Fairbrother Russell: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fairbrother Russell: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:631;Page:3610] 
RUSSELL FAIRBROTHER (Labour) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to speak to this bill tonight but I am very sad to have to speak against the bill proposed by my good friend Steve Chadwick. I oppose this bill. 
I listened with some interest to the last speaker who comes from Napier. In 5 minutes he again gave one of his profound speeches for Napier by firstly noting simply that the territorial authorities would not approve of this bill—and of course they would not—and secondly making some inane comment about travel agents in Napier not choosing to open on certain days. Napier has bigger issues to address than trying to stretch the dollar of a few over a few extra days. Napier has large areas of social deprivation and it is the people there—the young kids—who will be called in to work on the extra day. Of course there is choice but it is not a real choice. 
I speak in this debate as someone who has continually parented for the last 37 years. I started parenting when man first walked on the moon—in fact in the same month—and my youngest child is now 14. So for the last 37 years or however long it has been I have been raising children. In that time I have seen shops close fully on the weekend whereas today some are trading for 6 or 7 days a week. In that time we have also seen the breakdown of family life. The dollar does not buy more; people just work longer hours to have the same buying power for their family. And we now have two parents working. The effect on the family is that children no longer grow up coming home to one parent who is there and dedicated to their needs. We can beat our chests all day and all night about what causes family breakdown but if there is not one parent in the house whom children can relate to in downtime when that parent is not harried by work pressure then that family will have all the symptoms and signs of family breakdown. There are suburbs in Napier where parents have no choice but to work every hour available to them in low-paying jobs in shops or in cleaning jobs. There are suburbs in Napier where the children do not lack the love of their parents but their parents lack the time to give them their support because of the competing demand of earning an income. 
I also speak as a member for 6 or 7 years of a board of trustees of a decile 2 secondary school. I know only too well the difficulties a decile 2 school has in engaging with its parent community. Again it is not because the parents do not want to be engaged; it is because their time is so committed. Many of the parents work for a wage that does not give them the choice that property developers property speculators and the like have to govern their lifestyle accordingly. In Napier we see the clashes of the two styles. We see those who are privileged with choice and who want shops to open 7 days a week so that they can go and buy from those who have to work for a menial wage at the expense of their family life; and we see those who do not have a choice whether to work those hours—even though it may be written into the bill that they do—because shops opening for longer hours will put pressure on the 16 and 17-year-olds to work at the expense of their school work and put pressure on the mums and dads to work the few extra hours so that their children can have the glittering toys that the well-off have. 
This is a real debate in the suburbs of our community. It is the pressure of time that is the biggest cost to family life. This bill does nothing to ease the pressure of time. It is absolutely fallacious to say that businesses in Napier will improve because the shops open on a few extra days. There is not an unlimited amount of money going around and waiting to be spent. Every dollar in the suburbs in Napier that matter is well committed before parents look to see how many days a week the shops open. Many parents could not spend enough money to feed the kids even if the supermarket was open on only 3 days a week. An extra day will not help the young kids in Napier who have time on their hands and are on the streets because their parents are working hard to meet the cost of buying a house in Napier or the cost of paying the exorbitant rent that some landlords charge because the National Government sold State houses and there was no income-related rent legislation. We do not have the stock. People cannot get a State house. 
These are the issues we have to address rather than increasing our shopping days by a few measly hours. I stand here as someone who asks people to look over the other side of the fence. What this bill proposes may be unimportant in the scale of things but it is part of the principle of whittling away for the mighty dollar what is really our greatest value in this country—our people. What is most important? It is people; it is people; it is people. And we cannot have people without relationships and relationships are families. Families need to have downtime to spend together—time when they do not need to do anything so that real relationships can be formed. That is why I speak against this bill despite the good intentions of my good friend Steve Chadwick.