Clendon David: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9465. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): Tēnā koe. I am pleased to take a short call on this Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill to affirm the Green Party’s support for this very good bill. Our compliments to whatever combination of Labour hearts and minds brought it into being. It is a very well-thought-out and quite simple piece of legislation. It simply affirms that every year New Zealanders will enjoy 11 public holidays rather than having them in only 5 years out of 7 years and missing out in those other 2 years.I am genuinely surprised that Government members have not come round to supporting this legislation. I have listened reasonably carefully to their speeches in various readings and that is not always an enjoyable experience listening to speeches from that side of the House but it has been interesting to just try to unpick what their objections are.My fellow Northlander Mike Sabin who just resumed his seat gave a very sincere speech reflecting on his commitment to Anzac Day. I would have to say that if I thought or if any of my Green colleagues thought that the passing of this legislation would in any way diminish or degrade the importance or the integrity of that celebration we would probably not—well in fact I can say certainly I would not support it and I suspect neither would my colleagues.Anzac Day is critically important. I confess in my former life I was more or less committed to attending services on any given Anzac Day. As an MP I have also seen it as an absolute duty to turn up at local celebrations and also a pleasure. It is an important day in our history and one we should continue to acknowledge.The proposition that somehow Mondayising Anzac Day will lead to less commitment to it and a smaller turnout to honour that day is at odds with the evidence from Australia where Mondayisation has been in place for some time and the numbers if anything are increasing for attendances at Anzac Day celebrations as indeed they are here in New Zealand as younger people realise this is not about the glorification of war. It is about acknowledging sacrifice and also a commitment to doing everything we can to avoid wars in the future.Some of the objection to this bill has been around the economic effect—the effect on business. Again I simply do not see that as being valid. We heard some extraordinary numbers in the first reading about the tens of millions of dollars it would cost the country every year to have two more days off 2 years out of 7 years. Those numbers simply do not add up. Some businesses will close obviously on days that otherwise they would not but that is more than compensated for in the scheme of things around the larger economic picture by the fact that the Mondayisation will enable people to have extra time off. Long weekends will become feasible. There will be a knock-on effect in tourism and elsewhere. So we do not accept that there is any economic difficulty or issue involved in that.It contributes to our work-life balance. New Zealanders actually work some of the longest hours of any developed country in the world. Unfortunately that does not flow through to productivity which I will say a little more about in a moment but we are just making sure that we do maximise the work-life balance opportunities for people in the workplace and this bill does make a small but useful contribution towards that.Mr Bennett seemed concerned that the bill did not go far enough that somehow its effect was so little as to not warrant his support. I am somewhat tempted to dust off the Green Party’s April Fool’s Day spoof that suggested another eight holidays per year. We might find support for that from the MP from Hamilton. But it does seem an extraordinary proposition that because this is a relatively minor matter albeit a positive matter it cannot be supported for that reason.I have mentioned Anzac Day and Waitangi Day too is an important observation in our history. It is very important to us collectively and personally it is an important day. I have both Māori and Pākehā tupuna who put their names to that document put their signatures on it so it has always been very much a part of my personal DNA. While living in the north—well even before living in the north—I have been a regular attendee at Waitangi Day celebrations in Waitangi. It is noticeable that where Waitangi Day falls on a weekend you tend to find a different attendance than through the normal course of events. The day of the week on which it falls does affect the attendance atWaitangi people’s travel arrangements and so on. The situation where it falls on a Saturday or Sunday and people know that the Monday is also a holiday will I think enable more people to come to Waitangi and enjoy the celebration at that very key site.It will do no harm for Northland tourism. As we know Northland is one of the still relatively undiscovered gems in the tourism crown of New Zealand. There is a great deal to enjoy there. There is an increasing supply of tourism attractions and accommodation and I would encourage people who are heading north to hang around a while and see just what a great deal there is to offer in the north.I mentioned the issue of holidays—the fact that people seem to think that if we have one more holiday in each of those 2 years that somehow there will be an economic cost to that. As to the number of holidays New Zealanders have be they large or small—you can argue about whether 11 is a lot or a few—our key economic issue around that is actually productivity. We do not have a productive economy. The reason for that is that the one significant and probably the single most important contributor to that low productivity is poor labour productivity. I believe firmly that the reason for that is that we have a very poor management culture in New Zealand. We have too many people in management positions who are actually not good at that task. We have this unfortunate habit of promoting people who might be good at a particular activity to a management role. This has been acknowledged by employer groups by employee groups by the finance sector by bankers and by a whole array of different sectors and different interests in the economy.The issues are not about whether we have 11 days off a year or only 9 or 10. The issue is that we do not invest enough in management and upskilling our managers in New Zealand. If we invest a little bit there we will get a great deal more productivity in our economy. People perhaps could stop working such extraordinarily long hours with no economic cost and in fact with significant economic benefit.All in all as I said the Greens have been pleased to support this legislation from the beginning. We will continue to offer that support and we look forward to in future years enjoying with the rest of New Zealand the time that it will allow for people to maintain work-life balance to spend time with their families and to enjoy this beautiful country of ours. We commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.