Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill

When we were last on the second reading of the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill, Dr David Clark had the call and has 8 minutes remaining.

When I was rudely interrupted, I had just read through a letter from the Catholic social justice agency Caritas—and I had to read it quickly because I had only a minute and a half before the House rose—to illustrate the point that this law that we are looking at passing in this House is something that will disrupt family life. It is a change that I do not believe we need to make.

Caritas, the Catholic agency for justice, peace, and development, sent the Commerce Committee chair and the members of that select committee a letter. I wish to read the first couple of paragraphs. It said: “Dear Melissa Lee, I am writing to follow up on the invitation I issued last week to you and your fellow members of the Commerce select committee to come to our Caritas office for an Easter Sunday meeting to discuss the proposed changes to Easter trading in the shop hours amendment bill. The meeting is for 10.30 a.m. on Sunday, 21 March at the Caritas office in Hill Street, Thorndon, Wellington. We, ourselves, have plans to be with family, community, and church on that day but we are willing to sacrifice those plans to help you understand the impact of having to work on Easter Sunday.”

As far as I am aware, no members—not one—from that committee attended the meeting, or even voiced a desire to attend that meeting, and I think we have a fundamental problem in this House when we have people willing and able and keen to pass laws that they themselves will not be affected by and that they do not imagine they will ever be affected by. They are happy to dictate that other people should be at the beck and call of their employers on Easter Sunday when they themselves would never undertake such a thing, even on a one-off occasion such as that suggested in this letter from Caritas.

So I want to say that this particular piece of legislation is a step further down a slope that we have been going down where working people are deprived of the few rights that they have left in this country to enjoy time with their families and to pursue hobbies and to build the social fabric that makes New Zealand the special place that it is, which we have all grown up in.

I was also looking through the risk analysis prepared on this bill and I discovered that it was limited because the direction had been given by the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety that this was going to be a very simple way of doing things—the way the Minister wanted to do it, looking at no other options. The conclusion we find in this is that there are risks with the proposed amendment. It says the general public, businesses, and employees could find the changes “complex and confusing,”.

This by-law is complex and confusing. It expects that local authorities will have to make the decision. The responsibility for making these decisions, for implementing policy, and for writing the policy, and all the costs that go with it, will be shoved at local government. It does not make things less complex in reality; it actually makes them more complex. It will make New Zealand more of a patchwork than it already is. It does not achieve the stated purpose that Mr Woodhouse has been claiming for the bill, which is that it will sort out the issue of Easter trading, and we have already seen that members of this House—certainly on the Government benches—have voted against similar legislation. We will find, no doubt, amongst local governments around the country a difference of opinion, and if we look in this House we see that difference of opinion.

We see that Mr English has voted three times against a similar bill, we see that Mr Brownlee has voted three times against similar bills, we see that Chester Borrows has voted on four occasions against similar bills, and we find that newer members of the House have voted consistently against similar bills. Alfred Ngaro, Tim Macindoe, and Sam Lotu-Iiga have voted with their consciences against bills like this in the past. It will be very interesting to see whether the Government members vote with a similar conscience this time, or whether, maybe, they have changed their minds dramatically for some reason, now that this has become a Government bill.

I certainly have been consistently opposed to this kind of change in our legislation, and I shall be voting against it because I believe that New Zealand families do not need that limited private time that they have, that limited time they can plan to be together, eroded any further than it already is. It is very limited in this day and age. When I was a kid, Sundays were generally retail-free. Those days are gone. They exist in other countries around the world. Other countries see fit to have days that do not involve retail, and they still seem to tick over. Plenty of European countries have very few shops open on a Sunday. But here we are, proposing that those last remaining days of the year that people have to spend with their friends and families will be taken away from them so that they cannot plan holidays together out of town and they cannot plan a long weekend, and those who wish to have religious observances, for example, cannot necessarily guarantee to have those.

The Minister tried to give us assurances that if employees said they did not want to do it there would be no repercussions, but we know what hollow words those were because we know that as workers become more and more vulnerable as more and more of their rights are eroded, working people feel the pressure from their bosses, particularly those who would want to open 24/7. That is where working New Zealanders are most vulnerable. So I want to contend that it is not just for those workers but also for their families. Those working people have families that depend on them and want to spend time with them, and when employers who are not implementing this bill want to spend time with their spouses and families, they will no longer be able to guarantee that.

I know that when I put a bill through this House that Mondayised a couple of holidays, what I was surprised to learn—a little surprised, and maybe I should not have been—was that the majority of employers were in favour of an extra public holiday. They were either in favour of or neutral towards it—87 percent were either in favour of or neutral towards another public holiday—and I think that was, in part, because the majority of employers are small employers and they also want to spend time with their friends and family. They know that that time has been set aside, not that they have the time for themselves set aside because they are employers and they can choose and they cannot see their families because they are required to work at short notice.

So that is why I shall be standing against this bill, and I suspect many of my colleagues will too because they care about working New Zealanders, unlike the crowd opposite, who are happy to see wages eroded year after year for working New Zealanders. We on this side—at least those I have spoken to—will be opposing this bill. We want to see New Zealanders with more rights, more opportunities for leisure time, better incomes, and the ability to pursue the Kiwi Dream of owning their own home, bettering their lot through education, and so forth. That is why I shall be opposing this bill. I think it is a bad bill. It is bad law, and I think those opposite who support it but who are not themselves willing to give up their Easter Sundays should be ashamed.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill in its second reading. Before I start talking about the bill I just want to respond to David Clark, the member who has just taken his seat. He mentioned the letter from Caritas, and I just want to tell that member that I did, in fact, reply to that letter. I was, in fact, working on part of that holiday and I was not able to travel down to Wellington, but I was in Wellington and I did invite those people and said that if they were in Auckland, I would be very happy to meet with them. So the member is quite wrong if he thinks that somebody did not actually respond to them—just correcting that fact.

This bill amends the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act of 1990 to grant territorial authorities the limited power to create by-laws, and if the select committee had had its way, there would have been a local policy surrounding shop trading hours trading on Easter Sunday to ensure the right of shop workers to refuse work on that day, as well. It was the main agenda item in the Commerce Committee over the last few months and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my colleagues and also the committee secretariat, who have actually put a lot of hours into this bill, for their support during the submissions and hearings process. I believe it was a comprehensive discussion for the committee and I thank the members of the committee, even though we did not come to an agreement to support the bill. We had disagreements, and that has to be respected. It is, after all, a democracy in this country.

