Brown Peter: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Brown Peter: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 That was a passionate speech. I respect Mark Gosche—he has his view—but he is wrong. This bill should go to a select committee and the New Zealand First members will support it going to a select committee. We have promoted similar bills as I recall on more than one occasion in the past. We supported Steve Chadwick’s bill when she wanted to do much the same thing. But Parliament in its wisdom turned those bills down time and time again—which New Zealand First believes is fundamentally wrong. Obviously we believe that people who work in shops should have some family time and time at home. But we do not believe that we should impose that on them and say “thou shalt not work” because we think it is good to have time at home or that nurses who are working should say shop people must not work. That is not right. 
We think the time has come at least to allow shops to open on Easter Sunday. We have stronger reservations about Good Friday—I want to be honest. We did a survey in Tauranga some time ago and the public clearly wanted shops to open on Easter Sunday but they were not as keen to have them open on Good Friday. One of the principal reasons why they wanted shops to open in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui is that the port there is becoming a significant port especially for cruise liners that often come in on a long weekend. The tourists get off get into taxis or minibuses and go for a long bus ride—past Rotorua because the shops are not open—to Taupo. They spend all their money—their US dollars and what have you—in Taupo. That brasses off Tauranga people. They do not think it is fair that shops are open hundreds of kilometres down the road but shops cannot be opened around the port area. That is not fair. 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: Life’s unfair. 
PETER BROWN 
: The member says that life is not fair but our job here is to make it fair or at least to make it fairer. I invite the Minister to listen and to say that is unfair and at least to be prepared to make it fairer. 
The view of the New Zealand First members is that each community is different. We would prefer this sort of legislation to be brought in but to leave it to the local community—the local bodies—to determine whether they would want shops to open. Clearly Tauranga Mount Maunganui and Rotorua would and I accept that Wanaka would as well. 
New Zealand First totally supports sending this bill to a select committee but we believe there is a bit of tidying up to do—none more so than in the schedule at the back of the bill. We think it does not really make sense to define Tauranga district as being “within 30 kilometres from the Chief Post office Tauranga.” The chief postshop in Tauranga has shifted at least once and at least more than 1 kilometre. Does that mean that shops that were within the 30 kilometre area before the postshop shifted are now out of it? That is a little bit “Monty Python-ish”. We believe it would be much more practical to define the area in the way we define a voting area. It is much more sensible. People understand that definition and they know that areas are changed only by sensible rational thought. 
We are hugely disappointed that this type of bill has not got through in the past. We hope that this bill will get to a select committee be modified and come back and that shops will have the ability—if they so desire—to open on Easter Sunday. As I say we regard Good Friday as being in the same vein as Christmas Day and we would not support shops opening on Christmas Day. New Zealand First tends to regard Good Friday as a day of special reverence but we think Easter Sunday makes for a long weekend. It is a holiday weekend for many New Zealanders—not all of them by any means—and it is a holiday weekend for people who come here on cruise ships or even in aircraft to experience New Zealand. We think it is wrong to close up shops simply because we believe there is some concern for the workers in shops. It is quite easy to roster shopkeepers staffing shops just as it is to roster any other activity. Many shops in New Zealand are operated by owner-operators.