Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): 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!Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —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."