The current rules around shop trading on Easter Sunday are, in fact, outdated, I believe, and need to reflect the changing requirements of New Zealand. Tourism in New Zealand is affected by uneven requirements—actually, uneven benefits—that have been grandfathered to certain townships and districts. Complex trading rules are hard for small businesses to work out as they are confusing, and the trading rules are, in fact, confusing. For example, Rotorua could not trade on Easter Sunday, but its neighbouring town could; Queenstown could, but its neighbouring districts could not. That was one of the main discussions we have had. As a committee, we read over one hundred written submissions and listened to a number of oral submissions. These submissions were wide ranging. They were from businesses and organisations small and large, as well as from members of the public, and I thank those who made submissions for participating in our parliamentary processes.

The submissions were actually quite clear in wanting to maintain the significance of Easter Sunday as an important day in the New Zealand cultural calendar, and they were clear in wanting clarity in the law for New Zealand trading. I know that the member opposite who just took his seat also mentioned the fact that Easter is, in fact, a day for families, and I do agree. Those people who celebrate Easter and mark the date for Easter actually think of it as a day that they need to spend time with family, but there are other communities that do not actually look upon Easter as such.

I am pleased with the recommendations that my National Party colleagues have made in the committee and I wish to bring some of those recommendations to the House as they are important for the discussion of this bill, I believe. These recommendations will ensure that employees’ rights are, in fact, protected and that local policy is implemented rather than a series of by-laws, which local districts actually said might be a little too expensive and difficult to implement. At the moment, the law is unclear as to whether employees can actually refuse to do non-trading work on Easter Sunday, such as stocktaking or even maintenance work, which is actually not trading work. This recommendation by my colleagues would see the rights of the worker put first to ensure that they can, in fact, have their day of significance without interference or prejudice, and they can actually refuse to work. A worker must have an option to refuse work on Easter Sunday without the repercussion of their employment relationship falling through. One of the key ways that we can do this is to clarify the meaning of “treat[ing] an employee adversely” to be defined the same way as section 67F of the Employment Relations Act 2000. This would ensure that benefits, such as skills, promotion, or training opportunities, are not denied to them, and that they are not dismissed or unduly treated for choosing to refuse to work on Easter Sunday.

One of the things that was quite apparent during the submission process was that many people are led to believe that Easter Sunday is, in fact, a public holiday. It is not a public holiday. Good Friday and Easter Monday are, in fact, public holidays, but Easter Sunday is not a public holiday. It is a restricted trading day. A lot of people—

💬 Sue Moroney: Was a restricted trading day.

Ha, ha! The Easter holiday is a significant day for many people. This is important to remember because some people will be expected to work on that day, but will have no time in lieu or extra pay when they work. I think it is the right of the workers to say to their employers: “Actually, those are the days that I find very significant for my religion, for my family, and if I want to refuse to work, I should not be prejudiced as a result of refusing to work.” I think that extra protection that we could have provided through this bill we could not actually agree on during the Commerce Committee process.

The tourism industry needs this law change, I believe. To paraphrase the Deputy Mayor of Queenstown Lakes District Council, people come from all around the world and they expect certain levels of service. The current law is damaging to our reputation as a great place to visit. As long as we have a nation forbidding local communities to make a call about how they want to operate during Easter Sunday, this will be an ongoing debate and an ongoing problem for the tourism market in our great country. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recently released some data about tourism numbers, and the international visitor tourism spend increase actually went up by 10 percent, which is helping to grow our economy and helping to employ more New Zealanders in the tourism sector. It is important for members of this House and the local communities to understand that businesses should not expect any additional cost as a result of the passage of this bill. The bill, if anything, will help them grow their businesses during the period where thousands of expats come home for the holidays—even local New Zealanders travel between cities to have a family holiday.

One of the key arguments against letting communities decide for themselves as to whether they should have Easter Sunday off or not is that it is supposed to be a family day and that they should have a family holiday. My response to them is to ask why a day with the family cannot involve the shops. Often Easter Sunday is a day a lot of families actually do DIY projects as a family—I know that whenever there is a public holiday my mum drags me to the garden centre to get plants so we can take it back and plant the garden or change over the plants that she had that have died, or something. It is a family time that we do actually spend together, and I think it is important.

In summary, I believe that this bill is important, and it is, in fact, important for New Zealand. It will also provide the means for local businesses and communities to work out whether they actually want to trade on Easter Sunday, and I think empowering the local communities to decide for themselves is important. I think we have provided that through this bill, and it is only a shame that we as a select committee could not actually agree on that. Hopefully, during the Committee stage we might have more debates on this. I commend this bill.

There is a number of reasons to vote against this legislation.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: There are.

No, there is a number. There is a number; there are several reasons.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Oh, very good.

Yes. No worries. So there is a number of reasons to vote against this legislation. It really does not matter what side of the debate members are on in the substance of the legislation. It is actually a very poor piece of legislation, and it should be voted down simply on the grounds that it is just bad lawmaking, but I want to address the issues both of the quality of the bill and of the substance of the bill.

So, first of all, what we are talking about here is actually taking away from workers one of the days that workers have the absolute legislated right not to have to go to work; one of just 3½ days that are set out in New Zealand law where shops cannot open and the workers who would ordinarily work in those shops actually have the legislated right to spend time with their families and their communities. It just so happens, because of the history of our nation and the way we have developed, that those days mostly are based around Christian festivals—Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Christmas Day, and Anzac Day morning. Personally, I am not particularly wedded to the Christian festivals, although I know for a lot of members that is an important aspect of this. I am not. What I am interested in is the fact that we actually set aside some days—really not that many, but some days—that are for families and communities, some days where we just take a break from consumerism, where we just say that, actually, on these few days, 3½ days out of the year, we are going to put families and community first. That is actually what the shop trading restrictions currently do.

