Mathers Mojo: Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMathers Mojo: Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7628. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOJO MATHERS (Green): The Green Party will be opposing this bill which opens up trading on one of the very few days of the year when trading is currently restricted. I have to say I do not understand the obsession of some people with liberalising trading on Easter Sunday. This is something like the ninth or 10th attempt to do so in the last 9 years. I just think that this is inappropriate.Easter Sunday is one of only 3½ days in the year that offer Kiwi families a day where they have some protection from work commitments and from the constant pressure of mass consumerism. Of course there are many exceptions. There are many service industries emergency services and utility operators whose employees are obliged to work or be available for work 365 days of the year and may be required to work on Christmas Day Good Friday Easter Sunday or Anzac morning. But retaining a few special precious days of the year that are free from the expectation that retail shops will be open—for the people who work in the retail industry that is incredibly important.When you talk about choice—for people to have the choice to shop—what about the people who work in the retail industry having the choice not to work and to be with their family and to have a family gathering without having to juggle around these work commitments in the retail industry? These people are some of the lowest-paid people in the workforce. These are the ones who most need this protection because there is an incredible power imbalance in negotiating around taking leave from work. If the shop is going to be open that day and you work for that shop you are going to find it very difficult to say: “No I would rather spend the day with my family on Easter Sunday.”These days stand as significant symbols of freedom from a culture of unfettered unconstrained unbridled consumerism at all expenses and we need to value and encourage such days that are free from these pressures because it is that pressure of mass consumerism that is destroying our planet. They are also incredibly important symbols of valuing family life and work-life balance. We need to protect these 3½ days. We need to grow and expand them not constrain them because it is a struggle already for many families to get together and have genuine family time.For personal reasons Easter Sunday is of personal significance for me and for many other hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who will use this day to go to church to celebrate. That is important and we should honour that. Yes there are other days that are equally important to other groups of people but we should be looking at those and making more public holidays. We should be expanding them not reducing them.We need genuine public holidays and it is Green Party policy that Easter Sunday would be a public holiday so that if you are expected to work on that day then at least you can have a day in lieu. But this is a dog’s breakfast of a bill and we will not be supporting it. Thank you.