Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): There is a number of reasons to vote against this legislation.Hon David Cunliffe: There are.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: No there is a number. There is a number; there are several reasons.Hon David Cunliffe: Oh very good.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Yes. No worries. So there is a number of reasons to vote against this legislation. It really does not matter what side of the debate members are on in the substance of the legislation. It is actually a very poor piece of legislation and it should be voted down simply on the grounds that it is just bad lawmaking but I want to address the issues both of the quality of the bill and of the substance of the bill.So first of all what we are talking about here is actually taking away from workers one of the days that workers have the absolute legislated right not to have to go to work; one of just 3½ days that are set out in New Zealand law where shops cannot open and the workers who would ordinarily work in those shops actually have the legislated right to spend time with their families and their communities. It just so happens because of the history of our nation and the way we have developed that those days mostly are based around Christian festivals—Good Friday Easter Sunday Christmas Day and Anzac Day morning. Personally I am not particularly wedded to the Christian festivals although I know for a lot of members that is an important aspect of this. I am not. What I am interested in is the fact that we actually set aside some days—really not that many but some days—that are for families and communities some days where we just take a break from consumerism where we just say that actually on these few days 3½ days out of the year we are going to put families and community first. That is actually what the shop trading restrictions currently do.In effect what this legislation is doing is taking away one of those 3½ days. It is being done in the name apparently of tourism. Pardon me if I am unconvinced by the argument that tourist operators desperately need to be able to operate on Easter Sunday but it is OK that they remain closed on Good Friday 2 days beforehand. It is OK apparently to keep Good Friday as a restricted day where shops cannot open and tourism operations cannot operate. That is OK. That is not having a detrimental impact on tourism having Good Friday as a restricted day but for some reason Easter Sunday just 2 days later has to be liberalised.I have not yet heard a cogent argument from anybody why that makes sense. In fact from submitters at the Commerce Committee I heard the opposite. Submitters—Retail New Zealand Hospitality New Zealand—came to the select committee and said there was actually no logical argument for liberalising trading on Easter Sunday and not doing it on Good Friday or Christmas Day or Anzac Day morning. So are they next? Once this battle is over if the Government gets its way is that what happens next? Do we go to Good Friday next? Do we suddenly get the argument that tourism will collapse if we do not allow trading to occur throughout the entire Easter weekend? Or will it be Christmas Day? Is that what comes next? I am not usually one who buys in to the slippery slope argument. These were arguments that were made by the people who support this legislation—that there was actually no logical reason to pick out Easter Sunday and we should be doing the same on Good Friday Christmas Day and Anzac Day morning. So that is something that I think members need to think about. Ultimately to me it comes down to that simple fact: that workers actually deserve some days where they are allowed to have the day off where they can put their families and their communities first. That is sort of the substance of the argument.What about the bill itself? The major failure with this legislation is that the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Woodhouse got up in his first reading speech and told us that one of the problems with Easter trading currently is that there are different rules for different areas. So Queenstown and Wānaka have different rules. Rotorua has a different set of rules from—somewhere else that is nearby that I cannot recall. This legislation does not solve that. This does not solve that issue.If anything it makes it worse because territorial authorities up and down the country will have different rules. From my part of the country Palmerston North and Feilding are 15 minutes away from each other. People like to shop in both of those usually on the same day. People come to Palmerston North for conferences and sports events. They often go out to Feilding as part of their experience. Two different territorial authorities—potentially two completely different sets of rules. Right there one of the Government's main arguments for proposing this legislation is completely undermined because it said that the whole idea of this legislation was to get rid of those inconsistencies between territorial authorities. All this legislation does is set up the opportunity for an even greater level of inconsistency across the country.Why has the Government chosen that path? Well the answer to that is simple. That is that if it actually took on the responsibility of allowing Easter Sunday trading—which is a Government responsibility not a local body responsibility—it would not get it through its own caucus. It does not have the support of enough National Party MPs to get that bill through Parliament. That is the truth. That is the reason why the Government has chosen this course of action—not because it is the smarter course of action not because it is more efficient not because it makes more sense but because what it wants to do is get rid of the restrictions on Easter trading altogether.But National Party MPs will not let that happen so instead it is foisting the responsibility on to poor old local government—local government that the National Party likes to berate for putting its rates up saying that it is creating unnecessary costs for ratepayers. Yet this Government because it cannot get something through its own caucus is prepared to cause unnecessary cost for every single council in the country. This is a poor piece of legislation created because the Minister could not convince his own caucus to support what he wanted to do and frankly if the Minister has not got enough power of persuasion to do that he should not kick the can down the road to the poor old councils.On that ground alone Parliament should vote this bill down regardless of where members sit on the argument of should we or should we not set aside Easter Sunday as a day for families and communities. This is a bad piece of legislation that dispatches a central government responsibility on to local government at a cost to every single one of those councils—a significant cost to every single one of those councils. I know the Government is going to bring Supplementary Order Paper 179 that proposes that we change the responsibility of the councils from a by-law to a policy. The councils told us that that will not make one iota of difference to their costs. Every single council that came and submitted at the select committee said: Do not make this our responsibility. It is your responsibility not the local government's responsibility. Do not make us carry the can on this one." Even those that support the concept said that they did not want the responsibility. They did not want the cost. So the bill fails on that front as well.We know that this has traditionally been a conscience vote. The National Party MPs have been effectively whipped into supporting this. I will be interested to know how some National MPs if this legislation passes—what position they plan to take if their councils actually seek to liberalise Easter Sunday trading. I will be very very interested to know how some of those MPs will actually position themselves on that. But the message is simple: this is a bad piece of legislation. It creates unnecessary cost for councils and it takes from workers their right to have a day that is set aside for their family and their communities. I urge members to vote it down."