Chadwick Steve: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I move  
That the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 This is indeed a red-letter day for Rotorua whose people are all listening at home. We hit the double when the Rotorua bill in my name was drawn from the ballot only 2 weeks after Jacqui Dean’s bill. I supported that bill—even though it is more parochial being in respect of only Wanaka and Tauranga—as it was the only mechanism that I could work with to get Rotorua the right to trade at Easter and we are now in an MMP environment. At a future point I will move that this bill be referred to the Commerce Committee. 
I note that chambers of commerce around the country in areas like Cambridge are also asking to be counted in with other districts such as Napier and things then start to get messy on the mechanism of Jacqui Dean’s bill. That bill was voted through to the select committee by 73 votes to 41. I hope the same support will be given to this member’s bill. It is only democratic that bills reflecting local community interests are supported through to a select committee so that submissions are heard. 
The history of Easter trading though is unbelievable. It goes back to 1977 so it is now almost 30 years old. The anomalous schedule of exemptions that makes us shudder in Rotorua was established by the Shop Trading Hours Commission back then. In 1990 the Act revoked individual business exemptions but retained these absurd geographic area exemptions. Rotorua was simply left off the list—an act of omission not commission—overlooked and then the mechanism to get it back on to the schedule of exemptions was no longer there. We had no other choice. 
This is the Rotorua District Council’s second attempt in 6 years at a bill. In 2001 as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed electorate MP I introduced the first bill which lost in 2002—and I understand losing a bill—by eight votes. It was unbelievable—63 votes to 55. Timing is the art of the possible and everything in politics can find the right sense of timing and place. In 2003 the then Minister of Labour Margaret Wilson—during another frustrated attempt of mine—established the Shop Trading Hours Working Group with the New Zealand Retailers Association the Consumers Institute Local Government New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. Those organisations recommended two options: to remove Easter Sunday trading as a restricted day—that was the majority view of the committee—or to empower local authorities to exempt shops from trading exemptions. The last movement on Easter trading occurred with Rodney Hide’s bill which was a carry-over of Patricia Schnauer’s bill in 2001. This movement permitted garden centres to open on Easter Sunday. That Act contained protections for workers that ensured that they could not be compelled to work unless both employer and employee agreed—that was a Green amendment. That was the last bit of movement. 
Rotorua conducted an Easter Sunday electorate survey in July of 2005. Fifty-eight businesses responded and 83 percent of those businesses wanted a law change. Seventy-six percent supported a law change for Easter Sunday only. Seventy-one percent told me to resubmit another bill post-election so here we go again. There was only a 20 percent increase from a previous chamber of commerce survey in 2001 when only 56 percent of people wanted Easter Sunday trading and only 20 percent were in favour of trading on Good Friday. 
The value and economic benefits to Rotorua as an iconic tourism town are known. We actually earn $463 million every year in direct value from tourism. One in six of our locals is directly employed by tourism. It is a great opportunity for us. Retailers are proactive supporters of tourism. We have been only too aware of the risks to retailers who open on Easter Sunday and this was graphically evident in 2005 when 87 retailers were visited by the Department of Labour and 10 of the 54 retailers who had opened their shops in support of the Jambalaya Festival were summonsed to court. They were dismissed without charge. What a ridiculous waste of court time! That incident increased the anger and frustration of those who experienced the reality of this ongoing nonsense. 
One can gamble on Easter Sunday. There is no restriction on selling alcohol in cafes on Easter Sunday. Petrol stations with shops can trade. Airport cafes with shops can stay open. Taupo right next door to us can trade but Rotorua cannot—it just gets sillier. 
So what does the bill do? It allows the district councils to adopt the special consultative procedure in Part 6 of the Local Government Act 2002 in order to ask their communities anywhere in New Zealand whether they want to trade. The bill does not compel any shop to open on Easter Sunday and it does not compel any worker to work on Easter Sunday unless both the employer and the employee agree. The bill passes the New Zealand Bill of Rights vetting. The National Distribution Union the Retailers Association chambers of commerce and Local Government New Zealand support the bill being jointly considered by the Commerce Committee along with Jacqui Dean’s bill. 
At the moment we are running a petition in our region. It is supported by the local newspaper—the  
Daily Post 
—the district council Retail Rotorua my electorate office and the chamber of commerce. Such unlikely partners have never worked together on any other issue in our city. The petition closes at the end of this week so it will be beautiful timing to refer it to the Commerce Committee. Responses are incredibly positive from the West End supermarket to McDonald’s. They are saying: “Give us the petition. We are glad to fill it in.” I do hope tonight that this will be the end of Rotorua’s crusade to correct the anomaly that beset us in 1990. I appeal to sensible members of the House to support the bill going to the Commerce Committee. Then that committee can consider both bills together and it may come up with something better.