Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): In respect of the intervention from Dr Megan Woods some time ago of all the organisations and people whom the Labour Party demonstrates such disdain for for their lack of influence or ability to make a choice the one that Dr Woods now brings in is trade unions. In criticising staff who absolutely have no ability to say no to an employer when they propose that their retail store remains open on Easter Sunday the employee under Dr Woods' thesis is so disempowered so unable to say those simple words No and I don't need to give a reason for that."—for those who have membership of a union she has just said that does not matter either. That is of no benefit. There are a great number of these vulnerable workers on minimum wages in retail stores whom the Labour Party professes to be the champion of and yet it does not have any faith in the unions to represent them adequately. I have much more faith in trade unions to be able to support their workers. I actually think an employee is going to have every confidence in being able to say: "No. For my own reasons—if you open on Easter Sunday that's fine but I do not want to work." Here is the interesting thing that none of the members of the Labour Party caucus have told you: the employee protections in this bill have actually been improved. Actually thanks to the Commerce Committee—and I really want to applaud its chair Melissa Lee for her tireless efforts to get the Opposition members of the Commerce Committee to see sense and produce an amended bill which in a conscience vote the Committee will be in the best position to vote the merits of. But no they could not even bring themselves to do that—they did not have confidence in their own colleagues—even though it is a personal vote. Can one see a pattern emerging here? I come back to the extra employee protections. Currently under the Shop Trading Hours Repeal Act if a shop is prevented from opening but an employee is required to work anyway—perhaps stocking the shelves doing a stocktake cleaning and so on—they cannot say no. But under the amendments proposed by the committee and that I have introduced under Supplementary Order Paper 179 every employee in a retail outlet is able to say no even if the shop does not open and give no reasons. That according to the Labour Party is poor protection. I suggest otherwise. I want to touch on a matter that was raised by Ria Bond before the dinner break in respect of my experience in employing staff on Easter Sunday. Well I can tell that member that as the chief executive of a surgical hospital a place that cannot close in the evenings cannot close in the weekends and often did not close over the Easter break—although sometimes we did—I have every insight into the disruption that unusual unpleasant weekends and public holidays have on working lives. I understand the concerns that employees might have about this. They are the same concerns that ratepayers may have. They are the same concerns that the shop owners themselves may have. But I do not believe it is beyond the wit of them and indeed it enables an employee to make a choice to say yes because actually some of them—part-time staff students who have a part-time job—may want to earn that extra income but the Labour Party would prevent them from doing so. I think that is a shame. I think this speaks volumes about the issues of freedom and choice in this country and that is something I hold very dear. I will finish on this one point and that was one made by Mr Su'a William Sio before the break: Easter Sunday is not a public holiday. It is pretty simple. If one wanted to make an intelligent intervention on this bill I would have thought a member would know that. Easter Sunday has never been a public holiday. And in respect of his comments about how the costs are being imposed on local government as if it had no choice—there is that word again—guess what? If the local council does not want to incur those costs—Brett Hudson: They don't have to.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —they do not have to. What this does is it gives the opportunity for the ratepayers—the people who would ultimately pay the costs of a consultation on a change in policy—to say to their local councils: "Actually we do want this." And they will be saying that in Wānaka they will be saying it on the Coromandel they have already said it in Rotorua—they will be making statues of Todd McClay in Rotorua. They do not have to incur a single dollar of cost if they do not want to. That will be between them and their ratepayers."