Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise as the member of Parliament for Southland to speak on Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill. The National Party supports Matariki and a Matariki holiday. But as other speakers before me have said there is a time and a place for the Matariki holiday for it to come into law. And we have put forward our view very clearly that if it is to come in now it needs to replace another public holiday. This country already has 11 public holidays and at this point in history there is a huge amount of pressure already on New Zealand businesses and the people they employ and we need to make sure we take the pressure off them so that they can continue to trade and to operate.I'll speak very briefly in turn on Matariki because it's quite a special thing. The appearance of the seven stars of Matariki in midwinter marks the start of the Māori New Year. Matariki can be translated as Matariki: tiny eyes; or Mata Ariki: eyes of God. The Matariki stars can be seen all over the world and also known as the Pleiades the Seven Sisters and Subaru. According to one legend the stars show a mother and her six daughters with the mother—Matariki—in the centre. Matariki is not a constellation but a star cluster. A star cluster is where the stars are situated near each other in space whereas a constellation is a collection of stars that only appear to be close to each other from our view here on Earth. Matariki is one of the closest star clusters to Earth a mere 444.2 light years away. While only seven of the stars are clearly visible to us the star cluster actually consists of more than 1000 stars. Traditionally Matariki was used to determine the coming season's crop here in New Zealand Aotearoa. A warmer season and therefore more productive crop yield was indicated by how bright the stars were. The rich tradition of Matariki provides an ideal opportunity to explore the ways that people pass on and sustain aspects of their culture and heritage.As I said the National Party welcomes a publicly observed Matariki holiday. We oppose imposing a potentially $450 million burden on our businesses and particularly on our small businesses. Many small business submitters expressed their concern about the cost an additional public holiday might present to businesses that are already facing increased minimum wage additional sick leave and the ongoing effects of COVID-19. New Zealand is a nation of small and micro businesses including the self-employed. There are approximately 530000 small businesses in New Zealand representing 97 percent of all firms. They account for almost one-third of all employment and contribute over one-quarter of New Zealand's gross domestic product.New Zealand has a higher percentage of small and micro businesses than other countries. The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has noted that the recovery of New Zealand's small businesses post-COVID-19 is vital to the sustainability and growth of the economy and to the wellbeing of thousands of small business owners and the people that they employ. And I would note that the people they employ are the people who put food on the table for their children.I have been around and spoken to many many small businesses in my electorate—and I'm sure colleagues in this House have done the same—and I've heard stories for example of many business owners I've spoken to where they have fought incredibly hard over the last two years to keep the doors open and keep their people in jobs. I have talked to business owners who have taken out mortgages on their family home taken out second mortgages—and in some cases even third mortgages—just to keep their staff employed; keep their business operating in the hope that they will have a future. We should not be placing more burden on these small businesses now at a time when they are doing everything they can do survive and keep their people employed. That is why this Matariki bill coming in as an additional public holiday is the wrong step at the wrong time—despite noting that we do support Matariki and what it represents wholeheartedly. So we need to note that there has been a number of cost projections which vary quite significantly. It's estimated that the net effect on the economy is somewhere between $25.7 million in the positive and $133 million in the negative. This calculation's based on estimated economic benefits of between $310.4 million and $496.1 million and estimated costs of around $443.4 million—in other words almost half a billion dollars.We're advised that the additional costs of implementation are likely to be similar to those of New Zealand's existing public holidays. So we need to note there are 11 existing public holidays placing costs already on our small businesses in particular. Quite simply the proposal to create a new holiday will add more stress and strain to small businesses who are already dealing with inflation that's at three-decade-highs before we're even headed into a period with Ukraine and Russia added to our inflationary impact. I cannot commend this bill to the House.