SpeechDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia orana Mr Speaker. It's getting late and I believe it might be time for a little bit of a bedtime story as we put I hope this bill to bed. It's an old story but it appeals to me because it talks to the one remaining day of protected holiday that we would have left for workers in this country were this bill to pass. Let's see how long it takes my colleagues to pick up what we're talking about: At length the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived. With an ill will Scrooge dismounted from his stool and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk. 'You'll want all day tomorrow I suppose.' 'If quite convenient sir.' 'It is not convenient and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it you'd think yourself mightily ill-used I'll be bound.' 'Yes sir.' 'And yet you do not think me ill-used if I have to pay a day's wages for no work.' 'It's only once a year sir.' " That's what we're going to have. This perhaps should be renamed the "Scrooge Bill" because it will put us back in the Dickensian position of having one day a year in which people can guarantee that they will have a day with their families without the pressure of work.Because for all the fine rhetoric coming from the ACT Party as to the freedom to work what we're really talking about is people of extreme vulnerability—people like my colleague Ms Walters was describing but also going back over 150 years the people that Mr Charles Dickens was discussing when he made this story about a clerk with a family to support who felt almost unable to take that one day a year who was begrudged it who was only given it out of a strong sense of custom. It is so little—it is so little to ask really for our families to preserve just a little bit of space within the year where they do not have to worry about disappointing employers upon whom they rely. Business is not just about profit; business is about people. Without the people there is no profit and there is no business. It is not too much to ask of each other that we preserve a few small days in the year where vulnerable workers do not have to negotiate or worry about the time they take off. I am not a Christian and for me the fact that these holidays that we have left are religious holidays is not an issue. I find it more of a cultural phenomenon but it is one that even a non-Christian family like my own celebrated and found extremely precious. The fact that Easter was available to us—there are so many memories I have around the Easter holidays. There are so many memories because there are so few opportunities for families to stop in the middle of things. I too remember how important and how special and yes how dull sometimes those Sundays were without shops but how precious in retrospect that we had that time to stop with our families and spend that time together. I don't quite know speaking of spending—I'm not quite sure how the anticipated profit is going to come because the very fact of us having two less days of holiday doesn't actually mean the money is going to increase. The people's wages will stay the same. Their discretionary spending will stay the same. It'll just be packed into—shock horror—two less days in a full year. It doesn't seem to be a problem. People will still be able to go out and they will be able to spend on the day after Easter is over. So: "Mr Scrooge told his worker 'Oh it's a poor excuse for picking a man's pockets every 25th of December but I suppose you must have the whole day. Be there all the earlier the next morning he said.' " Let's not let ourselves become like Mr Scrooge with just that one day where families are protected. Good night Mr Speaker."