In effect, what this legislation is doing is taking away one of those 3½ days. It is being done in the name, apparently, of tourism. Pardon me if I am unconvinced by the argument that tourist operators desperately need to be able to operate on Easter Sunday, but it is OK that they remain closed on Good Friday, 2 days beforehand. It is OK, apparently, to keep Good Friday as a restricted day where shops cannot open and tourism operations cannot operate. That is OK. That is not having a detrimental impact on tourism, having Good Friday as a restricted day, but for some reason Easter Sunday, just 2 days later, has to be liberalised.

I have not yet heard a cogent argument from anybody why that makes sense. In fact, from submitters at the Commerce Committee I heard the opposite. Submitters—Retail New Zealand, Hospitality New Zealand—came to the select committee and said there was actually no logical argument for liberalising trading on Easter Sunday and not doing it on Good Friday or Christmas Day or Anzac Day morning. So are they next? Once this battle is over, if the Government gets its way, is that what happens next? Do we go to Good Friday next? Do we suddenly get the argument that tourism will collapse if we do not allow trading to occur throughout the entire Easter weekend? Or will it be Christmas Day? Is that what comes next? I am not usually one who buys in to the slippery slope argument. These were arguments that were made by the people who support this legislation—that there was actually no logical reason to pick out Easter Sunday, and we should be doing the same on Good Friday, Christmas Day, and Anzac Day morning. So that is something that I think members need to think about.

Ultimately, to me it comes down to that simple fact: that workers actually deserve some days where they are allowed to have the day off, where they can put their families and their communities first. That is sort of the substance of the argument.

What about the bill itself? The major failure with this legislation is that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Michael Woodhouse, got up in his first reading speech and told us that one of the problems with Easter trading currently is that there are different rules for different areas. So Queenstown and Wānaka have different rules. Rotorua has a different set of rules from—somewhere else that is nearby that I cannot recall. This legislation does not solve that. This does not solve that issue.

If anything, it makes it worse, because territorial authorities up and down the country will have different rules. From my part of the country, Palmerston North and Feilding are 15 minutes away from each other. People like to shop in both of those, usually on the same day. People come to Palmerston North for conferences and sports events. They often go out to Feilding as part of their experience. Two different territorial authorities—potentially two completely different sets of rules. Right there, one of the Government’s main arguments for proposing this legislation is completely undermined, because it said that the whole idea of this legislation was to get rid of those inconsistencies between territorial authorities. All this legislation does is set up the opportunity for an even greater level of inconsistency across the country.

Why has the Government chosen that path? Well, the answer to that is simple. That is that if it actually took on the responsibility of allowing Easter Sunday trading—which is a Government responsibility, not a local body responsibility—it would not get it through its own caucus. It does not have the support of enough National Party MPs to get that bill through Parliament. That is the truth. That is the reason why the Government has chosen this course of action—not because it is the smarter course of action, not because it is more efficient, not because it makes more sense, but because what it wants to do is get rid of the restrictions on Easter trading altogether.

But National Party MPs will not let that happen, so, instead, it is foisting the responsibility on to poor old local government—local government that the National Party likes to berate for putting its rates up, saying that it is creating unnecessary costs for ratepayers. Yet this Government, because it cannot get something through its own caucus, is prepared to cause unnecessary cost for every single council in the country. This is a poor piece of legislation, created because the Minister could not convince his own caucus to support what he wanted to do, and, frankly, if the Minister has not got enough power of persuasion to do that, he should not kick the can down the road to the poor old councils.

On that ground alone, Parliament should vote this bill down, regardless of where members sit on the argument of should we or should we not set aside Easter Sunday as a day for families and communities. This is a bad piece of legislation that dispatches a central government responsibility on to local government, at a cost to every single one of those councils—a significant cost to every single one of those councils. I know the Government is going to bring Supplementary Order Paper 179 that proposes that we change the responsibility of the councils from a by-law to a policy. The councils told us that that will not make one iota of difference to their costs. Every single council that came and submitted at the select committee said: “Do not make this our responsibility. It is your responsibility, not the local government’s responsibility. Do not make us carry the can on this one.” Even those that support the concept said that they did not want the responsibility. They did not want the cost. So the bill fails on that front as well.

We know that this has traditionally been a conscience vote. The National Party MPs have been effectively whipped into supporting this. I will be interested to know how some National MPs, if this legislation passes—what position they plan to take if their councils actually seek to liberalise Easter Sunday trading. I will be very, very interested to know how some of those MPs will actually position themselves on that. But the message is simple: this is a bad piece of legislation. It creates unnecessary cost for councils and it takes from workers their right to have a day that is set aside for their family and their communities. I urge members to vote it down.

I rise in support of the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill, a bill that does not take away rights but offers choice. It offers choices to communities to express, through their local authorities, whether they would like to see shops able to open on what is currently a restricted trading day. It offers the choice for those territorial authorities to accede to the wishes of their communities, or not. If they do pass a by-law or a policy that permits trading, it gives choice to businesses as to whether or not they choose to open. Lastly and most importantly, the bill offers the ultimate choice to each employee as to whether or not they wish to work on that Easter Sunday. Should they choose not to, it has provisions to provide protection for that employee, particularly if the employer seeks to take some advantage or later consequential action for that choice. It is a bill that is all about choice.

I would like to speak about a couple of elements around the select committee process, particularly the submissions from local bodies. But before I get to that, I think one of the reasons we now find ourselves in a second reading debate with a bill returned to the House without amendment—just in its bar 1 form—is the comprehension failure on the other side of the House, which is exhibited tonight by the speaker who has just taken his seat, Iain Lees-Galloway. His claim is that this bill would enforce costs on every local authority across the country. He is 100 percent wrong, and could not be further wrong, because he sat in the Commerce Committee for this item of business. It was made very clear to the members of the committee that councils could choose to maintain the status quo, and that if they chose to maintain the status quo there would be no costs of a by-law or a policy or any other measure, Mr Lees-Galloway. So his statement just shows that the member there has no fundamental understanding of the bill, and so he is hardly in a great position to recommend to others whether they should support or oppose it.

