SpeechDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to do a different take on being a small-business owner. When I was growing up back in the 1970s one of my fondest memories was listening for the bus on a Friday night. As soon as I heard it go past I'd be running down the road to meet my dad who always worked a late Friday night in his souvenir shop in the New Plymouth mall. Back then shopping was pretty much Monday to Friday but you had the excitement of going downtown on a Friday night. For those that wanted to go and pick up that extra little bit of shopping you had the ability to do so until 8.30 p.m. The thing is everything was closed at the weekends and so what that meant is dad had heaps of time to be with us kids. So we had fantastic times going down to the beach going to the park. He used to build us play forts. He used to build his chicken coops. He had a whole empire of self-sustainability in terms of the fruit trees and the veges in the garden.Then the law changed and Saturday trading came in. I guess for him it was a bit of a dilemma because while everybody else opened on Saturday morning if he didn't all his customers would go to his competitors. So what happened is Dad just extended his work hours. He still had to work Friday night Monday to Friday but he went in again on a Saturday for his customers to stay open.I don't think he actually earned any extra money but basically it was something where he wouldn't lose money if he was there. So what happened is Sunday became the combination of our family day but also him juggling all his church responsibilities as well.Fortunately what happened is by the time Sunday trading came about nine years later all us kids had grown up and the business was no longer there. I think the thing for him though was that working on a Saturday and a Sunday really wasn't a choice because if your competitors are working you don't really have any other option otherwise you're going to lose your business. So basically now what we've got is a fact that small-business owners if they wanted to can stay open and work 24/7 seven days a week. I think the issue we've got now is everybody's stressed and we've got mindfulness and we've got meditation and they're a billion dollar business. So what happens is many of us look forward to our public holidays as having that little bit of time off. But as you've heard from my colleagues we've got 11 public holidays we celebrate now as a country but there's only really four of them where workers can actually be guaranteed that bit of time off. That's Christmas Day; then we've got Anzac Day up until 1 p.m. as my colleague Jamie Strange had talked about; then we've got Easter Friday; and we've got Easter Sunday. I think of our other public holidays; so we've got Boxing Day which is now synonymous with excess and with sales; then we've got the day after New Year's Day again where basically many of us are going out and catching up on the last of the bargains that came from the Boxing Day sales. So we've got very very few days where somebody working in retail can actually say I'm going to have that holiday spend it with my family and with my friends" and basically don't have to have the pressure of justifying why they want to do that to their employer. Also for many who are working in vulnerable conditions the actual pressure to actually stump up and say "No I actually want to spend that time with my family and friends." may well be incredibly difficult. So we've lost that whole protection and we've lost a lot of that ability for people to spend that time.As again my colleague Jamie Strange said for many those particular days—Easter Friday and Easter Sunday—are not just holidays they're holy days. They're where you go to church and you mark the death and the resurrection of Christ. For many of them that's a significant moment where you don't want to be out there shopping. So basically for others though it's actually just a time to spend with family and friends. So for me and for our side of the House what we're wanting to do is not to lose any more of those protections that our workers have. I'm proud actually of some of the protections we have put in place for workers since we've been in Government over the last four and a half years. I think about you know just the things like the increases to the minimum wage reinstating meal breaks and rest breaks and doubling the number of sick days that people have. So again there's not the pressure to come to work when you're sick. Also thinking about what we're going to be doing in terms of fair pay agreements.So this is not a bill that on this side of the House we can support because I think we want to make sure that people can take that time off and be with family and friends on those limited extra days of the year. Thank you Mr Speaker."