Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in support of the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill a bill that does not take away rights but offers choice. It offers choices to communities to express through their local authorities whether they would like to see shops able to open on what is currently a restricted trading day. It offers the choice for those territorial authorities to accede to the wishes of their communities or not. If they do pass a by-law or a policy that permits trading it gives choice to businesses as to whether or not they choose to open. Lastly and most importantly the bill offers the ultimate choice to each employee as to whether or not they wish to work on that Easter Sunday. Should they choose not to it has provisions to provide protection for that employee particularly if the employer seeks to take some advantage or later consequential action for that choice. It is a bill that is all about choice. I would like to speak about a couple of elements around the select committee process particularly the submissions from local bodies. But before I get to that I think one of the reasons we now find ourselves in a second reading debate with a bill returned to the House without amendment—just in its bar 1 form—is the comprehension failure on the other side of the House which is exhibited tonight by the speaker who has just taken his seat Iain Lees-Galloway. His claim is that this bill would enforce costs on every local authority across the country. He is 100 percent wrong and could not be further wrong because he sat in the Commerce Committee for this item of business. It was made very clear to the members of the committee that councils could choose to maintain the status quo and that if they chose to maintain the status quo there would be no costs of a by-law or a policy or any other measure Mr Lees-Galloway. So his statement just shows that the member there has no fundamental understanding of the bill and so he is hardly in a great position to recommend to others whether they should support or oppose it. But that brings me to the select committee because the select committee did seek to undertake work—or the members on this side sought to undertake work—to improve the bill. There were a number of amendments that we feel had the bill made it through the select committee process with the tracked changes adopted would have improved it. Being a first-term MP I can say that most occasions are learning occasions and I have been told by colleagues on both sides of the House that in the past Opposition members—and a great example of this that I was given was Sir Michael Cullen—felt that it was their duty to work constructively in a select committee to improve a bill even if ultimately when the bill returned to the House they would oppose it. In this particular instance the Opposition members chose to do the opposite.Sue Moroney: Oh like you did with the paid parental leave bill for example? The National Party did the same with the paid parental leave bill.BRETT HUDSON: They chose instead of improving the bill and returning it to the House in a better form to use the power of their equal number of votes to have all changes thrown out. I heard the member opposite making some noise about other bills. Well I can say from the limited experience I have had in this term that if I look at bills like Sue Moroney's paid parental leave bill at the Government Administration Committee and the Official Information Act amendment bill under Adrian Rurawhe that recently passed the Government members on the Government Administration Committee worked constructively to help make amendments for each of those bills taking on board the message that had been given to me that our duty is to at least ensure that a bill if it is returned to the House returns in the best state it could be in. Unfortunately the members opposite in this instance do not think that that should apply to them. It is actually worse—there was an instance in a select committee meeting when one of the Labour members said: Why are we even bothering doing this because we're just going to vote against it in the end anyway?". That just left me with a cold chill wondering whether for the Labour Party members democracy extends only to items that they agree with because that seems to be through their behaviour what their philosophy is. The other area I want to briefly touch on is the submissions from local bodies. In the early 2000s the previous Government passed a general competency clause in the Local Government Act which gave local bodies a far wider remit to undertake actions to spend money and to take on projects than they had had in the past. Yet I have never yet heard a council say: "I don't want to have general competence." Similarly I have never yet heard a councillor say "We the council do not want to take on board the wishes of the local community." except in this instance. In this instance what they want is they want central government to make a blanket statement for their local communities. They do not want the power in this instance to listen to their communities and give their communities what their communities want. It would seem to me sitting on this committee that there is a possibility that exists at least amongst some of our territorial authorities of a wish to have a wide range of powers but as soon as a difficult problem comes along to kick that up to central government and take away local choice and have central government make the decision for them. I hope that in the next stage we get some Supplementary Order Papers to put back some of those amendments into the bill. I commend this bill to the House."