Madam Speaker,
For the second time this year we find ourselves debating yet another attempt to reform the ramshackle laws relating to Easter trading. I have to acknowledge that Steve Chadwick's Bill which we are dealing with here tonight is the best attempt yet to remove some of the inconsistencies in this area but the Green Party will still oppose this bill and the value system it privileges.
Steve Chadwick's Bill is fairer than Jacqui Dean's. We appreciate the fact that it doesn't include Good Friday as a shopping day, and that there will be some protections for workers so that they cannot be compelled to work on Easter Sunday unless both employer and employee agree. However, these are still not good enough reasons to endorse it.
There is a lot of rhetoric in the debating chamber that this is all about the "freedom of choice." But in fact when you start to think about the wide-reaching effects of this legislation, it pays to ask whose "freedom of choice" are we really serving?
For example, exactly how many business owners want this "freedom of choice" to open for business on one of the last three-and-a-half remaining days of the year where they can't? How many of their staff really want the freedom to be able to work on Easter Sunday? Low waged workers desperate for money to pay the bills will find themselves behind the counter through the economic imperative, without the protection, in those localities that mandate this legislation, of a day off which they may badly need.
At the moment most workers - and business owners and managers for that matter - can relax in the knowledge that on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and the morning of ANZAC Day they don't have to go to work.
Perhaps they would just like a chance to rest and recuperate. Perhaps they would like time to do things with the family. If they're Christian and it's one of the holy days, they might even like to go to church. These are three and a half precious days that are not defined by the everyday buying and selling that seems to characterise every other moment of our lives.
I commend the recent statement from the Anglican Archbishops on this matter. Headed 'Hamsters? Or Humans?' it says, among other things, "Are we simply consumers, running like hamsters on a wheel in the marketplace, or is there more to us than this? What we require is legislation which represents the interests of all people, not simply the economically and commercially powerful".
Good on the Archbishops.
Is this piece of legislation before us tonight truly representative of the popular will of the majority of ordinary New Zealanders? I doubt it.
It's time this House was reminded that economic decisions have human consequences and moral content; that they do actually hurt or help people, strengthen or weaken family life, and advance or diminish the quality of justice in our land.
Every economic decision we collectively make must be judged in this light: Does it protect or undermine the dignity of being fully human?
As politicians, we tend to trade in the positive generalities of concepts like "family" and "children." We all jockey to position ourselves as the political party that best represents the interests of families.
This is the obviously rhetorical stuff of politics. Today, this House is being asked to look beyond the rhetoric to make a specific judgement on an economic issue that will directly affect the quality of life of families.
Some have argued that it will make some families materially richer. For a few, it no doubt will and I certainly don't want to downplay the necessity and benefits of a vibrant economy to our wider society. However, we have already set aside three-hundred-and sixty-one-and-a-half days of the year for this.
Only three-and-a-half days remain where this isn't necessarily the case-three-and-a-half days to re-imagine ourselves differently without the all-pervasive presence of market forces.
And if we allow trading on Easter Sunday, as this Bill before the House ultimately proposes, why stop there? Good Friday is no more Holy in a Christian sense than Easter Sunday. And why close shops for only half of ANZAC day? What is the logic of sanctifying one part of the day but not the other? Finally, there's Christmas Day - a day preceded by the most intense commercial pressure of them all. Why let it suddenly stop when the music of commerce is reaching its crescendo?
There are other values to life that are more important than buying, and selling and making money - values that the Green Party believe are of more consequence to the quality of our lives than promoting the freedom to shop. We will be voting against this Bill.
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