Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): I rise in support of this the Shop Trading Hours Amendment Bill in its third reading. It is with very great pride that I do because this bill is all about choice about providing choices and enabling people in the communities to exercise those choices. It begins with a very simple choice: do communities wish to permit trading on Easter Sunday? If they do not the local body authority is under no obligation to move away from its default position. If they do then through the special consultative process it will consult with its communities. Local people will have the right and the opportunity to express their will—their choice—to their local body representatives. If on the basis of that consultation they feel that there is a desire to permit trading on Easter Sunday within the region within their authority area then the businesses will have a choice: do they wish to open or do they not? They will not be forced to trade if they do not wish to but they may be permitted to if that is the will of those local communities and then the employees have the choice. The employees have the choice of whether or not they wish to work on that day. When the members of the Opposition say that it is a time to spend with families that is a choice that those employees—each one of them—will be able to exercise. I will come back to that in a moment because it speaks volumes. The interjections and the previous statements speak volumes for what the Opposition members actually think about labour laws and the ability for employment protection to work in the real world. They have no faith at all. This bill is all about empowering people to make decisions in their local communities—decisions and authority that our local body authorities and their representatives have wanted for years. Parliament back in the early 2000s granted general competence. I do not think there has been a single local body authority that has asked for that to be withdrawn. I do not think there is a single local body or district councillor whom I have met who thinks that local communities should not have a say in what is done in the operations of their local communities so it is with some regret I think that some authorities chose to kick this can back up the road towards Parliament to make a tough decision for them. If local body authorities want general competence if they want the ability for a broad remit of authority—Iain Lees-Galloway: Well give them everything then. Let's go home. BRETT HUDSON: —then they have to realise that they have to take the tough decisions with the easy. It is notable that Mr Iain Lees-Galloway has yet again displayed for the public of New Zealand the centralist central government almost Stalinist-like approach of the Labour Party—all controlled and directed from central government. We here are the party of choice which is giving the power out to those local communities to decide for themselves. But let us move on to employment protections because the Labour Party has a history of claiming they are important and of introducing legislation to support workers yet its members have said throughout these debates on this particular bill that they do not work—they do not work. It seems to me that they sometimes work—what the Labour members really think is that when it is their measure employment protection works really really well but when it is something that this Government wants to do it does not work. To use Mr Lees-Galloway's analogy: because it does not work we may as well scrap it. That is what Mr Lees-Galloway is saying really—it does not work so just get rid of it all. Well I think he is wrong—I think he is wrong—and the employment protections that this bill will afford these employees will give them the choice to work or to not work as they see fit. So ultimately when we consider this what is this bill really going to do? It is going to give local communities the ability to make their decisions: do you wish to permit trading on Easter Sunday or do you not; do you wish to work on that day or do you not? Really I think that is the hallmark of good government. In this party we have faith in New Zealanders to make the right decisions we have faith in the decisions that people make and we are supporting them through this bill in their local communities to make their own decisions. I commend this bill to the House.