A push to standardise "a shambolic patchwork" of more than 50 trading hours zones across the state has met with fierce resistance from small businesses.
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On a Saturday most south east Queenslanders can shop from 8am to 5pm but inner city Brisbane shops are open until 5.30pm, shops in the CBD entertainment precinct are open until 7pm and New Farm businesses are open until 9pm.
The National Retail Association wants to unite the whole region under one set of trading hours restrictions.
But independent and small business representatives say the association's push for uniformity is nothing but an attempt to extend trading hours, potentially crippling small businesses.
The debate comes in the wake of Tuesday's discussion about Brisbane's growing 24/7 economy, which has people buying everything from mulberries to fresh-squeezed juice in the middle of the night.
The National Retail Association says it is not advocating 24-hour shopping, and SEQ shoppers simply want consistency in trading hours.
NRA CEO Trevor Evans said the current system was confusing for consumers and retailers alike.
"We think that the biggest challenge in south east Queensland at the moment for retailers is just around the number of different rules that there are," he said.
"The state at the moment is split up into well over 50 zones and different rules apply in each one of those zones."
Mr Evans said, Indooroopilly, Toowong, Roma Street, the CBD, Fortitude Valley, Albion and Hamilton each had a different set of rules governing trading hours.
"So if you are a furniture retailer, a chain, and you opened a store in each one of those locations then different rules would apply to each one of your stores," he said.
"Now clearly that's gone too far."
The NRA filed an application with the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission in October to combine what it termed a "shambolic patchwork of trading hours zones", 10 separate zones between Noosa and Coolangatta.
The claim would see 7am-9pm trading hours Monday to Saturday throughout the south east corner.
CCIQ advocacy and workplace relations director Nick Behrens said his organisation supported uniformity but said the submission was a backdoor attempt to extend trading hours.
"One of the significant issues has been boundary anomalies where consumers are left in a state of confusion of whether a store is open or not," he said.
"Literally you can have businesses within hundreds of metres of each other yet they're subject to different trading hours arrangements.
"We absolutely support the notion of treating south east Queensland as the one trading zone, however... the National Retail Association's application, whilst premised on consistency, is actually a sneaky attempt to liberalise trading hours in south east Queensland."
Mr Behrens said the application, if successful, would force small business to open longer in order to compete, putting pressure on families and likely forcing many stores to close.
Retail Guild of Australia Queensland representative Roz White owns three IGA stores on the Sunshine Coast.
She said any extended trading hours for bigger retailers would shift business from smaller neighbourhood centres to big shopping centres.
"If the business moves from the smaller players across to the bigger players, there's a pure economic shift… then that causes the smaller players to be non viable," she said.
"If they're non viable, they can't operate, they close down and we lose diversity in the market.
"We lose consumer choice at the end of the day."
The NRA's application is due to be heard later this year.
