Sowry Roger: Holidays Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Sowry Roger: Holidays Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:614;Page:10507] 
Hon ROGER SOWRY (National) 
: 
 I want to start this debate by stating very clearly that the National Party will be opposing quite vigorously the Holidays Bill. This bill although it has been before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee deserves proper scrutiny by the House and it will certainly be subject to that as we work through the Committee stage of it. 
It is hard to think what change of name to give a bill called the Holidays Bill that does a number of things—for example paying people who work on public holidays double time even though they might already have that built into their contracts. In the House we have argued many times that a bill should be given a label that indicates exactly the things it does so that the public when they look at legislation know exactly what it does. 
But I want to pick up a suggestion that was made by the Restaurant Association of New Zealand. The association represents all the restaurants around the country—large and small. It appeared before the select committee and suggested that the title of this bill was wrong. It suggested that this bill should be called the “Government Restaurant Tax for Public Holidays Bill”. That is what it believed. The Restaurant Association of New Zealand when appearing before the committee pointed out that it believed on a survey of its members that 40 percent of the restaurants in this country would have to close on public holidays. 
Jill Pettis 
: Aw! They always say that. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: The member for Whanganui groans and moans. Let us see what the restaurants in Wanganui say when she visits them tells them they will now pay extra for opening on a public holiday and asks them whether they will open or will put on the bottom of their menus that little thing that used to appear there back in the 1970s—that if one eats out on a public holiday a surcharge applies. 
Jill Pettis 
: That’s all right. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: The member for Whanganui says that is all right. On her salary that is fine. She will just pay the extra on a public holiday and to heck with all the families who are not on that salary and who want to go out and have a special treat on that day—that is too bad. She can roll her eyes; she does not care a jot about that. But the Restaurant Association of New Zealand does care about that. It talked about this bill and its suggestion was to change the title to the “Government Restaurant Tax for Public Holidays Bill”. I have moved an amendment based directly on the Restaurant Association’s submission to the select committee. 
Interestingly one of the Labour members on the select committee—who took very little interest in the bill—the new member Ms Mackey was very interested in this bill. When people were talking about the title she was reading— 
Jill Pettis 
: She’s not on the committee. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: She was. She was sitting there as a substitute. The whip sent her along and she was riveted by the bill. She was so riveted that once or twice she was in danger of missing turning the page of her  
New Idea  
magazine that she was reading during submissions. While the Restaurant Association was making submissions she was reading  
New Idea 
 that great women’s magazine which has absolutely nothing to do with the select committee. But she is a keen hard-working member of Parliament who clearly wanted to take part in the submissions. 
I point out in moving an amendment that the Government change the title to the “Government Restaurant Tax for Public Holidays Bill” as suggested by the Restaurant Association of New Zealand that the association also said that a large number of jobs would be lost because of this bill.