Lees-Galloway Iain: Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7617. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Well this bill has all the hallmarks of another Woodhouse shambles. We had the health and safety legislation shambles—it is going to be worm farms all over again. He is the Minister with the record for the most shambolic legislation. We had the worm farms fiasco we have got a zero-hour contracts law that does not get rid of zero-hour contracts like he said it would—it actually enshrines zero-hour contracts in the law—and now we have got this. This is a ridiculous patchwork approach that we are going to get where if you live in one town you may have to work on Easter Sunday but if you work in another town 10 kilometres down the road you may not have to work on Easter Sunday. It is ridiculous.I have to ask why the Minister is sending this legislation to the Commerce Committee when it is quite clearly an industrial relations matter. The people who are going to be affected by this legislation are working people—that is where this legislation belongs. So the thinking behind this is completely muddled and completely shambolic—exactly what we would expect from Michael Woodhouse.There are three main reasons to vote against this legislation and that is certainly what I intend to do tonight. First of all this is not local government’s responsibility; this is an industrial relations matter. This relates to workers’ rights. This relates to employment agreements. That is not the purview of local government. At a time when this Government keeps piling the pressure on local councils to cut costs and to keep rates under control it is simply giving councils one more job to do.My local council has just agreed to spend another $100000 a year employing extra staff to deal with all the extra by-laws and regulations it has to process because of that Government. This is just one more thing that is going to add cost to councils and cost to ratepayers and it is not their responsibility.The National Government needs to take responsibility for this. If the National Government wants to get rid of Easter Sunday as a day that families can have together it should do it itself. That is its responsibility not local government’s responsibility. It is kicking the can down the road and the buck stops over there. It does not understand that though. It does not want to take responsibility; it wants to push the responsibility off on to local government.The second reason to vote against this is the fact that we are going to have a mishmash of rules and regulations across the country. As I said you could work in Palmerston North and be compelled to work on Easter Sunday and you could work in Feilding 15 minutes up the road and you might not be compelled to work on Easter Sunday. There is going to be patchwork across the country of irregular laws and irregular regulation. It is going to be a dire mess.Thirdly it is the fact that some workers are going to lose one of the few days we have left in our calendar where people—Hon Maggie Barry: Aw!IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: “Aw!” says Maggie Barry—“Aw!”. She is not interested in families; she is not interested in people actually spending time in their community spending time with their families. Easter Sunday is one of the few days that we have got left when people can believe that they are going to have a day off and spend some time with their family. And as the Minister pointed out it is not a public holiday so they are not going to get any extra compensation for it. So people are going to be expected to work on a day that has been a sacrosanct day for families and they are not going to get any additional compensation.The Minister says: “Oh you know they can refuse to work if they want to.” What planet is he on? The man is in la-la land. He needs to actually go and spend some time with some minimum wage workers—people who are actually at the beck and call of their employer—and see what it really means to refuse work. Oh sure you can challenge it. If the boss is actually silly enough to say “I’m reducing your hours.” or “I’m dismissing you because you turned down work on Easter Sunday.” sure they can challenge that. There will be myriad ways in which people can have their hours manipulated if they refuse to work on Easter Sunday and if that is what their employer demands.They have no idea on that side of the House what it is like to be someone with insecure work—someone who is on a zero-hour contract someone who is stuck in casual work or someone who is stuck in fixed-term contracts or seasonal work. Those members have got absolutely no idea what that is like. They have got no idea what it means to struggle to put food on the table and that is why they are prepared to support this legislation.Actually I think there would be a lot of members on that side of the House who if they were not whipped into this would not support this legislation. There are a few members who consistently vote against Easter trading. Sam Lotu-Iiga is one. I want to know why he has agreed to be whipped into supporting this legislation. Tim Macindoe is another one. Why has he agreed to be whipped into this? Chester Borrows—Chester Borrows is a man who has been absolutely consistent on this legislation.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will not draw the Deputy Speaker into this debate. Have another go.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: He has been consistent though I will give him that. Anyway there are a number of members on that side of the House who have been dragged into this because the Government knows that if it gave the National members a free vote it would not have a hope of getting this legislation through.When we talk about employment relations and when we talk about workers’ rights what we are actually talking about is people’s ability to live a full life to spend time with their family and to be able to do things like join a sports team which you cannot do if you cannot guarantee that you are going to be at practice or that you are going to show up for every game. You cannot be a volunteer in the community because you cannot tell them: “Yes I’m definitely going to be there on the weekend to do my volunteering role.” You cannot guarantee that you are going to have time to be there for your kids and to go along to your kids’ school production and see them performing because you do not know whether you are going to be given extra work on say a Wednesday night or a Thursday night. You cannot guarantee those things and that means people cannot live a full life.I hear it often from the members opposite that the way out of poverty the way to having a full productive fulfilling and good life is through work. Well not if work is like this—not if work is low-paid and insecure and it dominates the rest of your life. Not if you cannot live the rest of your life because you are at the beck and call of your employer and you have got no rights because every year the National Government takes more and more of your rights at work away from you.Those three reasons are the reasons why every single member of the National caucus should be considering voting against this bill. And I know some of them have been consistent—they have voted in favour of having Easter trading in the past of making people work on Easter Sunday. I know some of them have been consistent on that but a lot of them have not and I want to know why those who have opposed this type of legislation before are not going to take a call and actually explain why this legislation is better than what they have had before.And why are they not going to take a call and explain to the House why they think it is appropriate for local government to have to take up the slack? Why are Government members not prepared to actually make the decision themselves? Why is National the party of personal responsibility not actually prepared to make this decision itself? No it is going to push it off on to the poor old councils so they can deal with the politics of it. They can deal with the pros and the antis and they can go through the consultation process.Every single territorial authority in New Zealand is now going to have to go through a full consultation process spending millions in the process. What has the Taxpayers’ Union got to say about that I want to know. The Taxpayers’ Union which is so opposed to councils paying the living wage—I want to hear what the Taxpayers’ Union has to say about the Government causing local government to have to spend more because the Government has not got the guts to do this itself.There are plenty of reasons to vote against this legislation and I am surprised and appalled that the National members have allowed the whip to be applied in this situation. This has always been a conscience vote in the past. Where is your conscience I say to the members of the National Government. Where have your consciences gone? Why are you not prepared to stand up for what you believe in and oppose this legislation?