Flavell Te Ururoa: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7607. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe Madam Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa iteneipo. Members may not know this but the Easter before last was the year a cyclone hit Tuhoe country at Ruatoki in my electorate. It had nothing to do with the fact that the Taupo retail community was able to open its doors and that of Ruatoki was not. It was in fact the cyclone that threatened to devastate a biennial Te Hui Ahurei o Tuhoe. Despite the big winds gusting forward and the tents collapsing all around us—I was present as was Tariana Turia—Te Hui Ahurei stood strong. Despite the rain the wind and the mud Te Hui Ahurei continued for the 4 days of Easter. In many ways it was that Tuhoe spirit that I thought of when our attention turned to this Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill. 
You see Tuhoe as a tribal nation are a very young people. In fact in 1996 42 percent were under the age of 15 and it is precisely because of the youthfulness of Tuhoe that in the early 1970s Te Hui Ahurei o Tuhoe was established as a strategy to connect young Tuhoe to their culture. It was a product of renaissance and a way of maintaining Tuhoe identity amongst the younger members most of whom lived away from the lands of the Urewera ranges. Nowadays Te Hui Ahurei o Tuhoe attracts more than 25000 people who come each Easter to the Eastern Bay of Plenty to celebrate Tuhoetanga. This year as with other years there will be netball; kapahaka; rugby; wearable arts; food; exhibitions; taupatupatu or debates with stimulating korero to and fro; and lots of competition and friendly challenges to bind the people together. 
I look at that festival not as the member of Parliament for Waiariki and not even because I have had the privilege of attending and sharing the celebrations with the people; I look at it today by thinking about how the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill will affect it. The first rendition of the bill from Jacqui Dean might not have affected too many Tuhoe other than possibly those living in Wanaka and Tauranga. But if the recommendations of the Commerce Committee are enacted—which would mean that all shops in all areas could open on Good Friday and Easter Sunday—there would be a significant and longstanding effect certainly on whanau Tuhoe and everyone else. Te Ahurei o Tuhoe at its very heart is an expression of whanaungatanga a celebration of kinship. But if the shop trading amendments are to come into force it would mean that the very basis of the festival is at risk. 
I want to make it clear that the opportunity for whanau members to work or not to work on a public holiday is something that every individual worker is entitled to consider. There may well be solid economic reasons lifestyle reasons or career promotion factors that justify taking up every opportunity to work additional hours. For promoters of these bills the central factor is the due expression of individual choice not the impact of this choice on others. There are only 3½ days every year that are genuine public holidays as others have talked about. Although many previous restrictions on shop trading no longer exist general restrictions still remain for trading on Good Friday Easter Sunday Christmas Day and until 1 o’clock on Anzac Day. Three and a half days out of 365 is not a lot to ask for really. Easter Sunday is the only Sunday left in the annual calendar when shops are not able to open. Easter Sunday added to Good Friday is also the only long commercial-free weekend in which families can be together basically uninterrupted by work commitments. But with this bill and the accompanying Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading) Amendment Bill this all stands to change. 
So we in the Maori Party come to this bill thinking particularly about the impacts it will have and how it will impinge on whanau time. We wonder whether people will be working when ordinarily they would not be. How will this bill enhance and strengthen whanau participation in community activities? We think about voluntary and community work. If whanau members have to work who will care for pakeke younger children and younger tamariki on days when presumably other forms of care might be harder to come by? 
I return to this notion of choice. Providing an individual with the opportunity to work is not just a matter of that individual’s choice. Members can take for example in the case of my own whanau my eldest daughter. If she takes up the opportunity to work on Easter Sunday or Good Friday that choice will have implications for her younger siblings her parents—her whanau—for we will all miss out on her delightful company and whanaungatanga is therefore compromised. 
We do acknowledge however that the protections around the work choices for employees at Easter have been strengthened by the recommendations from the select committee and we will support those proposals. In the previous version of the bill employees had to opt in to protections by agreement. That provision of course contrasted fairly significantly with existing legislation that applies protections to all employees. 
 However we do not support the amendment made at the Commerce Committee to add all councils to the list of exempted areas potentially allowing the total liberalisation of Easter trading across the entire nation. This is a far cry from the original intent of the bill—as Dr Cullen alluded to—to allow trading exemptions in the visitor districts of Tauranga and Wanaka. Although the select committee has made it possible for councils to opt out from exempting shop owners to trade during Easter there are some very practical restrictions and questions around this capacity to opt out. The select committee report fails to detail how this would be done what consultation would be required and whether legislation would be amended. We believe it is vital that the bill describes the nature of the process that would be required in order for district councils to decide appropriately whether to opt out of the exemption. 
My understanding is that since 1997 there have been five bills before Parliament proposing amendments to the Easter shop trading hours legislation and Sue Bradford alluded to some of those. Only one is passed and that was the legislation giving garden centres an exemption on Easter Sunday. Following conscience votes the others have all failed to get sufficient support in Parliament. Surely that has to tell us something about central values that members of this Parliament will be revisiting in their decisions on the two bills in front of us. A vote for either of the bills will have many impacts on the constituents we represent. Neither bill will treat Easter as a public holiday. Therefore workers will not be benefiting from compensation for family time by earning time and a half pay or a day in lieu. 
The Maori Party is well aware that 30 years has passed since the Shop Trading Hours Act 1977 which placed significant restrictions on the hours and days that shops could operate. That law was amended in 1990 to provide much greater freedom for retailers. It permitted retailers to open up to 24 hours a day 7 days a week. In a sense we went from the floodgates being fastened tight and secure to 13 years later the opposite occurring. 
At the same time as work hours increased and employee protections had been reduced the need for quality care of employees and whanau has never been more important. If the bills do miraculously make it through the Committee stage a key priority would be to enable those working either Good Friday or Easter Sunday or both to be granted the pay rates and conditions commensurate with those of a public holiday. We appreciate too that no matter how we flesh the pay packet one can never underestimate the importance of preserving precious family time as the reserve of the family and the family alone. 
The Maori Party believes that working at Easter impinges on the ability to participate in whanau activities. We are of course mindful and fully supportive of the freedom to practise and express one’s spiritual beliefs and values. We are sufficiently aware of the compromises and sacrifices that far too many New Zealanders are experiencing bringing in its wake the all too familiar trend of work-life imbalance. Kia ora tatou.