But that brings me to the select committee, because the select committee did seek to undertake work—or the members on this side sought to undertake work—to improve the bill. There were a number of amendments that, we feel, had the bill made it through the select committee process with the tracked changes adopted, would have improved it. Being a first-term MP, I can say that most occasions are learning occasions, and I have been told by colleagues on both sides of the House that in the past Opposition members—and a great example of this that I was given was Sir Michael Cullen—felt that it was their duty to work constructively in a select committee to improve a bill, even if, ultimately, when the bill returned to the House, they would oppose it. In this particular instance, the Opposition members chose to do the opposite.

💬 Sue Moroney: Oh, like you did with the paid parental leave bill, for example? The National Party did the same with the paid parental leave bill.

They chose, instead of improving the bill and returning it to the House in a better form, to use the power of their equal number of votes to have all changes thrown out.

I heard the member opposite making some noise about other bills. Well, I can say from the limited experience I have had in this term that, if I look at bills like Sue Moroney’s paid parental leave bill at the Government Administration Committee and the Official Information Act amendment bill under Adrian Rurawhe that recently passed, the Government members on the Government Administration Committee worked constructively to help make amendments for each of those bills, taking on board the message that had been given to me that our duty is to at least ensure that a bill, if it is returned to the House, returns in the best state it could be in.

Unfortunately, the members opposite, in this instance, do not think that that should apply to them. It is actually worse—there was an instance in a select committee meeting when one of the Labour members said: “Why are we even bothering doing this, because we’re just going to vote against it in the end anyway?”. That just left me with a cold chill, wondering whether, for the Labour Party members, democracy extends only to items that they agree with, because that seems to be, through their behaviour, what their philosophy is.

The other area I want to briefly touch on is the submissions from local bodies. In the early 2000s the previous Government passed a general competency clause in the Local Government Act, which gave local bodies a far wider remit to undertake actions, to spend money, and to take on projects than they had had in the past. Yet I have never yet heard a council say: “I don’t want to have general competence.” Similarly, I have never yet heard a councillor say “We, the council, do not want to take on board the wishes of the local community.”, except in this instance.

In this instance, what they want is they want central government to make a blanket statement for their local communities. They do not want the power, in this instance, to listen to their communities and give their communities what their communities want. It would seem to me, sitting on this committee, that there is a possibility that exists, at least amongst some of our territorial authorities, of a wish to have a wide range of powers, but as soon as a difficult problem comes along, to kick that up to central government and take away local choice, and have central government make the decision for them.

I hope that in the next stage we get some Supplementary Order Papers to put back some of those amendments into the bill. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take the call for this, the second reading of the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill, for the Greens. I had the privilege of sitting on the Commerce Committee, replacing my colleague Gareth Hughes for the submission process of this bill. I want to thank the chair and the permanent members for having me there.

As you are aware, the committee was unable to reach a decision, a majority decision, about this bill, which I think actually reflects just how vexed the whole issue is about retail trading on Easter Sunday. From my reading of the pages on the website, this is, I think, about the 10th bill on Easter Sunday trading that has come before the House since 1996. So it is about every 2 years that a bill like this appears. Actually, it is probably the reason why we have got bits and pieces and little amendments and exemptions all over the country, with some places allowed to open and some places not, which I think, quite frankly, is a bit of a dog’s breakfast.

This bill—this is the original bill—gives councils, territorial authorities, the ability to make a by-law to allow shops to open in their areas. To quote the Bills Digest, there are three parts of it: limit power to create by-laws, give shop workers the ability to refuse work on Easter Sunday without giving a reason, and enable shop employees to take a personal grievance if they were compelled to work on Easter Sunday or their employer treated them adversely as a result of their refusal to work on Easter Sunday. I am going to address a couple of those parts in turn.

The first part, which is about the councils—they cannot actually make a by-law. That is what we found out during the process, but they can, however, make a policy. That was the recommendation that that members on that side of the House were keen to put in as an amendment if the bill had been passed at the select committee, which it was not. Regardless of whether it is a policy or a by-law, there is still a special consultative procedure that has to occur. We heard from councils and from Local Government New Zealand that this is actually quite an expensive process because what it involves is consultation, calling for submissions, hearings, and deliberations—exactly what happens with a select committee, basically, but on a more regional scale.

All the councils that we heard from were concerned about the cost for the process: all that plus the cost of the staff who have to support that process. If we think about it, Parliament has got a lot more money sloshing around than our local councils do. So with the exception of a couple of councils—there were a couple like Rotorua—they expressed a clear preference for the Government to make decisions about whether shops should be open or not on Easter Sunday so that the ratepayers did not have to foot the bill, and at least there would be some consistency across the country. I agree with my colleague from Labour Iain Lees-Galloway that this bill is badly drafted law in the first instance but it is also, I believe, the only way it could get past National’s caucus.

My Green colleagues and I are all opposed to this bill because we do not actually believe that retail workers will be protected. They will not be able to tell their employer that they do not want to work on Easter Sunday. Their ability to take a personal grievance is extremely limited, particularly since just taking a personal grievance generally occurs only when the employment relationship is in breakdown, and if it was not in breakdown before the personal grievance was taken it is certainly going to be in breakdown after the personal grievance is taken, so what is the point?

There is also the issue of whether retail staff actually can take a personal grievance. Maybe if they are in a union—FIRST Union, which is the union for retail workers—they would be able to take a personal grievance and would have some protection. But in the retail sector there are an enormous number of shops that are small businesses, the worker is working alongside the employer, and they are not covered. They are not members of a union. In that case, they are unlikely to feel empowered to take a personal grievance. Given the low wages in the sector it is unlikely they will be able to afford a lawyer.

Our opposition also stems from the fact that there are only 3½ days a year when shops are closed. In the submission from FIRST Union, which represents retail staff, they refer to a Unicef report from 2007, which actually states that here in New Zealand our workforce has one of the lowest rates of family time in the world. Since that report in 2007 it has also been shown that we have some of the longest working hours in the world. I will just quote. They said: “Removing one of the few remaining protected family days will certainly not increase the quality of living of New Zealand families.”

