Logie Jan: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionLogie Jan: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2977. Text is subject to correction.]JAN LOGIE (Green):I rise to speak to the annual review of the Ministry for Women. I would like to start by sharing with the Committee a quote about the recent report Fault Lines: Human Rights in New Zealand which was produced by some academics from Waikato University including the previous Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor: “Professor McGregor says we keep telling the United Nations we were the first to grant women the vote but we still don’t have equal pay for women or pay equity for carers. ‘Nor do we have adequate paid parental leave and we continue to suffer completely unacceptable levels of violence against women. We say how good we are but the reality is we’re in trouble.’ ” The Ministry for Women newly named in this term of Parliament is the Government’s principal adviser according to its annual report on achieving better outcomes for women. Quite similarly to the previous speaker Peeni Henare I feel that this is another case of a ministry being asked to turn water into wine. With a small group of people and a budget of under $5000 this group of mostly women are expected to help this Government to work with this Government to deliver on better outcomes for women in this country.I do want to spend just a very brief period of time talking to the structure and the fact that this ministry has a Minister the Minister for Women who is outside of Cabinet. We have seen in the last week that I would suggest the Minister feels that her political career and her personal political ambitions are in conflict with her ability to speak out and advocate for women in this country. When the Minister for Women chooses to reiterate the Prime Minister’s minimisation of a case of harassment and chooses not to raise any of the wider issues around women’s safety in the workplace we see the consequences of this position being based outside of Cabinet and the low priority that this Government gives to the status and the progress of the rights of women.The ministry has three core goals: economic independence of women more women in leadership and increased safety for New Zealand women. These are ambitious goals. The reality is that when one in three women in this country is likely to experience sexual violence and when one in three women in this country is likely to experience physical violence at the hand of their most intimate partner we know we need ambition and we know we need someone who will stand up and actually work to turn that round. What do we have instead? We have a Minister outside of Cabinet and we have a small under-resourced ministry that is able only to give advice.In the last year and a half this ministry has produced 17 media releases the majority of which are congratulations to other organisations. Only three of them reported on information that had been put out by Statistics New Zealand. There were only three pieces of research and advice that media releases were put out on. I am not blaming that group of people who are in there who I believe have the best intentions. This is an issue of this Government’s lack of priority around the well-being of women and the well-being of families in this country. It is a sad indictment on the state of things in New Zealand. Just to take the one example of paid parental leave where the Government here had the opportunity to grant this country 26 weeks and it chose—