Copeland Gordon: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Copeland Gordon: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7609. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 As the deputy chairperson of the Commerce Committee I would like to begin by clarifying how it has come to be that this Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill which when it received its first reading in the House permitted shop trading on Good Friday and Easter Sunday in just the Wanaka and Tauranga districts is now extended to cover the entire nation and every single territorial authority within the nation. Let us be very clear that the bill we will be voting on tonight now permits unrestricted shop trading on Good Friday and Easter Sunday from North Cape to Bluff with no single area exempted or excepted. I want to explain to the House because Sue Bradford touched on this matter how that situation arose. 
This bill was before the Commerce Committee for some time—for several months—and we received many submissions on it. At the conclusion of that phase when we came to the consideration of the bill there was no majority on the Commerce Committee for either this bill or the accompanying bill in the name of Steve Chadwick on which we heard submissions at the same time. So it looked as though we would be referring both bills back to the House completely unaltered. At that point the Leader of the House Dr Cullen intervened at the Business Committee to say that he thought that was not a satisfactory process when the bills under consideration were to be debated in this House as conscience bills. Members may recall that subsequently the Speaker wrote to every select committee stating that if the committee is considering a conscience bill then it at least has an obligation to bring it back to this House fit for its purpose. 
Having received that advice from the Speaker’s office we then proceeded to examine the bills in detail. Some members of the committee made it clear from the outset that they were going to oppose the bill. So when Sue Bradford stated that this bill was reported back unanimously from the select committee that is incorrect. That was never the case and Sue Bradford misunderstood the situation in that regard. The select committee basically said that if it was OK with the member in charge of the bill and as suggested by a member of the committee we would put a nationwide provision in the bill in the knowledge that at the Committee stage it could if necessary be taken out. That is how schedule 2 was amended from including just the Wanaka district and Tauranga district to including the entire nation. 
But I make the point that that change did not arise from one single submission made to the committee or heard by the committee. I repeat that there was no submission to the committee that this bill should be widened out to embrace the entire nation. Therefore in my opinion the nation’s inclusion in schedule 2 is contrary to democracy is contrary to parliamentary process and should not be permitted. It was done in the circumstances I have set out but I can signal now that should this bill be passed tonight there will be a move in the Committee stage to take its provisions back to ones that apply to the original two districts only: Wanaka and Tauranga. There will be such a move and people will have an opportunity to vote the rest of the country out. I make the point again that its inclusion was done without any submissions from the public on that issue being heard at all. 
I turn now to the fact that I oppose this bill. I would like to see as many New Zealanders as possible continue to have a holiday on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. There are 350000 people directly or indirectly associated with the retail sector and other organisations similar to it such as used-car and new-car dealerships. Those 350000 people at the moment as of right have a holiday on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This Parliament is debating tonight whether we should remove that right from those people and force them to work on Good Friday and Easter Sunday willingly or otherwise—because that is the commercial reality. Let us not be naive about it. The commercial reality is that those 350000 people will if this bill is passed be working on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That is the reality and we are removing that right not to work. Therefore I believe that the House should proceed with great caution. We are removing a right that New Zealanders have had as far as I know for a very very long time: the right that if they work in manage or own a retail shop or similar business they do not have to work on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Henceforth we are going to change that. 
I believe that is absolutely tragic for those 350000 people and all of the people which probably includes most New Zealanders who will be affected as Te Ururoa Flavell said so clearly by their absence. Those people will no longer be with us on Easter Sunday for family celebrations. They will no longer be with us for sporting and other occasions on Good Friday. We should bear in mind by the way that people can now go to garden centres on Good Friday as that provision is already there. This change is proposed in spite of the fact that there is no really good reason for doing that. 
I was also very taken by the explanation given by Hone Harawira today at the press conference that in Maoridom Easter is now the time when hui are held. It is the time when whanau and even iwi and hapu come together. That is because it is the only time in the entire year when they can get together when they are all on holiday. We are going to destroy that. If they continue to have those activities and I am sure they will a significant segment of those hapu iwi or families will no longer be there. 
I think all of us even on Christmas Day as we get together find ourselves asking where a granddaughter is only to be told that she has had to work because she is a nurse or whatever she is. Already a lot of people have to work even on Christmas Day of necessity. But it is completely unnecessary for anyone else who is not involved in the provision of essential services such as nursing and so forth to work just in order to chase a very elusive extra dollar. 
I make the point that New Zealanders are already some of the people who work the longest hours of people in any OECD country. I would also like to make the point that according to statistics produced by the New Zealand Institute the fact that we work longer hours does not mean that our labour force is more productive than that of other countries. On the contrary there is a certain point at which just working longer hours actually reduces productivity. An example of that would be France which has a 35-hour working week and a productivity rate that is way better than New Zealand’s. So this measure is counter-productive. Why? Because people are stressed they are tired and their health is suffering and it really is not even good commercial sense to have exhausted people working on those two very valuable days. 
Only 3½ special holidays are set aside each year—only one single Sunday out of every 52—and I believe that those special days should remain special for all New Zealanders or as I said for as many as possible having regard to the fact that essential services must continue. Service stations need to be open to sell gasoline restaurants need to be open so that people can eat and so on. Those facilities are already open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday anyway. But the rest of it is simply optional in reality. We should not remove the right of people to have a holiday on those two days without any compelling reason commercial or otherwise. Those days should remain special for all New Zealanders. United Future members will therefore—although this is a conscience vote I stress—be voting against this bill tonight because we believe that we should not arbitrarily without any submissions at all along those lines coming to the select committee open the entire country to shop trading on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It simply does not make sense. It is poor law and we should not proceed with it.