Connell Brian: Shop Trading Hours (Easter Trading Local Exemption) Bill — First Reading 
Connell Brian: Shop Trading Hours (Easter Trading Local Exemption) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:15500] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 I start by offering my support to some of the comments made by Mr Peck. I thought they were constructive and I add my considered opinion that the bill would be better dealt with in the Commerce Committee primarily because I think it is a committee that has its head around the issues and would move it through the select committee process expeditiously. I also add—because I am sure Mr Peck meant to—that the only reason the Commerce Committee does not have a lot of work on at the moment is because it puts through its work very quickly. 
Rodney Hide 
: It’s got a good chairman. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I understand it has one of the best chairmen in Parliament. It will be a pity to lose someone of that calibre. 
I reluctantly support this bill. I want to explain why I say “reluctantly”. I have a great deal of sympathy with the position Mr Woolerton finds himself in and I say to the House that we continually miss the opportunity to resolve this issue. As Mr Peck has already noted just before Easter this year there was a bill before the House that sought Easter Sunday trading right across the country. I was a member of the select committee that considered it. I know Mr Hide was and he made a significant contribution to it as others did. 
Rodney Hide 
: My bill! 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I am sorry I cannot hear the member! I worked on that select committee and I believe that it made a very considered recommendation to the House. It was a difficult position to arrive at. The submitters were divided roughly fifty-fifty against and for but on balance I believe that the committee decided that the only way to progress this rather vexed situation was to ask the House to pass legislation that would allow Easter Sunday trading. 
I pick up Mr Peck’s concerns here on the bill as it stands at the moment. The select committee I worked on when Mr Hide’s bill was before it put in place some safeguards for workers who did not want to work on Easter Sunday. The bill was very specific. It would have allowed employers to employ people on a part-time basis for that day only and it was clear that those employees who did not wish to work would suffer no disadvantage whatsoever. That safeguard was built into the bill. Shoppers would have been able to exercise their own consciences by choosing either to shop or not to shop and shop owners had the same ability—they could simply make a decision either to open their shops or not to open them. Unfortunately that bill was rejected. 
The bill we have now I believe has been born out of sheer frustration. There is a ridiculous situation across the country whereby some areas can have shops open and some cannot. It is a head-in-the-sand attitude. The reality is that the genie is out of the bottle. We will never stop Easter Sunday trading from happening across the country. It is a matter of time before everyone does it. A progressive Parliament would have got hold of the issue when it had the opportunity some months ago and said that we should embrace Easter Sunday trading and put in place some quality legislation. We are now getting a reaction to that being rejected and a reaction to some places across the country that can open shops and some that cannot. A couple of examples have been quoted and I will repeat them: we have Taupo and Queenstown which can open their shops and places like Rotorua and Tauranga which simply cannot. There is a patchwork approach to where shops can or cannot open and that will send confusing signals both to the people who live in this country and to the people who visit it. It will do our tourist trade an immense amount of harm. 
We need to face up to the reality of what is coming down the tunnel. People now work on public holidays when once upon a time that was a no-no. There are now shops that are open 24 hours a day and shops that open 7 days a week. The reality is that Easter Sunday trading will come whether or not we like it. The situation is doing immense damage to our wine industry because people come to this country specifically to go around some of those vineyards and to experience some of the things New Zealand has to offer and we are not embracing it. I support this bill.