Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): I rise on behalf of the Green Party to most certainly oppose the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill. I agree with Su'a William Sio; Part 1 actually does refer to amendments in the other parts of the bill so Part 1 ends up being quite wide. Basically this bill wants to liberalise Easter trading laws. This is the 10th attempt in 19 years to liberalise Easter Sunday shop trading laws and the Greens have consistently and continuously opposed these proposals because we want to protect workers' rights. Specifically it is including the lower-paid workers and the workers who do not have any choice but to work. If we do not have a nationwide consistent approach to employment laws those workers who will not have the choice—by the nature of their jobs and by being in the position of needing that job—will not be protected. They need a nationwide central government consistent approach given their vulnerable position. Their ability to take a day off and spend time with their family needs that nationwide protection. Part 1 does give that decision back to local government in some cases through by-laws making it possible for local government to say it will allow certain shops in certain areas to continue to trade on what is normally a protected day for workers—one of the few protected days for workers. I will repeat: it is not the workers who can just take days off whenever they want because they are making ends meet and because they have already got loads of money—they should have that choice to take holidays whenever they want. It is actually the workers who will be vulnerable through this by-law and through this local government approach and who will be penalised. We have noted that it seems like there is some sort of attempt to put in a protection—for workers to be protected if they want to raise their hand and say Actually no—I had plans". It does not matter what they were—they could be religious whānau community plans events. The bill seems to try to put a protection in but the Greens say that it would have been a more acceptable bill if compelling an employee to work Easter Sunday could instead be an offence to be prosecuted by the labour inspectorate rather than just a personal grievance. Vulnerable workers need stronger backing to be able to feel more confident to put up their hands and say: "Yeah I actually really need to take this day off." The bill just does not go far enough in giving workers that confidence. Again workers are vulnerable. I do want to pick up on "public choice" and I want to maintain that the greater good is actually protecting workers' rights. The public have a whole lot of days currently to be able to shop till they drop and only I believe 12 days that are protected for family time for community time. This is a personal conscience vote I understand. I oppose this bill because I firmly believe that the greater good for this country for our development and for our productivity is to actually have a nationwide consistent approach to protecting workers as opposed to the so-called public choice to shop. That is actually not being taken away. There are so many other days on which we can choose to shop. I want to stand and support my colleague Mojo Mathers who absolutely spoke about protecting workers' rights. Part 1 of the bill is actually broad because all of the clauses and the amendments that are being made in Part 1 of the bill cover various other sections of the rest of the bill. Thank you."