Benn's RR report on Todd McClay and Easter Sunday trading

Geoff from Owhata

The New Zealand government allowed retailers in Queenstown and Taupo to trade on Easter Sunday.
Mr McClay now says that was "unfair", presumably to retailers in other centres such as Rotorua. He may be right about that, or he may be wrong. Parliament at the time clearly did not think that it was passing legislation which was unfair to anyone.
But never mind that. Let us accept that it was "unfair" as Mr McClay now claims. He then had two remedies open to him. The first and most obvious solution was to repeal the offending legislation. The second was to allow Sunday trading throughout the country.
Yet, curiously, Mr McClay did neither. Instead he passed the buck to the territorial local authorities, allowing them to impose any solution they saw fit, however "fair" or "unfair" that might be. So "fairness" was never the real issue for Mr McClay. If it had been, he would not have left local authorities free to continue with supposedly "unfair" rules.
The New Zealand government is employing a tried and tested liberal strategem whereby an anomaly is deliberately created and that anomaly then provides a pretext for more far-reaching reforms. For example, restrictions on the sale of alcohol are relaxed, which then fuels demands for a more permissive attitude towards the sale and use of cannabis, quickly followed by legalisation and taxation of the cannabis trade, and eventually, by the same logic, legalisation and taxation of methamphetamine and other drugs. The same approach has been used to make gambling casinos, houses of prostitution and many other highly profitable but morally suspect activities into pillars of the New Zealand economy. The government's ultimate object in the case of Easter Sunday trading is not to make for a better or fairer society, but to undermine the public holiday system in New Zealand, which rests on Christian foundations, and at the same time to erode the influence of the Christian church upon state and society.
That real object was well laid out by Darryn Cosgrove who pointed out that Christians are a minority of the public, that in the opinion of those like himself the Biblical account of the resurrection is nothing more than a fairy tale, and that the Christian religion should not be allowed to obstruct people from increasing their material wealth on Easter Sunday. However Mr McClay cannot state the matter so baldly as Darryn does, if for no other reason than that he still relies on the support of Christian voters to keep him in office.
Christians can respect people such as Darryn Cosgrove who staunchly, openly and sincerely deny Christ, not least because the Apostle Paul himself fervently denied Christ until the time of his epiphany on the road to Damascus. It is more difficult to respect Mr McClay when he argues that he only wants a system that is "fair". The Easter Sunday trading dispute is really all about whether capitalism and commerce should prevail over Christianity and community, and while it may not be politically expedient for him to admit the fact, Mr McClay is firmly on the side of commerce and capitalism.