Madam Speaker
What a shambles.
In my 7 years in Parliament I have never seen such a confusing and shambolic report from a Select Committee reach the floor of this house.
Tonight we have two Bills in front of us attempting to amend the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act.
These attempts follow a string of other unsuccessful attempts over the last few years. Our shop trading hours today are set by the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act 1990 and the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Amendment Act 2001.
But our Parliament is littered with other failed attempts to impose more shopping days on the New Zealand public and shop workers alike.
- The Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal (Easter) Amendment Bill 1996. Defeated
- The Shop Trading Hours (Repeal of Restrictions) Bill 1997. Defeated
- The Shop Trading Hours (Abolition of Restrictions) Bill 1999. Defeated.
- The Rotorua District (Easter Sunday Shop Trading) Bill 2002. Defeated.
- The Shop Trading Hours (Easter Trading Local Exemption) Bill 2004. Defeated.
These all sit in the dustbin of legislative history and this is where this and the other amendment Bill also belong.
The Commerce Select Committee had the opportunity to study both Bills, listen to submissions and bring back to the house recommendations based on the submissions heard that at least we could debate.
But no, the Select Committee commentary on both Bills states "we have no clear preference for either bill and are recommending that both proceed with amendment."
What a cop-out! The Commerce Committee wants this House and our Committee process to do their work for them.
So we now have two Bills in front of us, each seeking to do different things, and with amendments that go well beyond what was being sought in the Bills. They were going to be debated together. Now we find that they are being debated separately.
The shambles continues.
Plainly both cannot be passed as one is in conflict with the other.
I urge all of my parliamentary colleagues to throw out both Bills and to chastise (non-violently, of course) the Commerce Committee for its failure to do its job and for bringing this shambles to us.
And it gets worse. Just a few hours ago I attended a Press Conference organised by the Catholic justice and development agency, CARITAS, regarding the two Bills that we are debating.
I attended this conference together with fellow MPs Hone Harawira, Darien Fenton and Gordon Copeland.
At that Press Conference, Gordon Copeland stated that he was Deputy Chairperson of the Commerce Committee and complained that there was, in his words, "an abuse of process". The Commerce Committee has reported these two Bills to this House with amendments recorded as "unanimous", when the significant amendments to Jacqui Dean's Bill that extended liberalisation of shopping hours to all territorial authorities in New Zealand was put together by a couple of Members of the Committee after the submission process had finished, and without any submitter asking for such amendments.
This does not make for good lawmaking. I would therefore urge those who may have some sympathy for further liberalisation of Easter Trading to vote against both Bills as a sign of displeasure at the process, even if not at the content, of the Bills.
The Report of the Commerce Select Committee on Jacqui Dean's Bill is a shocker.
The original purpose of the Bill was "to grant a partial exemption to shops in visitor districts from the requirement in the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act 1990 to be closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday."
First up, Jacqui Dean was disingenuous with the name of her Bill which hid her attack on Good Friday by calling it the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Amendment Bill.
But now the Select Committee by "unanimous decision" - or was it - has given the Bill a completely new purpose of exempting all shops located in the territorial authorities listed in Schedule 2 from remaining closed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and then includes every territorial authority in the country in Schedule 2!
We are told that territorial authorities can opt out through their local consultation provisions under the Local Government Act, but the mechanism to give effect to this opting out is "either by the committee of the whole house or later by amending legislation."
So what does this mean?
Either Territorial Local Authorities will have to undergo their local consultation over the next few weeks while the Bill is before the Committee of the Whole — a legal impossibility if they are to abide by the consultation provisions of the Local Government Act - or they will have to wait for a Private Bill to opt out.
If this isn't a sham, I don't know what is!
Heart of the matter
I want to spend my remaining time going to the heart of the Shop Trading Hours debate.
I want to explode a myth we New Zealanders seem to hold close to our hearts. The myth is this: New Zealand is a great place to grow up in.
A recent UNICEF report on child wellbeing describes children's health and welfare in New Zealand as amongst some of the worst of developed countries. Our parents rate in the bottom quarter for time spent with their children. Is this the New Zealand we grew up in? Or has this pervasive cultural myth outlived its usefulness?
Why aren't New Zealand parents spending quality time with their children? One of the reasons could be the results of another OECD study that shows New Zealanders work some of the longest hours in the OECD: 1,826 hours per year compared with an OECD average of 1,778.
We have before the House two Bills, which are, quite simply, manifestations of the relentless pressure of market forces upon the social, cultural, and spiritual fabric of our society. These two Bills, whatever their humble intent, seem to overlook the wider implications of their provisions for the 200,000 retail workers and their families, and the more than 2 million people who continue to affiliate with the Christian religion in New Zealand.
Despite the very large numbers of people these Bills could adversely impact directly, I want to argue that this is not a numbers debate. This is a conscience issue which will affect us all. As MPs, we have been delegated the authority to vote according to our consciences and do what we believe to be morally right.
But how can one be truly moral when one lacks a vision for what it means to be fully human? Or reduces that vision to one of pure economic opportunity?
While this Bill seeks to address some stated anomalies with the current shop trading legislation, it overlooks the bigger picture that Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Christmas Day, and ANZAC day are actually the anomalies themselves, good anomalies: three-and-a-half days of the year where the logic of the market and economic opportunity does not prevail.
Let me remind members that retail businesses may open to trade on almost any day of the year at any time they choose. The remaining three-and-a-half days are the anomalies in that they stand against the prevailing winds of the relentless pursuit of profit and the "Affluenza" that Oliver James describes that is actually consuming us.
Within these three-and-a-half days, we have the breathing space to reconsider what it is to be human, what is it that we live for — what we value most highly and cherish above all else. At some deep level, this debate is about defining what we value, and what we don't — what it is about us as New Zealanders that makes us unique.
If we really want to be a country that is a great place to grow up in, then we might need to start actively working towards implementing ways that might make this more than a comfortable cultural myth, more than the social equivalent of the clean and green myth. It's time for us to get real about how we might help stem the disintegration of child welfare and family life in general in New Zealand.
When parents are forced to work long hours at the expense of time spent with each other and with their children, children and young people are left without the comfort and security of traditional family interaction. I don't need to spell out consequences that often result when young people look elsewhere for their primary support. The UNICEF report has captured that well already.
We all want to see better outcomes for our children. That obviously means better outcomes for our families. And that, in turn, means better outcomes for the workers that support the economic livelihood of those families. The Green Party does not support this Bill because it works to undermine positive outcomes for children, their families, and the workers that support them. In effect, the liberalisation of Easter trading corrodes the once sacred value we placed around them. But in a market-driven world, nothing, it appears, is sacred any longer.
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