Roche Denise: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Roche Denise: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3489. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENISE ROCHE (Green) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise to support the Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill. I find it quite ironic that we are having this bill before the House in the darkest time of the year and the time of Matariki—a time when it would be lovely to have more holidays actually. That period from the Queen’s Birthday weekend in June until Labour Day weekend is one of the longest and the hardest roads that workers ever have to face so it is quite a good idea to have this discussion about holidays and when we should have them. We fully support the Mondayisation of Anzac Day and Waitangi Day. We have heard the arguments against it and we fully support the ones for it that have come forward—from the Labour Party particularly—because it is about returning some family time to working families. 
What we are seeing at the moment in New Zealand is a real attack on families. We are seeing it on low-paid workers as well. We are seeing people working harder than they ever have before just to make ends meet. We are hearing stories of service workers union members cleaners caretakers shopworkers and security guards who are working 70 to 80 hours a week just to pay their way. These workers are struggling to make ends meet—they really are. And these are the workers who are actually doing the jobs and working on Anzac Day and working on Waitangi Day so they really should be given a day off when those days fall on a weekend because otherwise they do not get to have them at all. And it goes for all of us actually. 
We are not going to have a situation where we cannot attend a dawn parade on 25 April. We are not going to have a situation where we cannot attend Waitangi celebrations on 6 February. That is not going to happen. Those days are sacrosanct. We still celebrate Christmas on 25 December despite the fact that if it falls on a weekend we get the day off on the Monday or the Tuesday after Boxing Day. We get only 11 public holidays a year—11 public holidays a year—and workers get only 4 weeks’ paid leave per year. If you add that all up that is not a lot of time that is given to workers to rest. And as I said before you will find many workers are actually struggling and working longer and longer hours and not resting. 
 We fully support the Service and Food Workers Union’s campaign for a living wage and I am aware that some of my colleagues from the Labour side do as well. This is a call for more leeway: more ability for our citizens to participate in our communities do their civic duties and spend time with their families and to not have to struggle so hard. Having a day off because the holidays fall on the weekend is not an unreasonable ask. We believe that it is not going to cost a lot. The next time it happens—and I think there have been speakers on both sides who have mentioned this—is not for years to come. The cost itself is reasonably minimal. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: What—$200 million? 
DENISE ROCHE 
: No your figures are wrong. They are wrong because you have taken into account a whole bunch of things that should not have been counted in there including self-employed people. 
We will be supporting this bill; we will support it tonight. We would hope that it will go to a select committee because it will be great to hear from workers and employers as well how they think this will play out. We will hear from the RSA and Waitangi Day groups what they think about this bill. I am pretty sure they are going to say it is not a problem. We are going to support it because workers deserve a break.