Bradford Sue: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 First of all I would like to make it clear that the Green Party caucus is taking a unified position on the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill and will be voting against it tonight. I know I have spoken when similar bills have come before the House in the past and I reiterate those comments. We have in front of us a bill that adds yet another layer of exceptions to the original Act which is itself full of inconsistencies. To expand that ramshackle patchwork by adding two new districts only begs the question about the rest and the bill fails to address the underlying questions about workers’ rights the role of public holidays in family life and the nature of sacred days in a country of mixed-faith heritages. The Green Party believes that if we are to overhaul the legislation around shop trading hours we should do so comprehensively and fairly taking all points of view and all parts of the country into consideration and not go on attempting to change it at one or two localities at a time. 
I turn now to the other reasons we oppose the bill. First of all we see big problems for workers in that employees are protected only in so far as they are able to negotiate protection into their employment agreements. The reality is that few would be able to do that and independently negotiate exemptions. This bill does not recognise the unequal bargaining power employers have when negotiating working conditions with their staff who tend to be among the lowest-paid and least unionised people in the workforce. We strongly believe that no worker should have to work on Good Friday or Easter Sunday against his or her will. This bill does not provide any or adequate protection to stop that from happening. 
Secondly the bill makes assumptions about the place of family life in a culture that seems to value paid work and conspicuous consumption above most other things. Easter Christmas and the morning of Anzac Day remain the last days uninterrupted for most by the compulsion to work. They are a time when family life can be nurtured and when people can get together without the intrusion of work commitments. There is a lot of fine talk in this debating chamber about the importance of the family in holding together the very fabric of our society. If we are serious about protecting and nurturing families then we should all stand up against the powerful forces of commerce which quietly undermine the last few sanctuaries of family time. I look to United Future’s MPs particularly when I say that. Given all their beliefs about the family and in some cases about Christianity I hope they will join with us in opposing the bill. Indeed I am glad to hear that two of their members will be opposing it tonight. 
After all Easter Christmas and the morning of Anzac Day stand as the last significant symbols of resistance to a culture of unbridled consumption. We live as de facto consumers in nearly every aspect of our lives. We consume entertainment education health care sport politics and even religion. All of that pulls apart the spiritual fabric that binds us together as people both individually and collectively. In the words of American theologian Stanley Hauerwas the problem is not that we have become consumers but that we can conceive of no other alternative ways of living since we lack any practices that could make such alternatives possible. That is a crisis of the imagination and it possibly underpins the reasons why the death on the Cross of one of history’s greatest figures deserves no more reverence than a suburban shopping mall. 
Have we in this House lost any sense of the sacred? Easter is the most significant set of holy days in the Christian calendar. If the special and unique nature of the Easter period is no longer respected by society at large some may say we should not even celebrate the day as a statutory public holiday. But the reality is that more than half the population continues to affiliate with the Christian religion. The law should protect the sanctity and special character of those 2 days by allowing people to attend to their spiritual lives and attend worship without the imposition of work. 
So whether or not we are Christians and whether or not we have families we six Green MPs join together in voting against this bill and in support of a future that respects the importance of family life of traditional faith commitments of workers’ rights and of doing all we can to resist consumerism as the new but oh so hollow religion of our time.