I think we need to recognise that families are under stress, huge stress. Today’s data from Statistics New Zealand’s net worth survey shows that the top 10 percent of New Zealand households own half our country’s wealth while the bottom 40 percent of the households in this country own just 3 percent of the wealth. As our co-leader Metiria Turei said today, “When wealth inequality is this stark, it’s clear that the economy is broken.” I would wager—and I am not a betting person; I am the gambling spokesperson—that retail staff are not in that top 10 percent. They are more likely to be some of the 300,000 working people in this country today earning the minimum wage or close to the minimum wage. They are ordinary mums and dads who are spending longer and longer and longer hours at work to make ends meet. So if we take away one of their guaranteed days off then their families will suffer.

This bill will be a personal vote. I think it is about recognising that Easter Sunday is a religious holiday, and some MPs hold very strong views about the Christian sacred days. Last time a bill like this was voted on, Todd McClay’s member’s bill in 2009, National Party MPs Bill English, Chester Borrows, Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, Tim Macindoe, and Jonathan Young all voted against that bill. We are certainly hoping that tonight the members on that side of the House will not be whipped and that they will be able to vote with their consciences. We are asking that MPs choose what is right for families and for the communities because the economy works best when it is working for everyone. This bill does not help everyone.

I just want to reiterate that this is bad law and we really do need to kick it to touch. It is bad for councils, they do not like it; it is bad for retail staff; and it is bad for their families. I would urge MPs on that side of the House to use their personal votes to dump this bill. Thank you.

I seek leave to table an online petition that was organised by the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, with 4,581 signatures, calling on MPs Peter Dunne and Te Ururoa Flavell to vote against the bill.

Is there any objection to that process? There is objection.

I am proud to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the second reading of the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill. This bill seeks to allow the statutory restrictions on shops opening on Easter Sunday to be removed by granting territorial authorities the power to create by-laws to permit all shops to open in all or part of their districts on Easter Sunday.

This bill proposes to allow communities the choice about whether shops open on Easter Sunday in their district. New Zealand First disagrees with the purpose of the bill. If this were the case, then this bill would have provisions to allow for a local referendum, at a fraction of the cost of the proposed by-law mechanisms inside this bill. New Zealand First believes that this overarching assumption sets the tone of the legislation in its entirety but does not take into satisfactory consideration the degree of citizen engagement with local body decision-making processes.

The bill aims to achieve these means by granting territorial authorities a limited power to create by-laws that allow shop trading in defined areas within their boundaries on Easter Sunday, enabling shop workers the ability to refuse work on Easter Sunday without giving a reason, and enabling shop workers to bring a personal grievance against an employer who compels them to work on Easter Sunday or treats them adversely because of their refusal to work on Easter Sunday.

I do want to thank the Commerce Committee advisers for their patience throughout the process of the select committee going through this bill in its entirety. This bill has proven to be a very tricky bill and at times the members of the select committee agreed passionately to disagree in every way possible.

New Zealand First supported this bill in the first reading in order to allow the select committee to scrutinise this bill. This is a fundamental process of Government and allows for the knowledge of our advisers to assist the select committee in that process. The select committee had a good range of submitters. In total we had 107 submissions and we heard from 17 submitters orally. There was a good variety of submitters: from local councils, Churches, Family First, Caritas, the Retail and Wholesale Merchants Association of New Zealand, the Salvation Army, the tourism industry, and many more who took part in providing the select committee with their views on this particular bill, which overall actually had quite a common thread of concern.

Most councils felt that the decision-making process should remain at central government level. They did not want to make the decision for their local council to choose to create a by-law and have to actually enact that by-law. This was primarily due to the costs that they could not, in good conscience, pass on to their ratepayers, particularly when many districts already have significant financial challenges.

We have seen this in my home town of Invercargill where a proposed project to fund water mains had failed quite spectacularly and was under constant pressure, due to financial demands in other areas. Such a by-law would add more pressure on local councils, which could face costs ranging between $60,000 and $120,000. This cost was the catalyst for local councils throughout New Zealand to determine why the responsibility should sit with central government to make the decision.

New Zealand First feels very strongly that local councils should call for a local referendum, because this bill, for members of this House, will be a conscious vote.

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: A conscious vote?

So why not let the good people of our country—our ratepayers—decide as well. I am sure, Dr Coleman, that when you have got a cold you cannot say words properly either.

New Zealand First provided a minority report, through the select committee process. New Zealand First does not support any of the amendments presented to the Commerce Committee because the costs to councils would remain the same. The complexity of this bill would remain the same. The issues with this bill would also remain the same.

Fundamentally, the main purpose of this bill was initially to allow councils to consult with their communities regarding Easter Sunday trading, and that employees are given the opportunity to decline work without repercussion. However, this has unintended consequences on employees and employers, and I will give two example of this.

If a person on a job seeker’s benefit went to their first job interview and was called back to that same business for a second interview, when the clause becomes a condition to accepting the position for the employee but that potential employee declines to work on Easter Sunday due to the fact that they have an unveiling for a loved family member to attend, they will not get offered the job. They would then go back to Work and Income and tell them that they did not get the job because they were not available to work on Easter Sunday. What happens to these people then? I will tell you what happens to them. They will get stood down from their benefit, and this is clearly an unintended consequence for job seekers. This is just one example amongst many more that I can give on this particular issue within this bill.

If those workers who are actually already working in the workplace have their employer negotiate with them to work on Easter Sunday, and they decide to decline this request, then their employer will absolutely—and I understand this—be annoyed with their top-performing employee for not capturing the potential income that the employee could provide to the business. The relationship breaks down; the employee seeks the only method of protection, which is to take a personal grievance against their employer. This also goes vice versa. When that relationship breaks down further in the workplace and the employee decides to leave, to get a new job somewhere else, they must disclose that they took a personal grievance against their previous employer. This is tinkering with the provisions of employment and it is riddled with unintended consequences.

I would like to now briefly address the submission from Caritas Aotearoa - New Zealand, which put forward a very strong submission that centred on the rights of family to spend time together to strengthen the family bonds and to be able to go away as a family over the Easter weekend. Its submission was a call to keep, for New Zealanders, 3½ days per year shop-free so as to be able to focus on our families. We know that there is a lot of pressure on families in today’s world, so New Zealand First can sympathise with families who are struggling to find time to spend with each other.

