Little Andrew: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 17 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9467. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a great pleasure to take a call on the Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Bill. This is a very important bill.I want to acknowledge the work of Dr David Clark my colleague who picked up this bill from Grant Robertson and also from Darien Fenton. I wanted to add that because as we know success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. Although of course when I say success has many fathers I might say in light of the debate yet to come that success has many parents and for those who have just tuned in their radios and their TVs when I say success has many parents I am talking in relation to the Mondayisation bill. I am not promoting polygamy; I am just saying as a saying that success has many parents and failure is an orphan. My contribution to the Mondayisation bill which we are debating now is that Grant Robertson had a conversation with me as he was drafting it so I feel that even my paw prints sit over this very important piece of legislation.Hon Trevor Mallard: I’m sure all of us talked to him while he was drafting it. Was it about this?ANDREW LITTLE: Well I am not saying he talked to me exclusively about it but I feel as if—Hon Trevor Mallard: But did he discuss the bill with you?ANDREW LITTLE: He discussed the bill with me even before I arrived here.I do not want to get into conspiracy theories about the old Labour Party and being driven by the unions because that certainly was not the case. But in response to my colleague Mike Sabin’s arguments about the old Labour Party versus the new I want to say about the old National Party that when it comes to labour rights it was the old National Party that actually introduced the first personal grievance law in this House in 1970. That was a National Party that respected workers and workers’ organisations. That was a National Party that actually wanted workers to have a good relationship with their employer to be respected and to have fair processes. What a sea change we have in the National Party of today and perhaps I will come back to that when I have a moment.What I also want to say to Mike Sabin is that this bill is not about not observing Anzac Day and Waitangi Day on the days they fall. Of course we will continue to do that. These are important days. These are the days and indeed the events that sit behind them that define us as a nation. We will always observe them and we will observe them with great emotion great consideration and great compassion towards those who have gone before us for the contribution they have made in the case of each of them. But what this does do at least in relation to those years in which the days fall on a weekend day—actually observing the following Monday as a holiday enhances our observation of them and the commemoration or the celebration of those particular days.This bill fulfils the promise of the Holidays Act which is to grant 11 days’ public holiday to every worker every year. That is an important thing and an important achievement. It fulfils the promise of a modern and civilised society and an economy that not only recognises the contribution of working people but recognises important events in our history and allows us as a community to commemorate them and celebrate them as appropriate.Let us not forget that in around about the last 15 years there has been a 25 percent increase in productivity and value in this country whereas real wages have increased barely 10 percent over the same period of time. There is no loss to business not in any aggregate sense at least anyway. There is no loss to business in the 2 years out of 7 years that this bill will allow extra days to be granted to workers in observation and commemoration of these very important days. As David Clendon said in his contribution we are a nation that over the last 20 years has shown that we are working longer hours on average and we are not being paid commensurately for those additional hours. We are not getting the reward. This might be seen for those who see some economic difficulty in it to provide just some little extra reward for those extra hours worked and the extra productivity produced in our economy as a whole.The truth is that this bill has widespread support across New Zealand not only amongst working people but across many businesses not the least of which is the Tourism Industry Association which represents literally hundreds of businesses big and small in this economy. It has a very important role to play. In fact the tourism industry is so important that this Government is about to grant an additional $158 million over 4 years to it. That is how much importance this Government sees the tourism industry having. Quite why it does not listen to it on issues like this I do not understand although I can explain it when I go back to the issues about the modern National Party and its attitude to workers and workers’ rights.Responsible regulation in the labour market simply means ensuring fairness. This bill is an example of responsible regulation and it is a bill that will ensure greater fairness for working people. This bill adds that. This bill—what it does; all it does—adds a maximum of 2 days’ leave in 2 years out of every 7 years—2 years out of every 7 years. This is not going to break the bank of New Zealand productivity or the bank of New Zealand business. It is a fair recognition of something that actually our Holidays Actalready promises but does not so far deliver. This will continue genuine observance of these important commemorative days when they would otherwise fall on a weekend.Let us talk about Anzac Day because we are on the eve of Anzac Day week. When we think about Anzac Day we know that young New Zealanders predominantly men—in fact it was all men—were conscripted into the army to go and fight thousands of miles away. That is important to us because actually one of the driving forces for the founding of the Labour Party was an opposition to conscription. Young men were conscripted to fight in a war many thousands of miles away. They accepted the argument that this was for Queen and country it was for a lifestyle and it was for a sense of freedom. It was not to work longer hours. It was not to lift their productivity by 25 percent and get nothing for it. That is not what young soldiers fought for in World War I. They fought for a set of values and for greater freedom and this bill properly and truly recognises the sacrifice that was made because it represents greater freedom—the freedom to spend time with one’s family and the freedom to express oneself how one wishes in one’s own time.That is what this bill does and we should respect it and support it for that reason. It is about putting work in balance with the rest of one’s life. That is the challenge of life in the modern world and this bill will help us to achieve that. It is about good rights at work.When we think about Waitangi Day and we think about the historical origins of that day and about rights to citizenship this bill is about conferring not only citizenship but “humanship” if you like. It is about the humanity of each of us—the right to have time off to mark important historical events to commemorate them within our communities and to celebrate them where that is required. When we think about kāwanatanga and tino rangatiratanga working longer hours and being deprived of the right to observe those important days is not what the Treaty of Waitangi stands for. It stands for people being people and that if anything is what the Treaty of Waitangi is about—people.So this bill is very important. This bill is very important because it is a chance for us to express our nationhood and those 2 important days on a real day by having the world of commerce stop for a moment and take a step back in years in which it would otherwise not do so on these 2 important days so that we can all observe them.I started this contribution by talking about the new National Party. Look at everything it has done when it comes to work rights. Every time this Government comes to turn its attention to work rights it is about taking away. It is about detracting from workers and their rights whether it is the 90-day trial period whether it is changing the test on personal grievances—a piece of law that actually originated from a progressive liberal National Party which we do not have today and we do not have any more. When we think about access rights at work when we think about the rights of workers to have a say over when they take their holidays every time this Government turns its attention to work rights it takes something away from workers.Well thank goodness for the Labour Party. Thank goodness for the Labour Party and at least in Opposition with good members like Grant Robertson Dr David Clark and Darien Fenton we have the ability to introduce laws like this and get them passed for the good of all New Zealand. That is why we are supporting this bill.