Gosche Mark: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I started to listen to the member’s speech part-way through—I apologise to her for getting here a little too late to hear the earlier part—but I think it was along the lines of wanting to take complexity out of the legislation. So let us look at what schedule 2 in her bill actually does. It means that in Wanaka businesses could open on these days provided they were within a radius of 25 kilometres from the postshop situated at 39 Ardmore Street Wanaka. Now if the National Party ever happened to get back into Government and went back to closing post offices and postshops as it did in the past then what would happen under this “less complicated” legislation? Under this bill in the Tauranga district if a business were in the area within 30 kilometres from the chief post office—at least Tauranga has a chief post office—it could open on those days. What would happen if the chief post office shifted? Or what would happen if a business were 30 kilometres and 1 metre from the chief post office? 
Dr Don Brash 
: Read the bill. You’re wasting our time. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: I am reading the bill. What would happen if one’s business were 30 kilometres and 1 metre away from the post office in Tauranga? If this bill is about clarifying matters and making them simpler I think other members who follow me may have something to say about that—and those are the ones who agree with the bill! I do not agree with the bill. I have looked through— 
Colin King 
: For any other reason? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Yes I will give members the reasons. I have looked through the many debates that this House has engaged in on these issues since I came here in 1996. I have done a search of  
Hansard 
 on the computer and it shows that time after time we have had this kind of debate and time after time we have ditched such bills. I think this bill will go the same way as the others even if it gets to the select committee. 
One of the things I would like to ask the member is why if she has the courage of her convictions this bill does not include Anzac Day. All of the people who have promoted this kind of measure have talked about freedom—the freedom to shop. They say if tourists cannot come to New Zealand and buy a photo frame in Wanaka the world will come to an end. If a tourist comes to New Zealand to buy a photo frame in Wanaka we really have to wonder what sort of tourist he or she is. Tourists do not come here to buy a photo frame in Wanaka on Easter Sunday. They come here for much more enjoyable pleasures and a great many other things that attract people to this part of the world. So it is nonsense that our tourism industry will rise or fall on the ability of people to shop on the 3½ days that they cannot shop. 
What this bill actually threatens are the rights of those people who work in or own those businesses and who do not want to work. The member says that those rights have been protected in the bill but I tell her that her advice that Easter Sunday is a public holiday is incorrect. If she would like to move that amendment to the Holidays Act to make it a public holiday I would be in favour of it but I do not think the National Party would like a member’s bill from any of its members to make Easter Sunday a public holiday. It is not a public holiday. She should think about it again. 
I come back to Anzac Day. Why do the people who have such a courageous need to put up members’ bills to allow shopping on Easter Sunday and Good Friday not dare to do that in relation to Anzac Day? Why do they not dare to go into the RSA and tell the old diggers—whom those members like to drink with and get their photo taken with on Anzac Day and the members say how wonderful they are—why the freedom to shop should be allowed on Anzac Day and Christmas Day? I would like an answer to that. They do not have the political courage to bite that one off. Some members have tried to do so in the past but the outrage from the RSA made them all withdraw. Yet again those members do not have the courage of their convictions. 
I have the courage of my convictions to say I believe that for 3½ days a year our shops should be closed and our workers should be able to be at home with their families. That is what the law should be. There is nothing wrong with that. I have the courage of my convictions to say I respect the right of people to say a line has to be drawn. When I look at previous speeches I have made on bills of these sorts I see I stand here as someone who is proud of the family values this country is based on. Those family values were not built on 7-day-a-week 24-hour-a-day 365-day-a-year shopping. But the National Party thinks the world will come to an end if we cannot shop and buy a photo frame in Wanaka and the world will come to an end— 
Darren Hughes 
: Except on Anzac Day. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: One cannot buy anything on an Anzac Day morning if one is in the National Party. It is too politically unpopular with the people that National members have to front up to once a year at the RSA. 
Let us have a look at the other provisions in the bill. I want the member to tell us in her 5-minute reply what protection there is in her bill if it becomes law for those who do not want to work on those days. I want her to tell us where that provision is in her very meagre bill. I cannot find it. The bill is so unclear and badly worded that the way I read it it is a nonsense to say that those people are protected and will have a right not to work. It is similar to the businesses that are forced by mall owners to open even though they do not want to. I have rehearsed this argument in the House many many times. Workers in this country should have the right to enjoy time with their families. 
 This Parliament has Standing Orders that prohibit people in this place from working on a Sunday—not just Easter Sunday but every Sunday of the year. Dr Don Brash who barely ever shows any interest in this House and barely works at all would not know whether the Standing Orders require him to come to work on a Sunday. He would not have a clue about the Standing Orders that state this Parliament does not have the ability to work on a Sunday. MPs on the Opposition side of the House want to legislate to say to shop workers—some of the lowest-paid workers in this country—that they have to work but MPs will not work because our rules will not allow it. I have not seen any National member in the 2 years since this issue was last debated promote a change to the Standing Orders that would require Parliament to sit on a Sunday. How come it is good enough for shop workers but not for us? How come Parliament prohibits itself from working on a Sunday but the poor shop workers who are on the minimum wage in Wanaka and Tauranga have to go to work? They have to be at work so that the poor member over there can get a photo frame on Easter Sunday and put in a photo of herself sitting at home and doing nothing. That is the absolute nonsense of those people. It is as though they are saying other people should work but they will not. They will get photos of themselves sitting at home with their families because that is what good family people do—they spend time with their families. 
New Zealand society has changed dramatically. We have liberalised our labour laws and our shop trading hours— 
Bob Clarkson 
: It’s all gone downhill. 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: Bob Clarkson says it has all gone downhill. The member is absolutely right. We cannot hold family values when we are requiring whole heaps of people who have families to go out to work 24/7 and to be available to work flexibly at any time. In the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee Bob Clarkson has talked about flexible working hours; he is very much in favour of them but not for himself and his own mates. He will vote for this bill because he wants the shop workers of Tauranga to be made to work on Easter Sunday while he is lazing around at home. That is the thing that absolutely amazes me about people who promote these sorts of bills. It is all about somebody else having to do the penance having to go to work and having to be there to serve in a shop because those members might die if they could not buy something for another 24 hours. That is utter nonsense. If we have a society that absolutely requires shops to be open 24/7 365 days a year and if our economy absolutely depends on it we are in big trouble. 
Seriously this issue is about the right of workers to have time with their families. That is why I oppose this legislation have opposed it in the past and will continue to oppose it in the future. I have struck a line in the sand and said enough is enough. We have to have some decent working conditions for people who are expected to work 24/7 for all the other days of the year. This is a chance for members to actually put their money where their mouth is and to vote for real family values that say we respect the right of shop employees to stay at home on Easter Sunday and have a day off like the rest of us in this place. We always remember those who are serving food cleaning and nursing in hospitals. They do not get that day off but they will tell members they support the right of shop workers to have that time off. Those people know what sacrifices they have made to be away from their families. Hospital and rest home care is absolutely vital and urgent—it is about life and limb. Shopping is not about life or limb.