In conclusion, 10 times there have been bills like this brought to the House, and 10 times those bills have been voted down and lost. New Zealanders work the second-longest number of hours in the OECD. New Zealand has some of the most liberal shop trading hours in the world, with only 3½ days annually that are restricted and, aside from certain sectors, absolutely no restriction on opening hours.

New Zealand First believes that such nationwide change is undemocratic, when local elections can be used for a local referendum on whether to liberalise local trading hours further. Although some would say that it is too late for the 2016 local elections, that is not the case. It would be suitable to hold a local referendum, thereby saving costs for territorial authorities and allowing each community to decide for itself by asking a simple question: “Do you want shops in your district to open on Easter Sunday?”. Thank you.

This bill is such good news for Wānaka. This bill is also good news for Geraldine. This bill is great news for Tekapō and Fairlie and Alexandra and Cromwell, all of which—I have not even got outside my electorate yet, but this bill is great news for the tourist towns in regional New Zealand. It is also great news for Marlborough. Wonderful news for Rotorua.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: If it’s such a good idea, why don’t you take responsibility and do it yourself?

Fabulous news for Palmerston North, except the member opposite cannot see it because he is so blinded by his union—of course his union pushers are telling him the way to think—but not so this side of the House.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You know, Mr Assistant Speaker, that it is out of order to suggest that a member is being told how to think by any outside influences.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: It may be out of order, but it’s still true.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think the first thing we will have is an apology from Amy Adams for her interjection.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: I apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I want to take some advice on the question. I am not—no, in fact I am prepared to rule. I am going to rule that it is not against the Standing Orders to suggest that people are being told how to think. I think it is one of the things that people who try to influence politicians do all the time.

This bill is wonderful news for all those towns in New Zealand that rely on tourism and visitors to their towns over Easter to make a dollar.

One of the first jobs I ever had, as member for Otago back in 2005, was a meeting with the chamber of commerce in Wānaka and with a number of their retailers who were frustrated at the fact that every second Easter Wānaka hosted the Warbirds over Wānaka International Air Show, and up to 80,000 or 90,000 people flocked into the Wakatipu Basin area to see Warbirds over Wānaka. What happened? Those people who were flocking in for the weekend—they flew into Queenstown Airport or they came by road or they hitchhiked into town to have a wonderful weekend—what could they not do? They could not go into town and buy any groceries because the supermarkets were resolutely shut. All the small retailers could see people up and down the street trying the doors of the shops in Wānaka, to see whether the retailers were open.

Here is the news for Opposition members, who are so hidebound in their viewpoint—actually, here is the breaking news on this stuff: people want to shop. So it is not just the retailers who wish to open—of course they do, because they want and need to make a dollar. People want to shop when they are on holiday, and that is the part of this argument that Opposition members have no argument for. They have no comeback on this, because the simple fact of the matter is that people come to Wānaka, they go to Rotorua, they go anywhere in New Zealand—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Don’t they go to Wānaka on Good Friday?

They even go to Palmerston North. I love Palmerston North. It is my home town. They want to shop when they are on holiday. They have not been able to. Well, glory be. Here comes the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill, which is going to fix that problem for Easter Sunday. Bring it on, I say. It is nothing but great news.

I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Greens on the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill. Although recognising that this is a personal vote, the Green Party members, I understand, will all be voting against this bill. The reasons I think have been outlined fairly consistently across the Opposition members in this House: this bill is bad for children, it is bad for families, it is bad for workers, and it is bad for local government. Although some of us may see shopping as a religion—I suspect the previous speaker seemed to elevate shopping to the status of a religion—actually, some of us believe that there is a value in taking a break, sometimes. Maybe 3½ days in a year is not too excessive in terms of taking a break from shopping and focusing on family, and guaranteeing that there is an opportunity to spend that time together.

I have heard some other members saying that, yes, the Opposition says that it is about family bonding, but what if your family wants to bond by doing the gardening together or doing some DIY? Strange, my family; I do not know—we have the ability to plan ahead, and go shopping the day before. I do not know whether that is too extreme a suggestion, but it seems possible to me that you could plan ahead and shop the day before, and be able to engage in those same activities together, as a family, on Easter Sunday.

As the local government spokesperson for the Greens, I think it would be a bit remiss for me not to talk about some of those specifics and why we oppose this bill. It does seem to me that there have been so many attempts to get this legislation through that have been unsuccessful. I guess there has been lobbying and discussions that have been happening within the National Party caucus with those who are proponents of this bill, to see what they may be able to get past the consciences of their members to be able to pass this bill to liberalise this trade. My understanding is that similar legislation in this House has failed nine times. It seems that the point that the National Party has got to is this: “This House will not make the decision. We’ll give the decision to local government, so that your consciences”—the consciences of those MPs on that side opposed to Sunday trading—“can be free.”

You can just say that it is a local government decision, even though the end result in many of the areas that you live in, or have connections to, may well be the same as what you would have opposed initially. You will be putting further financial and responsibility burdens on local councils, which time and time again tell central government that they are sick of being given further responsibilities, without having an increase to their funding base—that already the burden of responsibility and regulation versus funding is out of whack and they are overburdened.

It does not make sense to put employment legislation or shop trading hours on to local governments. They would be required to initiate a consultation process, hear submissions, institute hearings, and deliberate in the same way that Parliament does. That is a costly exercise. It is not cost free. So many of our councils are struggling to be able to fulfil their regulatory legal obligations, as it is. I do not think it makes sense to add another burden on to those councils, particularly the smaller councils.

Although the members there seem to reference the businesses and the tourists coming in, what about the local members of that community? If you are going to say “Well, they’ll be keen on this.”, then there needs to be a consultation, and a rigorous one, to make sure that they are keen, and that is going to be costly. Every time we have heard the legislation discussed at national level, that has not been the mood of the public. The public has not been telling us they want to shop more—that they cannot have this day free of shopping; that it will just completely destroy their lives to have more time to spend with their families, away from retail work. The Green Party believes that the least we can do for our families is let them keep this time together. Thank you.

Well, they say that rust never sleeps, and this bill coming back before the House shows just how true that actually is, because it is the National Party attacking family time again. Family time is under attack by this National Government. Today it is actually trying to get rid of the ability for families to get together on Easter Sunday; tomorrow it is going to use the extreme tool of a financial veto to stop families from getting 26 weeks of paid parental leave. So there is a theme that is developing here. I do not know what National has against families, but it is becoming more and more transparent with this Government.

