It was easter over the weekend, which meant the annual "debate" over relic easter trading laws, and various businesses deliberately flouting them for profit. I'd prefer those out-dated laws to be reformed - my preference is to make easter Sunday a public holiday, which solves all the problems other than business greed - but until they are, breaking them remains a crime. And where businesses deliberately commit crimes for profit, they need to be punished. Unfortunately, the fine for breaching the law - $1000 - is derisory, and clearly an insufficient deterrent (some criminal businesses clearly regard it as a cost of doing business).
Fortunately there's a solution for that. When a business makes more than $30,000 from breaking the law, that is "significant criminal activity". When they have knowingly, directly or indirectly, derived a benefit from significant criminal activity - which is clearly the case here - that means they have "unlawfully benefited from significant criminal activity". And where a business has unlawfully benefited from significant criminal activity, the resulting revenue can be taken under a profit forfeiture order under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act 2009. Note that when a business is convicted of a crime, that automatically meets the test for granting such an order, so the only legal question is the amount - a question which can easily be resolved with a search warrant or production order for their accounting records.
The question then is: will the police enforce the law, or will they allow these criminal enterprises to profit from their crimes? Or is it not a crime when done by the rich?
