Bradford Sue: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Bradford Sue: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9317] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 One down one to go. Now that the bill in the name of Jacqui Dean has been defeated we can concentrate on the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading) Amendment Bill but that is small consolation. The Green Party is opposed to this bill and will be voting against it as well. Some may say that the Steve Chadwick bill is the lesser of two evils. I can understand why Steve Chadwick as a diligent local MP may have come under some pressure to put up such a bill. This is not the first time we have had a “We Want To Shop Until We Drop In Rotorua Bill”. However this bill is also misconceived and we now have the opportunity to reject both evils. I therefore urge the House to vote down this bill as well. 
During the past couple of months I have noticed a strengthening of opposition to both the Steve Chadwick bill and the defeated Jacqui Dean bill. The Green Party has received delegations emails letters and petitions that have all been opposed to any attempt to liberalise Easter Sunday trading. 
I note that this bill has had its provisions for the protection of workers strengthened in line with the report of the Shop Trading Hours Working Group that was released in June 2003. It is claimed that the amendments to the bill will uphold the right of a worker to refuse to work each time he or she is asked to work on an Easter Friday or Easter Sunday. But the bill does not deal with the consequences of more shopworkers working on another day of the Easter break. 
This means that more distribution workers will be required to work more distribution centres will be open more truck drivers will be on the road and more security and cleaners will be needed. Perhaps more public transport workers will also be required. Those workers have no protection under this bill. And do we really believe that these worker protection clauses will protect workers in the real world of retail trading? 
Like the previous speaker Mr Martin Gallagher I received that letter from a Bunnings Warehouse worker who refused to work when Bunnings again opened illegally this past Easter. That company publicly stated that it was not forcing staff to work. I agree with the worker who wrote the letter that the best defence of workers’ rights is the defeat of this bill. Before I get a call from Bunnings management with a complaint that I am singling that company out let me say that the same comments can be made about all the stores that opened illegally on the current protected Easter days and that wish to have this legalised and to be able to open at all times on all days. 
We could take for example the attitude of Mitre 10 in Petone which also decided to deliberately flout the law by opening on Easter Sunday this year. “What is a $1000 fine when our turnover can surpass that amount in 2 minutes of trading?” one Mitre 10 employee told one of my staff who was shopping on the Saturday and who queried why the company was opening illegally on the following day. My staff member was told that no one there wanted to work on Easter Sunday. Those workers were not paid like it was a public holiday—unlike at Bunnings. They did not get any time in lieu either. They all just wanted to be with their friends and their families and not to be at work at all. 
For this House to try to address these issues with the legislation before it is a bit like rearranging the display of moa at Te Papa: it will never bring those precious things back. We have already lost too many things that are precious to us as New Zealanders. I do not want to add Easter Sunday to that list—or Good Friday or Anzac Day or Christmas Day. The same logic of consumer freedom used to liberalise trading on Easter Sunday will inevitably return to this House next year pushing for ever more opportunities to sell us something. 
So who is supporting this bill? I have received approximately one letter of support for this bill in the last couple of weeks and that has been from the Retailers Association. I know that many of the big chains support the bill—we have been told that Rotorua businesses support the bill—but there is no evidence of any groundswell of support at all from anywhere in New Zealand. 
So who opposes the bill? Retail workers oppose the bill. The retail workers union the National Distribution Union opposes the bill and its national and retail secretaries Laila Harré and Maxine Gay have been running a tireless campaign against it. The Council of Trade Unions opposes the bill. Churches and Christian groups oppose the bill. Unlike my section 59 bill which divided the Christian community there seems to be universal church opposition to the Steve Chadwick bill. I have not heard one church Christian group or faith group that is in support of this bill. 
Now a number of councils are also coming out against it. Over the last 2 days Auckland MPs like myself would have received two letters from a large number of Auckland and Waitakere councillors plus the Mayor of Waitakere Bob Harvey who all strongly oppose the bill. They oppose it for two reasons. First they oppose it because they support the holidays for retail workers and families at Easter time. Secondly they oppose it because they do not want the debate around shop trading hours to be imposed on local authorities. I am sure that if two of the biggest councils in the country feel this way so will most other councils. 
This brings us to those who are in the middle—those who are still wavering on the issue. I was somewhat bemused to read the speech of the Hon Lianne Dalziel to the Rotorua Chamber of Commerce yesterday morning. The timing of the speech was interesting in itself but so were the comments of the Minister that Steve Chadwick “having been burnt once before has worked with me to produce a fall-back position should her Bill fail.” We have to wait until the end of the speech to discover what this “fall-back” position is and we are told: “Cabinet has therefore instructed the Department of Labour and Ministry of Justice to undertake a review of how the Shop Trading Hours Act the Sale of Liquor Act and the Holidays Act operate over Easter weekend and report back options for resolving the discrepancies.” 
The Green Party was unaware of this review. The Social Services Committee does not seem to have been aware of this review. No mention of this review has been made in the debate on either of the Easter trading bills. My inquiries today have indicated that this is not actually a new review but part of the Government’s ongoing Quality Regulation Review. I think the honourable member may have taken some liberties in her description of the review and played those up to the audience yesterday. However the member may have helped other members wavering on the issue to vote against the bill on the basis that a review is currently taking place on these same issues the outcome of which—if further legislation is required—will need to come back to this House. So I strongly urge any waverers here tonight to vote against the bill on that basis and to wait for the outcome of that review. 
In the time I have left I will touch briefly on the issue of freedom. Many of the advocates of Easter Day trading say that this is simply an issue of freedom—freedom of choice and freedom to choose how to spend one’s time on Easter Sunday in particular. A vote supporting this legislation offers New Zealanders and our tourists one more choice of things to do on the last remaining consumer-free Sunday. People are free to attend church people are free to gather as families and people are free to shop. However the freedom of those having to work in retail outlets across the country on this day is neatly overlooked by the advocates of the argument for freedom. 
The rhetoric of freedom has become so entrenched in our society since the neo-liberal revolution that took place in the 1980s that we barely ever stop to consider what freedom corporations and their corporate-friendly politicians are actually trying to sell us. Michael Novak describes freedom in a free-market economy as an “empty shrine” or “wasteland” where common goals used to stand. 
Freedom in a neo-liberal world is simply the right to choose either to shop or not to shop to buy either widget A or widget B depending on personal preference. Where personal wants come from does not matter; all that matters is that individuals can pursue their wants without the interference of others especially from the State. Freedom is entirely personal individualised and without any higher claim value or common goal. If we give an alcoholic plenty of money in a liquor store that is open all hours then we have an example of perfect freedom in a market-driven world. 
The proponents of this bill are arguing that the nature of the good life is a greater freedom of choice. But this is a freedom defined in a vacuum—a wasteland—if one believes we should live in an ethical world. How many people seriously consider shopping to be the centre of virtue and of a good life? No; at the centre of virtue is whanau and family—those things that the Bunnings worker mentioned in her letter which Martin Gallagher quoted from—the right relationship with one another and our natural world. We should have time to play time to reflect time to worship time for meaningful work but also time for a well-deserved rest. Let us not throw this away.