Anderton Jim: Holidays (Four Weeks Annual Leave) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Anderton Jim: Holidays (Four Weeks Annual Leave) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:4022] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 Like other members of this House I spend a lot of time in airports often late at night and I see people—usually women usually Pacific Island women at that—who clean those airports late at night. I want members to imagine the way they have to get up in the morning make the lunches for the kids and get them off to school. They might have a part-time job during the day and they have to pick the kids up from school make their dinner then go out to work again cleaning floors and toilets and then try to get some rest before they start over again the next day. This is the life of many people who enjoy no more than 3 weeks’ annual leave. Governments parliamentarians parties and communities need to do what they can for those families. They want to work hard and we should encourage that—and they do work hard. God forbid that I had to work as hard as some of those people as a matter of fact. We should reward their hard work. We should ensure that parents have time with their kids and time to recuperate as well. 
I appeal to United Future members who I understand will be voting against this bill. If they are the family-oriented party I believe they are then I cannot understand why they do not have empathy with the families I see living under the stresses of the workloads they have to take up in order to look after their kids. It is for working families like this that we need to make progress. It is for them that I support this Matt Robson bill and this part of the whole holidays legislation. 
I have not broken any promise on this. I went into the last election campaign and many others committing myself to 4-weeks’ paid annual leave for individual workers and families. The whole point of economic development surely is to improve the social and economic well-being and standard of living of all New Zealanders. It is not possible to develop the New Zealand economy meaningfully without lifting all New Zealanders up in the process. I want all those who oppose this bill to state clearly how much leave they take each year. I want them to state why they deserve 4 or 5 weeks or more while working people with the least bargaining power deserve only 3 weeks. Those are the people whom I Matt Robson and others in this Parliament want to support. Do we work harder than women who raise a family and work in poorly paid jobs early in the morning and late at night? Is that true? If it is not then why do we not support giving those people this chance? 
I make the point that this Parliament in its whole history is the only place that has ever provided for paid holidays for workers—in 1946 1974 and hopefully 2003. The only place where provision has been made for that is right here in Parliament. Interestingly enough it was either Labour Governments or Labour-led Governments that did it. I hope my Labour colleagues are able to convince some of their colleagues that this is the time to do it because I want to be in Parliament to make sure of it either this time or next time. 
If we are serious about supporting families—and all of us say that we are family oriented and that we are for families—then we will support this bill. This bill should be renamed. Instead of being the Holidays (Four Weeks Annual Leave) Amendment Bill it should be the “Holidays (More Time for Working Families) Amendment Bill”—more time for the mothers and fathers who look after their kids and work at the same time to get a break; more time for parents to spend with their kids; and more time for working people to interact with their community their social and cultural organisations their churches and so on. 
Four weeks’ minimum annual leave is part of the solution to two significant problems facing New Zealand workers: overwork and underemployment. It gives workers more time away from the workplace and in a small number of cases employers will hire staff to cover those breaks. I just say to employers in New Zealand—and I was one of them—that I gave all of my workers 5 extra days’ leave a year and we had 5 long weekends right through the winter months. The productivity in my company did not go down; it went up. People were not taking “sickies” and trying to pretend they had something else to do. They knew that the time would be there for them to do it. Productivity rises when wages and conditions are lifted and when one has respect for working people; it does not diminish. 
Every single time that this Parliament has legislated for holidays for workers some employers around the country have said the world would end if we did it. They said it the first time—in fact they said it when Christmas Day was made a public holiday—and they have said it every single time since. I do not see New Zealand being sunk into despond or becoming a Third World country because we have paid holidays. Many countries in Europe have had 6 weeks’ paid leave for years for generations and some of them have the highest living standards and the highest-performing economies in the world. So I say that this is an issue whose time has come. If we want higher incomes then we need to increase incomes not cut them. Improving conditions such as this bill does is part of that methodology.