Mathers MojoPart 1 (continued) Part 2 schedule and clauses 1 to 3MOJO MATHERS (Green): People have spoken a lot about choice and have said that this bill and these clauses are about choice. Let us be quite clear about who is getting the choice: this is about shoppers. The context of that—to be able to have the choice to shop 365 days a year—is ultimately where the logic leads. That I would argue is not the most important thing to be bearing in mind—the ability to shop for an additional day when we already have the ability to go shopping for the other 360-plus days. It is important to recognise that some choices although they might be very important for some people are in the context of things trivial: the choice of what colour tie to wear and so on. They must not override human rights and wipe workers' rights—and that is what we have got here in this bill.We have to think about the rights of workers and the right to have some family time. In that context I would say that the ideology behind this bill by undermining one of the 3½ days of the year that are not open slather for shop trading is not only anti-worker it is anti-family. I want to refer to a submission by FIRST Union which represents retail staff some of the lowest paid workers in New Zealand. It refers to a Unicef report from 2007 that states that in New Zealand our workforce has one of the lowest rates of family time in the world. That is the context in which this bill is being brought here.We already have the lowest rate of family time in the world and yet family and building family ties is part of building strong communities so why at a time when so many families are under stress and struggling to get quality time with their children and other members are we bringing in a bill that undermines that? I find it absolutely appalling and it speaks a lot to the values of the National Party members of this House that they are prepared to back a bill that is anti-family—that is undermining families already under significant stress juggling multiple low-paid jobs—in order to liberate yet one more day for the sake of freedom of shopping for those who have the money to shop.The FIRST Union submission also went on to say that not only do we have some of the lowest rates of family time; we have some of the longest working hours in the world—families getting up at the crack of dawn juggling their first job coming back for a bite to eat going out again to work in the evening and working until late at night. I hear too many stories of that—where they struggle to even get dinner time with their kids.So removing one of the remaining protected family days—there has been a lot of emphasis on religion. Sure Easter Sunday has religious significance for me but that is not why I am opposing this bill. I am opposing it because it is undermining family time. As a mother of three family time is incredibly important to me. I find it devastating that in the context of today's society people on low incomes are struggling to get the precious family time that we here in Parliament usually are very privileged to be able to have. As my colleague Gareth Hughes has already said Parliament is protected from sitting on Sundays. For 50 weeks of the year we can often go and spend some of that time with our family but we do not afford workers that same protection—some of our most vulnerable workers—and that is what we should be doing.The other thing to think about is where you have the right to refuse. We have already pointed out that actually there is a power imbalance. But let us also think about the real situation that workers can find themselves in. Think about rural areas where they know when they are working for a small business that the likelihood of somebody else being able—