Bradford Sue: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 For the second time this year we find ourselves debating yet another attempt to reform the ramshackle laws relating to Easter trading. I have to acknowledge that Steve Chadwick’s bill which we are dealing with tonight is the best attempt yet to remove some of the inconsistencies in this area but the Green Party will still oppose this bill and the value system it privileges. 
Steve Chadwick’s bill is fairer than Jacqui Dean’s is. We appreciate the fact that it does not include Good Friday as a shopping day and that there will be some protections for workers so that they cannot be compelled to work on Easter Sunday unless both employer and employee agree. However those are still not good enough reasons to endorse the bill. 
There is a lot of rhetoric in the debating chamber about freedom of choice but in fact when we start to think about the wide-reaching effects of this legislation it pays to ask whose freedom of choice we are really serving. For example exactly how many business owners want this freedom of choice to open for business on one of the 3½ remaining days of the year when they do not have to open? How many of their staff really want the freedom to be able to work on Easter Sunday? Low-wage workers desperate for money to pay the bills will find themselves behind the counter through the economic imperative without the protection—in those localities that mandate this legislation—of a day off which they may badly need. 
At the moment most workers—and business owners and managers for that matter—can relax in the knowledge that on Christmas Day Good Friday Easter Sunday and the morning of Anzac Day they do not have to go to work. Perhaps they would just like a chance to rest and recuperate. Perhaps they would like time to do things with the family. If they are Christian and it is one of the holy days they might even like to go to church. Those are 3½ precious days that are not defined by the everyday buying and selling that seem to characterise every other moment of our lives. I commend the recent statement from the Anglican archbishops on this matter. Headed “Hamsters or Humans?” it states among other things: “Are we simply consumers running like hamsters on a wheel in the marketplace or is there more to us than this? What we require is legislation which represents the interests of all people not simply the economically and commercially powerful.” Good on the archbishops! 
Is this legislation before us tonight truly representative of the popular will of the majority of ordinary New Zealanders? I doubt it. It is time this House was reminded that economic decisions have human consequences and moral content and that they do actually hurt or help people. They strengthen or weaken our family life and advance or diminish the quality of justice in this country. Every economic decision we collectively make must be judged in this light: does it protect or undermine the dignity of being fully human? As politicians we tend to trade in the positive generalities of concepts like families and children. We all jockey to position ourselves as the political party that best represents the interests of families. This is the obviously rhetorical stuff of politics. Today this House is being asked to look beyond the rhetoric in order to make a specific judgment on an economic issue that will directly affect the quality of life of families. 
Some have argued that the bill will make some families materially richer. For a few it no doubt will and I certainly do not want to downplay the necessity and benefit of a vibrant economy. However we have already set aside 361½ days of the year to do this. Only 3½ days remain when this is not necessarily the case. We have only 3½ days to re-imagine ourselves differently without the all-pervasive presence of market forces. If we allow trading on Easter Sunday as this bill before the House ultimately proposes why stop there? Good Friday is no more holy in a Christian sense than Easter Sunday. Why close shops for only half of Anzac Day? What is the logic of sanctifying one part of the day but not the other? As for Christmas Day why let the shopping suddenly stop? Why close on Christmas Day when the music of commerce is reaching its crescendo? 
We say that other values in life are more important than buying selling and making money; values that the Green Party believes are of more consequence to the quality of our lives than promoting the freedom to shop.