Bradford Sue: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bradford Sue: Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7605. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 What a shambles! In my 7 years in Parliament I have never seen such a confusing and shambolic report from a select committee reach the floor of this House. Tonight we have two bills before us—this one and one set down to be debated shortly after it—attempting to amend the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act. These attempts follow a string of other unsuccessful attempts over the last few years. 
Our shop trading hours today are set by the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act 1990 and the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Amendment Act 2001 but our Parliament is littered with other failed attempts to impose more shopping days on the New Zealand public and shopworkers alike. The Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter) Amendment Bill 1996 was defeated. The Shop Trading Hours Repeal of Restrictions Bill 1997 was defeated. The Shop Trading Hours Abolition of Restrictions Bill 1999 was defeated. The Rotorua District Easter Sunday Shop Trading Bill 2002 was defeated. The Shop Trading Hours Easter Trading (Local Exemption) Bill 2004 was defeated. These all sit in the dustbin of legislative history and this is where this bill and the other amendment bill tonight also belong. 
The Commerce Committee had the opportunity to study both bills listen to submissions and bring back to the House recommendations based on the submissions heard that at least we could debate. But no! The select committee commentary on both bills states: “We have no clear preference for either bill and are recommending that both proceed with amendment.” What a cop-out! The Commerce Committee wants this House in the Committee stage process somehow to do its work for it. 
So we now have two bills before us each seeking to do different things and with amendments that go well beyond what was sought in the original bills. They were going to be debated together and now we find they are going to be debated separately which makes this even more difficult. The shambles continues. Plainly both cannot be passed as one is in conflict with the other. I urge all of my parliamentary colleagues to now throw both of them out and to chastise—non-violently of course—the Commerce Committee for its failure to do its job and for bringing this shambles to us. 
It gets worse. Earlier today I attended a press conference organised by Caritas Aotearoa - New Zealand the Catholic agency promoting justice peace and development regarding the two bills that we are debating. I attended this media conference together with fellow MPs Hone Harawira Darien Fenton and Gordon Copeland. We were presented with large baskets of Easter eggs which we shared with all of you. 
Hon Member 
: From where? 
SUE BRADFORD 
: They came from the National Distribution Union. At that press conference Gordon Copeland stated that he was deputy chairperson of the Commerce Committee and complained that there had been in his words an “abuse of process”. The committee has reported these two bills to this House with amendments recorded as unanimous when the significant amendments to Jacqui Dean’s bill that extend liberalisation of shopping hours to all territorial authorities in New Zealand were put together by a couple of members of the committee after the submission process had finished and without any submitter being able to speak to these amendments. This does not make for good lawmaking. 
I would therefore urge those who may have some sympathy for further liberalisation of Easter trading to vote against both bills as a sign of displeasure at the process even if not at the content of these particular bills. The report of the Commerce Committee on Jacqui Dean’s bill is a shocker. The original purpose of the bill was to grant a partial exemption to shops in visitor districts from the requirement in the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act 1990 that they be closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. First up Jacqui Dean was disingenuous with the name of her bill which hid her attack on Good Friday by calling it the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill. But now the select committee by unanimous decision—or was it—has given the bill a completely new purpose of exempting all shops located in a territorial authority listed in schedule 2 from remaining closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday then including in schedule 2 every territorial authority in the country. 
We are told that territorial authorities can opt out through their local consultation provisions under the Local Government Act but the mechanism to give effect to this opting out is either by the Committee of the whole House or later by amending legislation. So what does that mean? Either territorial local authorities will have to undergo their local consultation over the next few weeks while the bill is before the Committee of the whole House—a legal impossibility if they are to abide by the consultation provisions of the Local Government Act—or they will have to wait for a member’s bill to opt out. If this is not a shambles I do not know what is. 
 I will spend my remaining time going to the heart of the shop trading hours debate. For me and for the Green Party overall stopping the further commercialisation of family days and family life is a priority. I want to explode the myth which we New Zealanders hold close to our hearts that this country is a great place to grow up in. A recent Unicef report that came out last week on child well-being describes children’s health and welfare in New Zealand as being amongst some of the worst in developed countries. Our parents rate in the bottom quarter for time spent with their children. Is this the New Zealand we grew up in or has this pervasive cultural myth outlived its usefulness? Why are New Zealand parents not spending quality time with their children? One of the reasons could be seen in the results of another OECD study that shows that New Zealanders work some of the longest hours in the OECD—1826 hours per year compared with an OECD average of 1778. 
We have before the House two bills that are quite simply manifestations of the relentless pressure of market forces upon the social culture and spiritual fabric of our society. These two bills whatever their humble intent seem to overlook the wider implications of their provisions for the 200000 retail workers and their families and the more than 2 million people who continue to affiliate with the Christian religion in New Zealand. 
Despite the very large numbers of people whom these bills could adversely impact directly I argue that this is not a numbers debate; this is a conscience issue that will affect us all. As MPs we have been delegated the authority to vote according to our consciences and do what we believe to be morally right. But how can one be truly moral when one lacks a vision for what it means to be fully human or reduces that vision to one of pure economic opportunity? Although this bill seeks to address some stated anomalies with the current shop trading legislation it overlooks the bigger picture that Good Friday Easter Sunday Christmas Day and Anzac Day are actually the anomalies themselves good anomalies—3½ days of the year when the logic of the market and economic opportunity do not prevail. 
Let me remind members that retail businesses may open to trade on almost any day of the year and at any time they choose. The remaining 3½ days are the anomalies in that they stand against the prevailing winds of the relentless pursuit of profit and the “affluenza” that Oliver James describes as consuming societies like ours. Within these 3½ days we have the breathing space to reconsider what it is to be human what it is that we live for and what we value most highly and cherish above all else. At some deep level this debate is about defining what we value and what we do not—what it is about us as New Zealanders that makes us unique. 
If we really want to be a country that is a great place to grow up in and bring our children up in then we might need to start actively working towards implementing ways that make this more than a comfortable cultural myth and more than the social equivalent of the clean and green myth. It is time for us to get real about how we might help to stem the disintegration of child welfare and family life in general in New Zealand. When parents are forced to work long hours at the expense of time spent with each other and with their children children and young people are left without the comfort and security of traditional family interaction. I do not need to spell out consequences that often result when young people look elsewhere for their primary support. The Unicef report has captured those consequences well already. We all want to see better outcomes for our children. That obviously means better outcomes for our families and that in turn means better outcomes for the workers who support the economic livelihood of those families. 
The Green Party does not support this bill because it works to undermine positive outcomes for children their families and the workers who support them. In effect the liberalisation of Easter trading corrodes the once sacred value we placed around these days and around the family. But in the market-driven world it appears that nothing is sacred any longer.