Bond RiaRIA BOND (NZ First): I am proud to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the third reading of the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill. That is because this bill is an absolute ticking time bomb for our territorial authorities for local democracy to take effect for our families and for our employees and our employers and I will speak to each one of these travesties throughout my call today. Despite the fact that this bill has gone through all the passages that bills go through in this House despite the fact that Local Government New Zealand and local councils did not want this Government to dump this complex confusing cost-adding exercise on to local councils despite the fact that our families are being forced to spend less time together and despite the fact of tinkering with employment rights and those unintended consequences on job seekers this bill will now allow the statutory restrictions on shops opening on Easter Sunday to be removed by granting territorial authorities the power to create a local policy to permit all shops to open in all or some parts of the territorial districts on Easter Sunday. New Zealand First believes that local government is the exerciser of democracy at the local level. This is a fundamental part of New Zealand's governance structure and what we have noticed is the scope and the nature of the changes to how councils handle this. Also under this National-led Government I would have thought it would consider a more appropriate approach to this—something like allowing our local councils to give our communities a choice as to whether shops open on Easter Sunday in their districts by holding a local referendum. They are now being forced to through a policy mechanism. This would have in fact given our communities choices before local councils take on more financial burdens. We heard submitters voice the real impact and concern of the financial burden being unfair and unnecessary for them. Ratepayers who are already struggling and local councils which do not want this financial burden have been ignored. New Zealand First has multiple issues with this bill. New Zealand First believes that this sets the tone of the legislation in its entirety and it does not take into satisfactory consideration the degree of citizen engagement with local body decision-making processes. This leads the general public and this side of the House to believe that this Government lacks the intestinal fortitude to actually apply common sense to this bill. Let us touch on families. Families in New Zealand only get 3½ days per year to spend time together doing family things like holidays special occasions weddings birthdays and unveilings. This bill strips away the rights of families who choose to spend the Easter weekend together. Families understand that Easter Sunday is a restricted trading day as it stands. However it is surrounded by public holidays which is why our families go away to rejuvenate and to recharge. Families deserve to do that. This Government is refusing families their time together when they can create rituals not based on shopping but on celebrating together reconnecting and making memories. Unlike members of this House many families cannot afford to do that as some members have become accustomed to being able to afford to do it.This bill claims to recognise the significance of Easter Sunday and allows all shop workers the right to refuse to work on Easter Sunday through the provision of their being able to initiate a personal grievance claim where an employer requests a shop worker to work on Easter Sunday or treats a shop worker adversely because he or she refused to work on that day. New Zealand First believes that the State must refrain from interference in the employer-employee relationship instead leaving such matters to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) the vested body in New Zealand with the expertise to solve employment relationship problems and that furthermore by legislating for such provisions within this bill it erodes the ERA whilst also utilising resources unnecessarily thus wasting taxpayers' money. This bill also allows for an employee and an employer as the Minister alluded to earlier to renegotiate annually whether they will work on Easter Sunday. It also allows for 14 days' notice for the employee to retract that promise to their employer.As I have said I do not know what background Minister Woodhouse comes from or where most of the Government members come from but surely surely they can see that this bill will create difficulties within the workplace. Employees and employers are still forced to go through the personal grievance process which is harrowing devastating and absolutely unnecessary. Through the Committee of the whole House process the Minister did not address the unintended consequences for job seekers and that in itself is a travesty. Let us talk about this bill being a conscience vote. Public scrutiny of this bill has been given a boost by famous New Zealanders commenting on the travesties inside this bill. I just want to point out to the members of this House that in 1977 when Labour proposed to vote on party lines on this very issue National strongly objected in a parliamentary debate saying these sorts of issues should be conscience issues. National was disappointed at the time that Labour wanted to exercise the party whip on an issue like this. However the National caucus has agreed to treat the current bill as a Government measure rather than a conscience issue meaning that those members have agreed to vote alongside the party line. A bill like this bill which we are again looking at today has been through this House eight times with the same old proposals that we have seen year after year. They have been repackaged and re-presented in Parliament in this year's bill. As the Hon Michael Woodhouse said at its introduction to Parliament the present bill is modelled on Todd McClay's 2009 member's bill which was defeated in a conscience vote. Conscience votes are a significant constitutional safeguard against forcing members of Parliament to vote along party lines on ethical issues that transcend party politics. Easter trading has long been treated as one of these issues and this was recognised by the Speaker in the votes on both the first and second readings of this bill. That is because National members agreed to vote along party lines despite a long history of conscious votes on this issue. New Zealand First members have the intestinal fortitude and will continue to oppose this bill because this bill is a Get Stuffed New Zealand Bill" from that Government."