King Colin: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and Anzac Day) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Colin: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and Anzac Day) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:3915. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 May I begin by saying that we on this side of the House are voting against the Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill. I want to use the time I have available to actually explain to the other side what I seen as lacking. 
There is obviously a lack of understanding on the other side of the House on the Opposition benches of the primary industries which we are very fortunate to have. The effects of such legislation on the primary industries has been perverse for some time. The whole exercise and example around this can be illustrated well by looking at Anzac Day should it fall on a weekend. There are many employers and employees who are involved in flexible working situations. I want to use one that is fairly close to my heart and that is the wool industry. In regard to the shearing industry it is not uncommon to be in a situation where workers these days are managing farms. When it comes down to actually trying to get some cohesion and coordination within a seasonal pressure situation such events as are being proposed by this bill are nothing but cumbersome and obstructive. 
 An example is a farming business where the employer enforces the employees getting the sheep in ready for a Monday start or a Tuesday start. In the event of this bill what happens? It is a Wednesday start. So there are costs. This is just one example. There is the other situation where there are very often wet seasonal situations. A situation comes down to its Friday and it has been raining for a week then in the weekend it comes right. Nobody is going to start work on Sunday because there is another holiday on Monday. Nobody starts work until Wednesday. We are talking about thousands of people who are affected by this situation. Weather-dependent situations do arise. Whether it is making of silage making of hay or putting in the critical winter crop it is guided by a situation. We are not talking about 1 day or 2 days here; we are talking about 4 days in effect. I have seen no indication of consideration of that from the other side of the House. 
In effect this sort of legislation also creates inequity around the business model that is operating at the time. It enables an owner-operator to carry on doing their thing whereas an employer who offers job security to employees is totally put at disadvantage. What these sorts of bills do is actually create perverse incentives whereby the employer will put employees on subcontracting situations to be able to get round this situation. 
You may say on the other side of the House that 88 percent of people come from urban areas and only 12 percent of people from rural areas. Well that is not quite the case. 
I can say with great pride that it never happened in my day—and thank goodness it did not—and it should not be happening today. When we look at work the popular view is that a holiday is marvellous but from my own personal experience a holiday with four children was a costly experience. When you look at the family situation today it is quite clear that this bill is making a rather complex employment situation even more complex. 
It is objectionable that people on the other side of the House in Opposition stand in the way of people who want to work. It is sort of consistent when you stop and think about it because the Opposition finds it better to give away productivity—better to give away those opportunities for New Zealand to get ahead. On the National Party side of things here we are very proud of the work we have done to try to make sure that this economy grows and goes ahead. 
Let us count some of those things. The complexity of this bill does not address the full situation. In the hospitality area a lot of people have Mondays off. They work from Tuesday to Saturday and they will not be covered. So as far as this bill addressing an anomaly all it does is create further complexity. Within the primary sector there are some huge problems around the complexity. Today as in my day when the sheep are dry or when the hay is ready to be made that is when you should work. So I have no difficulty in opposing this bill.