarket or grocery store and have a storage area no bigger than half the retail floor area.

Which is how I managed to buy zucchinis at the cramped IGA last Monday.

This gives the Shoppies Union a gift-wrapped power of veto over any Ministerial tampering with trading hours.

While delivering on his election promise, the government’s bill delivers something it didn’t promise voters.

Most of it is taken up with permanently outlawing what we shall call the “Lucas Effect”. These provisions are quite extraordinary because they seek to severely limit the powers of future ministers to grant exemptions to trading hours.

For the entire four years of the former Marshall Liberal Government, the then Treasurer Rob Lucas repeatedly tried and failed to get parliament to pass legislation deregulating trading hours.

Lucas should have simply given up, but instead used his Ministerial powers to grant one-off exemptions for extended trading on public holidays, a strategy that proved wildly popular with shoppers.

It also constantly reminded voters of his government’s inability to deliver its agenda, a criticism pinpointed in the unauthorised but excellent Moriarty-Rowley post-mortem of their party’s March election drubbing.

They say the Marshall Government “doggedly refused to walk away” from trading deregulation despite being knocked back by parliament, and the frequent exemptions resulted in “continual bad publicity”.

This is a moot point because the madding crowds seemed to love shopping on public holidays.

The Malinauskas legislation will put a stop to that malarkey. It handcuffs future ministers to consult on exemptions, and opens them to judicial review lodged by any “interested party”. This gives the Shoppies Union a gift-wrapped power of veto over any Ministerial tampering with trading hours.

Few other “interested parties” are so lucky, but then few other “interested parties” kick so much cash into the ALP’s election kitty.

“The Minister must not grant or declare exemptions under this section that are so extensive as to undermine the controls on shop trading hours set out in this Act”, it thunders.

Isn’t it strange that a parliament that surrendered unprecedented powers over our lives to unelected public servants during the course of the COVID pandemic, that continually extends Ministerial intervention into all aspects of our lives, should seek to restrict the powers of a democratically-elected government on such a piddling issue?

It also seems more than passing strange that a parliament that happily passed right-to-die legislation giving people the freedom to kill themselves, can be so hung up about giving people the innocuous freedom to trade and shop as they wish.

For Premier Malinauskas, like his stonemason brothers, some things need to be chiselled in stone.

Matthew Abraham’s weekly analysis of local politics is published on Fridays.

Matthew can be found on Twitter as @kevcorduroy. It’s a long story.