Flavell Te Ururoa: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading)Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9319] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe Madam Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa i te Whare. Yesterday I met a woman who described herself as a wife mother and grandmother from Whangarei. I suspect that she may well have been the same lady who provided letters to other parties. She is a worker on the shop floor of the local Warehouse. We were pleased to have a discussion with her. She told me that last Easter she had refused to work on Easter Sunday and had instead enjoyed time with her whanau. 
She had made her decision for cultural and spiritual reasons. But upon returning to work she became aware that her colleagues had other reasons that had prevented them from being able to make the same decision that she had. She listed those reasons as being one pressure by the employers to work as part of the so-called team; two the effect of upcoming appraisals whereby it appeared that workers taking off Easter Sunday could well result in the boss claiming that they were unreliable; and three because of the low wages workers felt compelled to work on Easter Sunday in order to earn time and a half. The lady’s letter ended with a plea: “We look to all Government leaders to protect retail workers from the kind of abuse of power that can happen in corporate-owned companies.” 
I come to this debate on the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading) Amendment Bill thinking about that wahine. I have some questions for the House. How well do the provisions in this bill express the hopes and dreams of workers for a better future? Do they take into account the views of workers on the shop floor and their belief that an injury to one is an injury to all? What will the impact on workers be? Indeed what is the nature of the actual demand for shops to open on Easter Sunday? 
I have heard the advocates of Easter trading say that there is a demand for shops to open. I need to tell members that when I was at the Te HuiAhurei o Tuhoe on the Easter weekend not one of the thousands of people there—workers and employers alike—made any suggestion that they would rather be working. So who is making the demand? 
As the House is already aware the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act 1990 first amended shop trading hours. This was followed by the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Amendment Act 2001 which allowed garden centres to open on Easter Sunday. That was followed by a list of certain categories of shops that could trade on restricted days. I am told that these changes have made New Zealand one of the most liberalised shopping nations in the world—second only to Iceland. The fact that a precedent has been set however should not force anyone’s hand in determining how they vote on the bill. This bill and Jacqui Dean’s bill before it suggests some significant challenges to the public policy preference to retain certain special and protected days. We believe that in areas of debate that bring with them such major alterations to public policy the process must as a right involve public consultation local council decision-making and ministerial oversight. 
We were pleased to see in this current bill that much of the decision making would reside in the context of the territorial local authority area. Indeed it would be up to councils to determine the decision. However—and it is a big however—allowing local communities to have their say through their councils could have the potential to extend trading way beyond the concept of limited exemptions. 
The Maori Party supported the idea of territorial local authorities determining how the Act applies in their own unique situations but we believe that it would be preferable for exemptions to be granted to limited localities within districts rather than to the whole territorial local authority area. For example in Rotorua the limited locality might be the craft markets; in Auckland it might be the Viaduct or the Victoria Park markets; and in Porirua it might be the North City Plaza. 
Here we come to one of the most critical areas in the Stevie Chadwick bill. It relates to the provision for local authorities to consult with their communities on the issue of Easter Sunday shop trading and then to make a decision appropriate for the area. The bill enables councils to enact special consultative procedures to find out whether the locals want their shops to trade on Easter Sunday. The sponsor of the bill—member for Rotorua Stevie Chadwick—had suggested that the consultative procedures outlined in Part 6 of the Local Government Act 2002 would be used yet in a strange turn of events the Commerce Committee decided instead to recommend that section 83 of the Local Government Act be used. This change cuts across section 81 in Part 6 of the Local Government Act which just happens to be the particular provisions for councils to consult with Maori communities. If the opportunity to consult with Maori is specifically prohibited by the select committee we have to ask what that is about. 
The National Distribution Union has spoken with us—like others no doubt—about the possibility of exemptions being granted according to criteria in order to limit trading to genuine cases. A genuine case would be defined as a significant event being held in the area and a sudden population boom being experienced due to the location being an Easter weekend destination. I think of Whanganui last Easter with the Hui Aranga of Ruatoki with the Te HuiAhurei o Tuhoe of Wanaka with the biennial air show and of Rotorua every Easter.  
Stevie Chadwick and I well know that Rotorua is the place to be but it is even more so at Easter when our environment becomes really alive and passionate and is in the swing of Latin America. If members do not know every Easter Rotorua gets into the groove to the samba and salsa of the Jambalaya Festival which is the biggest Latin American and Pasifika dance and music festival in Aotearoa. Forget about  
Dancing with the Stars 
 the Jambalaya Festival is for 3 days and 4 nights and Rotorua transforms itself into a massive dance party.  
Easter hui Jambalaya and air shows no matter how spectacular are all significant deviations to the norm—the type of exemption we could envisage as being associated with a major festival. As the member for Waiariki I would have supported a bill that responded to the unique needs of unique places such as Rotorua or of other areas that have a genuine case. I would have supported a case for genuine retailers to apply for an exemption in order to attract the tourist dollar for a specific purpose rather than that we have just another commercial shopping day. There should be a specific purpose for a specific area. There was always a concern with this bill that the scope went so wide as to include everyone. Worse yet the select committee removed the provisions dealing with section 81 of the Local Government Act that mandated the requirement to consult with Maori. If the member for Rotorua Stevie Chadwick had put up a bill that was specific to Rotorua and had those exemptions in place I would have happily looked at supporting such a proposal.  
I just want to return to the central issue at stake in this bill: the cost of a decent day’s work. “Decent” is an interesting concept to ponder further. Our research says that a comparison of the proportion of employees working 50 or more hours per week among a selection of OECD countries shows that New Zealand has one of the highest proportions of workers putting in long hours of paid work. Easter Sunday and Good Friday already have significance to Christians as occasions of special meaning but in the context of concerns about long hours of paid work we are also concerned about the possible negative effects for families and children of taking an extra day from the already pressured family calendar. Anyone in this House who is the parent of teenagers could verify that life is so busy that one almost needs to text them with appointments to add family time to their busy schedules let alone if we were to delete another 2 days from the calendar.  
Other research results from Unicef’s international Innocenti report at the start of this year threw up a whole lot of hard questions about how much time New Zealand families have to enjoy being together. Unfortunately we are lagging behind many economically poorer countries in variables such as parents spending time with their children and giving them due attention and families sharing a meal together. 
 The Maori Party believes that we have to start talking seriously about the way in which New Zealanders balance the ever-competing pressures of paid work with the immeasurable value of quality family time. Workers and families have frequently reinforced the message that the need to earn enough income and the pressure of workplace practices have made it hard—in fact almost impossible—to have a balanced life. 
As we examine our conscience in the process of determining our position on the bill we must not let the importance of whanaungatanga be undermined. The principle of whanaungatanga recognises that the people are our true wealth and that an investment in whanau will provide a compelling foundation for future growth. We need to consider the benefits to employers and employees in order to ensure that there are protections for workers. We need to always hold firm to those who will be with us at the start of the working day at the end of the working day and for all the hours in between. In light of that principle we must vote against the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter Trading) Amendment Bill.