Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): In a previous contribution I worked through with the Committee the select committee process and some issues that arose with the amendments that were not accepted by the Commerce Committee which have been reintroduced as a Supplementary Order Paper. What I have not done to date is to deal with the issue at first principles and I wish to spend a few minutes on that now. May I open by rebutting the ridiculous claim from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and the members opposite that somehow a clause in this bill that workers can refuse to work on Easter Sunday with 14 days' notice is actually going to hold any sway in the real world. If an employer says to a worker Hey I want you at work on the weekend because it's one of our busy weekends." and the worker says they are going to exercise their right under new section 5I not to turn up the fact is that it will in the real world affect the relationship between the boss and the worker. The power imbalance in that situation is so obvious that the Committee really does not need to debate it. If the Government members think that that is a sufficient fig leaf for this disappointing piece of legislation that undermines family life that undermines the plurality of religious observance then there is very little that one can actually do to enlighten them. But all is not lost for National because the truth is that a number of its senior members and principled members have repeatedly voted against similar legislation. As I mentioned in my previous contribution there have been four attempts in recent memory to pass through this House laws that would liberalise trading on Easter Sunday: one from Steve Chadwick in 2006 one from Jacqui Dean in 2006 one from Todd McClay in 2009 and another one from Jacqui Dean in 2012. Several National members voted against all or most of those. Chester Borrows: No No No No. Bill English: No No No Yes. Gerry Brownlee: No No Yes No. Nick Smith: No No Yes Yes. Michael Woodhouse: Yes No—instructive. Alfred Ngaro: No. Tim Macindoe: No No. Sam Lotu-Iiga: No No. So here is the real reason why the Government is not bringing a similar piece of legislation to the Committee today: because it would be on documented voting record too difficult for a number of principled members of the National caucus to vote for it hence the workaround.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I have previously ruled—and I know that my colleague has—that this is a debate on the full extent of the bill. I would ask the member to come back. Leave has been granted for a debate on the whole bill as one question and I will ask the member to come back. Talking about past voting records is fine in passing but the member is spending a lot of time on that and I ask him to come back to the content of the bill.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Yes I am very happy to do that. Before I do though I would ask perhaps the members opposite—Alfred Ngaro and Sam Lotu-Iiga—whether they would like to take a call or—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no. I have just asked the member in a manner that I think is in keeping with the spirit of what we are doing here with the debate taken as one question just to concentrate on the content of that.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Thank you I will readily accept your guidance. The difficulty with the legislation and the clauses that we have now is that because this legislative process has been such an utter shambles members are going to have to vote clause by clause and those votes are going to be extremely complex. Let me come back to first principles: I am going to exercise my conscience to vote against this bill because I stand for the protection of one of these few remaining pieces of legislated family time. I stand for whatever faith it is the opportunity for religious observance. There are very few protected opportunities in our calendar. We are increasingly becoming diverse and multicultural and that is a good thing. But we should not give up the legislated protections that we have. That is why I am going to be exercising my conscience to vote against this bill. However because the Government's constitutional workaround has employed this rather bizarre and circuitous route of using local government as a proxy and because of the constitutional issues—the "Henry VIII" clause—that arise because of that and because of the Minister's amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 179 that seek to make it even quicker and dirtier by doing away with the by-law process and making it a policy stroke of the pen members who oppose the bill are going to have to have a very close look at this on a clause by clause basis. We are going to have to vote for example in favour of the original bill's new section 5E which set out a lot of the by-law process protections and against the Minister's amendments to that clause. As much as we detest the bill as a whole those of us who oppose it are going to vote in favour I would imagine of clauses that provide for the protection—"