Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you Madam Speaker. I do rise to speak in what has been mostly a respectful debate about Matariki. It's always great when you have an occasion on a Thursday afternoon when the House is unanimous around intent. The unfortunate reality though is that we will be opposing this bill and I want to get to that in a moment. I think it is important when we think about identity and where we are now as a nation our appreciation our understanding our recognition and value of Te Ao Māori that to have a Matariki Day I think is a really important step and one that National fully embraces. If I think about when I first came into this House compared to now and about each Matariki day the way and the volume of activity around Matariki has definitely grown. I think back to one of my colleagues the Hon Hekia Parata sending Matariki cards and that was part of the sort of growing recognition that for a significant part of New Zealand this is part of our evolution. And as my colleague the Hon Todd McClay talked about there wouldn't be a school in New Zealand now that doesn't celebrate it doesn't acknowledge it and doesn't recognise it and build it into part of their learnings. So the National Party does agree that we should have Matariki as a national annual public holiday so we applaud ActionStation for showing how a petition can lead to a law change.The unfortunate thing though—and this is where we do deviate in terms of our support—is the fact that it is an additional public holiday. What National would like to see is that it replaces an existing public holiday and members before me have explored the options of which possible day that could be and I'm sure as the submission process is undertaken there will be a lot of people who express differing views on which public holiday should be replaced. In the National Party we think that Labour Day is a good occasion that could be an easy replacement but given that this is the first reading my invitation would be for members of the public to have their say and engage on which public holiday they would like to see this replace because we see there isn't a need for an additional day and so instead from our perspective it would be a replacement as opposed to an additional day.The other thing that I think is important is that early on in my time as the MP for Taupō as an electorate we sort of kicked off across the wider Waikato this inquiry in terms of why it is that the Waikato celebrates Auckland Anniversary Day a bit similar to my colleague who spoke before about Rotorua—why do they celebrate Auckland Anniversary Day? So we dug into the history of it and there was a move and there was a mood to look at how we could actually separate ourselves from Auckland Anniversary Day and have our own anniversary day and what that would take. It was a really interesting process in terms of which laws we would need to change and how that would work.The point though is there wasn't a uniform agreement as to what date we would move it to. But what did come up was that there were some in the community who actually thought that Matariki would be a good option. Another one was more local in terms of commemoration of local land wars and that that might be a more appropriate anniversary for the Waikato. We didn't get it over the line. I think if there was sufficient agreement about what that date would be it would've been easier. So I think this process will also be interesting in terms of the range of views there will be around what possible day it would replace.The other thing that I want to look at though is the issue of timing. I think that's where it's particularly challenging right now. I looked back at some of the comments that have been made around the announcement of this public holiday by Labour. Stuart Nash in particular last year in the lead-up to the election talked about the fact that it wouldn't be introduced—it was a Labour pledge—in 2021 because businesses were still recovering from COVID-19. So it could've been in place for July 2021 so we could have been celebrating it this year but the decision was to delay it until July 2022 so that businesses had time to adapt and to recover from COVID-19 and this is what Stuart Nash has said in an interview last year.So one question one comment: I do think is appropriate to put in this House today is: is 2022 still a priority when the Government wants it to be an additional day as opposed to a replacement given the carnage that businesses up and down New Zealand are experiencing today with the latest COVID lockdowns? Each and every day the examples of businesses hanging on for dear life are devastating. I do think that it is a bit rich of the Government in terms of timing to be introducing this bill now at a time when businesses definitely aren't thriving out there. They're not looking forward to extra public holidays; they're just worried about how to keep the doors open. And unfortunately there's too many that I've spoken to who won't keep the doors open. I had a meeting on Monday with one of the regional economic development agencies and the increase in requests of the local economic development agencies for information about how to wind up a business have massively grown compared to the first lockdown for COVID last year and that's my final point—the cumulative effect. So there are two cumulative effects I want to talk about. The first is—as my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson has been leading the charge on—the number of changes to employment relations the number of additional costs that will come on to businesses in the employment relations space alone is really significant. With any one of those people think: Oh one extra public holiday big deal." It is the cumulative effect—extra sick leave changes to parental leave changes to potentially giving leave for teacher interviews. It's the cumulative effect that makes it incredibly challenging for businesses to cope.And now with the latest Delta outbreak we have a cumulative effect of businesses who are literally hanging on for dear life day to day. And there doesn't seem to have been a recognition by the Government that there is a cumulative impact of lockdowns for Auckland. We're up to number five. This one is think is cutting the deepest. Businesses had reserves last year. They chewed through those pretty quickly. The wage subsidy is great but that only covers some of the costs of keeping people in jobs. The reality is that if you don't have businesses you don't have jobs. So while Matariki itself is fantastic to celebrate and we think it would be a great addition something incredibly unique to New Zealand—and I think we should be doing more of those things—but not when the cost is borne by some. That's why we think a really sensible practical way to solve this issue would be to replace an existing public holiday. We propose the Labour Day holiday but I'm sure the New Zealand public will want to have their say on this themselves.So we agree with the intent. We don't agree with it being an additional holiday and we're really concerned about the timing given the amount of pressure businesses are already under and we don't think the Government has taken any consideration whatsoever of the cumulative effect of the changes they are making and the burdens they are putting on small businesses who are our economy. They are our employers. They are the lifeblood of bringing incomes into each and every household and the cumulative effect of this latest devastating Delta lockdown is causing carnage on business every day."