I am delighted to vote against this bill. This is one of those fortuitous moments in a parliamentarian’s life—my Catholic upbringing, my belief in how we must prioritise families, and my background in workers’ rights happily collide, all in one bill. So I am very pleased and proud to stand here, because I am standing up for the convictions that I hold by casting my vote against this bill.

I want to encourage members opposite, in the governing party, to hold to the courage of their convictions also. I note that there are a number of MPs who have voted against a measure similar to this, on past occasions, before this Parliament, and I want them to stand up for the courage of their convictions. I particularly call on Tim Macindoe to stand up for the courage of his convictions, because not only has he voted against measures that intervene in family time on Easter Sunday but he is known locally as a churchgoing man, and good on him. But Mr Macindoe, you cannot do one thing back in your electorate and then come here, to Parliament, and not only vote for trading away Easter Sunday but be the enforcer, the whip, who is requiring other MPs to trade away Easter Sunday as well. So I am calling on Tim Macindoe, as an MP who shares the local area that I am in, to do the right thing and stand up for the courage of his convictions also.

But I will also be interested in how MPs like Louise Upston vote on this issue. I note that Louise Upston has always seemed to have voted, since she has been in Parliament, to trade away Easter Sunday. But in her neck of the woods, her constituency for which she is the MP, in Cambridge they not only do not open on Easter Sunday but do not open the shops on any Sunday—any Sunday, any week of the year. Yet here they have their MP voting to try to get local bodies to consume their time and their money to ask themselves whether Easter Sunday should be traded away.

For whom is it being traded away? It is being traded away for workers and their families. That is what Easter Sunday is being traded away for. I do not care what religious affiliation people do or do not have in New Zealand; that is of no interest to me. What is of interest to me is that workers and their families can choose to do whatever they want on Easter Sunday. That might mean going to church, but it might mean the sorts of things that my family does, like attending, every Easter, a basketball tournament. Those are the sorts of things that happen over the Easter weekend, because it is the time when families can actually afford to have the time to get away and do those things. So that is what I am standing up for.

Fundamentally, this bill is a shambles. It is a shambles because that Government’s members are trying to appease their own conscience by standing up and saying that it is not fair that one area gets to trade on Easter Sunday and another does not. Well, the truth is that this bill is going to make that worse. It is going to exasperate that situation, and it is going to ensure—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Exacerbate.

Well, it is going to exasperate that situation.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): It might be both, actually.

But they do not understand that by saying that local body by local body by local body are going to make this decision it is going to get more and more fragmented. They do not seem to understand that. They need to start listening.

This out-of-touch, arrogant Government needs to start listening, and hearing what people are saying. Local body after local body after local body turned up to the Commerce Committee to say: “If you want to do this, National Party, do it yourselves. Don’t duck-shove it on to us.” That is what they said. That Government has stopped listening, and it also has stopped even giving its MPs the ability to use their conscience on this very important issue for families.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill in the second reading. First of all, I would like to acknowledge the officials who supported us during the Commerce Committee deliberations. Even though we could not come to a resolution, at least they worked hard and assisted the select committee in the process.

The previous speaker, Sue Moroney, mentioned that the National Party does not care about families. This is the only party that cares about families. That is why we are debating this bill. We want to ensure that businesses have got the choice of what they want to do.

This country has a growing number of tourists, and they come from far away to enjoy our hospitality. If we do not give them the opportunity, when they come, to go out and do shopping, buy some souvenirs, buy some memories from here to take back home, then we are doing an injustice to them.

As I said, we care about families. Think about the family—the bread earner works from Monday to Friday. The only time he gets to go and do some shopping is over the weekend, and if he plans to go somewhere like Rotorua during the holidays, he does not get any opportunity to shop over there with his family.

I would like to give my own example. Normally, I go out on Sunday to do shopping with my family. If on Easter Sunday some of the shops that want to open—we are not compelling them to; they have got a choice whether they want to open the shop or not. If that opportunity is given, then a lot of shops will open up. Because the country is getting diverse, a lot of people—I am not saying that Christianity is not a good religion or anything—from different religions who do not go to Church on Sunday can open their shop and can offer good opportunities for families to go out and shop together.

So this bill is a real opportunity for businesses to grow. We want to ensure that places like Rotorua have got the competitive market. Whereas Taupō can open up, Rotorua cannot, so this bill will give an opportunity for them to decide to open. With these words I commend this bill to the House.

This is one of the many times during my time in Parliament that this Parliament has called on members to exercise their conscience around Easter Sunday trading, and each and every time—and it must be more than half a dozen in the years I have been here—Parliament, and its members exercising their conscience, has decided that the right of families to spend time together, the right of workers to be free of subtle or not so subtle pressure from their bosses to work, and the right of New Zealanders to have just some small vestige of religious celebration should be protected in the law.

Each time, Parliament’s members have exercised their conscience to throw this out. And the National Government was confronted by the reality that if it put a bill to this Parliament trying once again to take away the rights of workers and families, and religious observance, it would get the same result again: no.

So what did National members do? Rather than have an honest debate about choice, they have come up with this cock-and-bull story about regional variation and some bizarre logic that it is somehow going to iron out the kinks in the admittedly imperfect schedule to the current law, where there are one or two towns that can and one or two towns that cannot but perhaps for tourism reasons should.

It is an underhand solution to a matter of conscience that has been repeatedly and strongly issued by members of this House, through successive Parliaments. It is wrong in principle. It is tricky in principle. It is dishonest with the will of this House. It is also unconstitutional. That was pointed out repeatedly to the Commerce Committee by the Regulations Review Committee, which I, wearing a different hat, have the privilege to chair. The Regulations Review Committee wrote to the Commerce Committee not once, not twice, but three times to address the constitutional outrage that this bill seeks to pass. Let me very quickly summarise it in really plain language.

When this bill was introduced it contained, arguably—because there was some difference between advisers’ views on this—a thing called a “Henry VIII” clause. A “Henry VIII” clause is when a regulation or a delegated instrument seeks to override the primary purpose of the bill. In this case, the primary purpose is to protect some holidays but a delegated instrument gives, or purports to give, local authorities an override.

