Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker and thank you to our National colleagues for offering the opportunity for the ACT Party to have a second call on this bill.Now we've heard from the Labour Government members and the Green member why they oppose the bill. Apparently they want to save us from ourselves. They want to make sure we don't have too much fun on Easter Sunday or Good Friday. They want to make sure we don't just have the pint that fantastic stein of lager with a good inch-deep head on it. They don't want us to have that with a bowl of chips. They want us to have the salad as well.Anyway it's nice they're thinking of our health but actually what we want and what businesses want is to be able to make choices about whether they open whether their staff have a choice to come to work and earn time and a half and get a day in lieu—because not everybody wants to take a holiday when the Government tells you to. Shock horror!Now I've been to my colleague Mr Baillie's pub. Fantastic food great range of craft beers. Is it The Honest Lawyer? Is that what it's called? The Honest Lawyer in Nelson. Fantastic pub The Honest Lawyer. But it's not just The Honest Lawyer in Nelson that wants to be able to offer people a plate of chips on an Easter Sunday or a Good Friday; there are hospitality businesses and retailers up and down the country who want to be able to trade.Now if I was a tourist at Easter and I came to West Auckland—I know people do it! They come to West Auckland as tourists at Easter. If we went out on Friday we wouldn't be able to go and pick up a bicycle tube if somebody had had a puncture. In fact we wouldn't be able to go to the bike park even because they're not open. The Easter trading laws mean that I can't go biking at my local bike park because that's a business and it has to close.If tourists came to New Zealand like they came to West Auckland where I live the garden centre would be open so maybe they could take a hydrangea or something back on the cruise ship with them as a memento of their trip—we're not quite sure. Or maybe they could go to one of the duty-free stores and buy a Gucci handbag or something. These exemptions are ridiculous.This is not a new problem. Bands all kinds of entertainers come to New Zealand and they play shows at Easter. They play multiple-day shows sometimes. If you were a touring band—you'd been all around the world and came to New Zealand—and you played a show on say a Saturday night and you decided you were going to go out on the Sunday and you found that you couldn't have a beer if you got there an hour before lunch you'd think What kind of country is this?"Well there was a band that had an experience like this—not in New Zealand but in the UK a long long time ago before they liberalised their trading laws. That was The Ramones one of the best punk rock bands of all time. In fact they wrote a song about it. It's called "I Want to Be Sedated". It was so boring when they woke up in England on Christmas Day they sang "24 hours to go everything's closed I want to be sedated." That's how New Zealand businesses feel. That's how Chris Baillie of The Honest Lawyer feels when he hears Labour and Green MPs telling him he's not allowed to give people a beer unless they have salad with their chips. A lot of us just want to be sedated!State control over business benefits big business big corporates because they can afford to carry the cost burden of being forced to remain closed. It's small and medium enterprises that actually suffer—those people who do work in their businesses long hours and many days and have to choose when to take holidays. What they don't want is the Government choosing when they open. They want to have that flexibility and that's what this bill provides for.So I would urge my colleagues: you might have thought you were coming to this House to vote against this bill going to select committee. I hope I've given you a window not just into my world and the world of touring bands but the world of what it means to be a small-business person who has to find a way to generate the revenue to pay staff and pay suppliers. I urge you to support this bill at first reading.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The great thing about a mask—it hides a lot of things!"