🛑 Shop-lifting Trespassers, Beware: The Joke’s Over. 🛑

🛒 Just recently, I did a late-night shop at my favourite grocery store. Only two female staff on duty. A lone male pushed a HUGE trolley through check-out, unpaid, past the staff and myself - and left. When I asked the female staff if they had seen it and what were they going to do, they shook their heads and said: "There is nothing we can do! It's too unsafe to stop him and we just have to take the shrinkage."

🔨 It’s been a while since the Trespass Act got a proper polish - since flared jeans were last in fashion, maybe? But now, the Government is finally giving our tired old trespass laws a long-overdue upgrade

📚 Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith and Associate Minister Nicole McKee have announced practical, business-friendly reforms aimed squarely at that repeat visitor every retailer loves to loathe: the chronic shoplifter who just keeps coming back like a bad ex, causing us legitimate shoppers to cop the price increases to cover the shrinkages

🧹 Time for a clean-out. Here's what’s changing:

📆 Trespass notices will now last up to 3 years (not just 2, because who’s got time to reissue these annually like a Netflix subscription?)

🏪 Franchises can ban offenders from multiple locations,so no more trespass-tourism from store to store

💸 Fines for ignoring a trespass notice will double, from $1,000 to $2,000

🕵️ Give a fake name and address? That’ll cost you $1,000 (up from $500)

💬 Minister McKee sums it up best: “For too long, offenders have treated trespass notices like a joke.”

Well, the punchline’s changed.

🙌 Retailers deserve to feel safe. Their staff deserve to be protected. And their stock deserves to stay on the shelves. These reforms aim to back those frontline workers with sharper teeth in the law, not just paperwork.

🛍️ And us genuine shoppers will also feel safer, knowing our shopping experience is safe and any thefts won't be passed along to be paid by us

 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 It’s a great example of policy responding to lived business experience. So if you’re in business and thinking “finally!, you’re not alone. 

🚨And if you’re a repeat offender? You’ve just been unsubscribed.

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