The rules of Parliament have always said that “Henry VIII” clauses are a bad thing. It is like the retrospective punishment of taxpayers is a bad thing. It is on our no-no list. On the rare occasions where it is deemed acceptable, it is only under very narrow circumstances and only with the strongest protections.

So here is the next part of the sorry saga. The submissions started rolling in from local government around the country, and I am sure National expected submitters to grab this with open arms. But, one after the other, Auckland, Christchurch, and most of the major centres around the country came in and said: “We don’t want this bill. We don’t want the supposed right to create a tangled mess of red tape and bureaucracy, because every community is going to be forced to go through all sorts of processes and procedures and end up with a whole different mass of rules. We don’t want it; it’s nonsense. If you want to change the law, change it yourself.”

In its wisdom, what did National then decide to impart upon the country? “Oh well, we’ll do away with the bylaw-making processes in the bill and just make it a policy matter”—virtually a tick-box, thereby aggravating the very constitutional outrage that they were supposed to be attenuating. Worse, they thought they would add insult to injury by stripping out the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protections. So there is no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet, as it is called—a check done by the Ministry of Justice or Crown Law to check that the Bill of Rights is complied with. No, that gets sacrificed on the altar of Mammon, as well as the rest of it—as well as family time, religious observance, union rights, and everything else—because this is a Government that has lost its moral compass, that has lost its values, that knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

I call this the “Brexit Bill of Easter Trading” because if our territorial authorities were like the eurozone, this encourages people to do a little bolt for the sidelines. You know what? The same kind of dissatisfaction and alienation that is amongst voters in the UK who have voted to leave—in my view, wrongly—will be encouraged by this bill, because people, in their heart of hearts, know that life is about more than money. It is not just about trading every day of the year. Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, if we pass this bill this year, then next year there will be another bill to get rid of what will be the last 2½—not 3½—days. It will be Good Friday, it will be Anzac Day, and then they will be the Nats who stole Christmas, because that will be the last bastion of families. Imagine going to little Johnny, Jane, or Rangi and saying: “Hey, dad would have come here to open your presents, but John Key’s Government forced him to go to work instead.” These folk seem to know nothing more than the elevation of commerce to their only god—

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh!

—and whatever people’s religion—well, Mr Bishop groans. Is any member of the National Party going to stand up for religious observance and vote against this bill? Just one, raise your hand—or are you under the whip? Are you under the whip? Are those members under the whip—because that would be yet another outrage.

This workaround bill seeks to trash one of our few family protections, and in doing so also removes the conscience vote as well as the constitutional protections against a “Henry VIII” clause. It is hard to comprehend a more underhand, sleazy, back-door approach to liberalising Easter trading in the name of the great god Mammon. Members over there are wriggling in their seats with discomfort because they know that they are wrong, and members on this side of the aisle are right on a matter of deep conviction.

Let me sum up: this bill undermines workers’ rights. There is no way that it cannot. There is no way that if you pass a law that says, in theory, you have the right to object to go to work and your employer will not mind, that that will be borne out in the real world. This bill removes one of only 3½ days per year of protected holidays that New Zealanders have left. It is part of a slippery slope of the run down, of the secularisation, of our society, and the worship of commercialism above all else. That is why this is a line in the sand worth fighting for, as a matter of principle.

Fourthly, this is a constitutional outrage, bad in conception, made worse by the amendments that the Commerce Committee rejected—could not find a majority for—and so sent back to the House unamended. Here is the prediction, wrapping up: the Minister will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper to do in the House, using the vote of the National whip, what the select committee would not vote for and which members of the House as a whole do not want. That will be the icing on the cake of a process that is the antithesis of principle, that is wrong in object, mistaken in execution, and, actually, insulting to the highest ideals of New Zealanders. I will exercise my conscience to vote strongly against this bill.

I rise to take a call on the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge the previous speaker, David Cunliffe, the son of an Anglican minister, and surely that was an evangelical, hermeneutical, preaching sermon about, I suppose, the supposedly sanctimonious position of this Government to this bill. But this is not about religion. This bill is about the issues around the freedom of choice. But let us go to that point, because the point was made in regard to this bill on the impact that it has on families—the impact that it has on the fact of imposing employment, and of trading on an Easter Sunday, and the realisation of that.

If the previous speaker actually thought and looked hard into the aspect of what the religious observance is of Easter Sunday—it is absolutely the most important day for those of the Christian faith. Inside of that, it talks about sacrifice, it talks about service, and it talks about the aspect of redemption that is actually important to that faith. But the most important thing it also reveals is this: it is the freedom of choice for every single person to choose, if they so choose to, the fact of receiving the revelation, the redemption, and the resurrection of the Son of God—as is part of Easter Sunday trading. If that is the key principle of Easter, then that is the same principle that lies in this bill.

I have some sympathy with and understanding of the comments that have been made. I myself, of the Christian faith, do understand the importance of Sunday, and the role that it plays for families, and the observance of that. I do not oppose that. I think that is absolutely important. But inside of this bill, what it does talk about is dealing with the next step. Others of the Opposition have said to us: “Well, why do we not just make it universal legislation that demands that every single territorial authority, that everybody else—actually, that there will be a compliance towards trading on Sunday?”. It takes a step back because it allows this clause, the freedom to choose—the freedom for territorial authorities, which will engage with their communities. If you read the regulatory impact statement, why it also talks about this is—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Pontius Pilate!

It is not the washing of the hands of Pilate. I know that is what he was referring to. It was the fact of this. Even Pilate knew that the people of Israel, the Jews themselves, had to make a choice. He let them choose. So if Mr Lees-Galloway wants to read further, read it, as it says, in context. If you know your hermeneutics, he allowed the people to choose. This bill will allow communities to choose, as they wish, whether they should have trading or shopping hours.

There has been some talk about the impact on those who may be affected for employment reasons. I am going to wind this up just in a few comments. There already currently exists the Human Rights Act of 1993, the Employment Relations Act of 2000. Those things are important. I know my time is short. I am getting notice of that. I do stand in this second reading. I look forward to the Committee stage of this bill. I commend this bill to the House.