Bradford Sue: Holidays (Four Weeks Annual Leave) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Holidays (Four Weeks Annual Leave) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 It is not so usual to rejoice when another party’s member’s bill is pulled out of the ballot but in the case of this Holidays (Four Weeks Annual Leave) Amendment Bill my Green Party colleagues and I were delighted when Matt Robson managed to win the members’ bills lottery towards the end of last year. 
During both the 1999 and 2002 general election campaigns the Green Party ran strongly on the promise that we would do everything we could if we got to Parliament to work for a minimum of 4 weeks’ annual leave for all workers. It is one of our central policy tenets that everyone should have the opportunity to live a balanced and holistic life in this stressed and hyperactive age. I think most people are all too aware these days that many people work too many hours each week and too many weeks each year while others have no paid work at all or too little to survive on. It has been a great irony that in an age of widely accepted mass structural unemployment we have also as a society persisted in the belief that workers should be forced to work 49 weeks of the year even though adding 1 week’s holiday would improve both their health and their productivity while allowing for more jobs to be created overall and for the work to be shared around more fairly. 
Just a couple of weeks before the election last July both Laila Harré and I spoke along with other MPs of course at a Business New Zealand candidates’ forum here in Wellington. A questioner from the floor asked about the various parties’ attitudes to the question of 4 weeks’ leave and I am sure Ms Harré was as disturbed as I was by Steve Maharey’s assurance that Labour would not consider implementing 4 weeks’ leave during this Parliament. I thought that was an outrageous promise from a senior Minister in a Labour Party that still presents itself as the party most representative of organised workers. I am glad that some Labour MPs who come from a union background have evidently been willing and able to exert sufficient pressure within their caucus at least to allow Mr Robson’s bill to be carried forward to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee for consideration alongside the Government’s Holidays Bill which went through its first reading last week. Over the weeks and months to come the Green Party is keen to work alongside those MPs and with unions and other groups in the community to try to ensure that in the end the Labour Government will support the extension of minimum annual leave from 3 weeks to 4 weeks. Matt Robson has given the Labour Party a golden opportunity to redeem itself in the eyes of ordinary workers and I hope it makes the most of it. 
I am well aware of the storm of employer outrage that is likely to accompany this bill when it goes to the select committee. However I would like to say to people who are pressing the panic button on this one that 4 weeks’ leave will not really bankrupt business or impact adversely on unemployment rates. Many companies and employers already allow their staff a minimum of 4 weeks’ leave without their operation being brought to its knees. Instead such employers reap the benefits of employees who can enjoy the simple human need of 4 weeks’ rest and time with their families. I am sure that not too many among the employing classes or among members in this House make do with less than 4 weeks’ holiday a year. The Green Party believes that 4 weeks’ leave is the minimum that all workers not just some should be able to expect in this country in the 21st century. 
I would like to note my amazement at the speech made by my United Future colleague earlier on this evening. He made clear that his party will be opposing this bill. I find that approach incomprehensible from a party that talks about the importance of work-life balance and the importance of family. Of all parties in this House United Future should be supporting this bill.