Chadwick Steve: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3190] 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I have to say that members’ day brings out the diverse views in this House. I feel slightly uncomfortable here tonight with my colleagues on either side of me—but lucky Jacqui Dean. Her bill was pulled from the ballot; mine has lingered in the ballot since the day after the election. We thought we would be the first cab off the rank because we would get the bill in the ballot there would be no others our bill would be pulled out and away we would go. 
The Rotorua bill that I sponsor though I have to say is a much more robust bill than the approach in this bill. It is more inclusive I say to Jacqui. We are attempting to address the ridiculous geographic anomalies that exist in the schedule of exemptions. This schedule of exemptions I think was a pure issue of oversight in 1990. I am not blaming the members at the time; I do not know whether the legislation was rushed through. We were not here then but Rotorua was simply omitted and left off the list. We have suffered for that ever since and I must tell my colleagues here that we have suffered. The absurdity for us is that people can go right through our town and shop in Taupo. 
Of course Taupo voted against my last attempt to get shop trading legislation in the House because it had an economic advantage enshrined in the law in 1990 and we have been unable to unseat that ridiculous anomaly ever since. But in the approach that we took in my bill we were actually less parochial. We realised last time in the bill that I sponsored as a Rotorua local bill that people saw it was just a Rotorua issue that I was trying to resolve and every other area in New Zealand was not remotely interested and so we lost that bill in the House. 
This time working alongside the district council the chamber of commerce Retail Rotorua and the economic development unit we proposed a bill that uses the long-term community plan for territorial local authorities as the mechanism to go out and consult their communities. If they agree to Easter Sunday trading only then can that be addressed. So any territorial local authority across the country could do that rather than picking winners. That anomaly drives the country to absolute distraction. 
This bill is imperfect. It will allow only Wanaka and Tauranga to trade and it also includes Good Friday. I know we have subsequently had advice from the Clerk of the House that other districts can add an amendment. Members can be sure I will be ready with Rotorua. But also I think adding Good Friday into the legislation does weaken its chances. We actually did survey the whole country with the help of the retail sector and the chambers of commerce and there was no mood across the country when it last came to the House—and times change—for Good Friday. That is the argument I am hearing in the House tonight—do not erode it away too much. So we understood that Easter Sunday was about the only day that people would accept for change if there was any mood and that is all that I proposed in my bill. I hope that does not weaken the support for this bill tonight. 
I will support this bill to select committee. Why will I? I am the MP for a tourism icon city and electorate and we have been driven absolutely crazy ever since 1990. We supported Rodney Hide’s bill in the last term of Government and I had no problem with that. As we say one finds some strange bedfellows in an MMP environment and I found Rodney’s bill eminently sensible. 
I would also like to point out that there is no protection for workers in this bill. In my bill that is languishing in the ballot—and it will probably stay there—we have the protections for workers that were proposed by the Green Party when they got the amendment into the last Easter Shop Trading Amendment Act that covered garden centres. We were pleased that the Greens got that amendment in for worker protection. That is not in this bill and that does concern me. 
I will be launching a petition in the Bay of Plenty this Saturday. The petition will urge Parliament to consider legislation to fix the anomalous schedule of exemptions. The petition has the support of the economic development unit Retail Rotorua the chamber of commerce and the district council. It was also resolved at every zone meeting of Local Government New Zealand right through the country that it too would support this bill. Good luck. I hope we get there. I never want to debate this again in this House.