Sepuloni CarmelHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): It's an honour for me to stand in this debate too to pay tribute to those that fought for the right for women to stand for Parliament in New Zealand. And at the same time I also pay tribute to those who fought for the right for women to vote in New Zealand. I am number 107; I was the second Pacific woman in the New Zealand Parliament and I want to start by acknowledging all of the Pacific women that have graced this place. Already who has been mentioned? Minister Luamanuvao Winnie Laban; myself; then Asenati Lole-Taylor with New Zealand First; Poto Williams our member of Parliament for Christchurch East; Jenny Salesa our member of Parliament for Manukau East; Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki list MP; and Agnes Loheni list MP. I don't know whether back in 1999 when Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban became the first Pacific member of Parliament that she would have envisaged that in 20 years' time there would have been seven Pacific women that have been in this place. At the moment we have four of those seven here at this very time—four? Five—five I think.Can I acknowledge the Pacific women that have been here and I want to do that because of the fact that representation is important; representation of women but representation of diverse women. We know that in New Zealand Pacific and Māori women remain under-represented in many of the areas where women in general are making progress. Some of those areas have been touched on but I need to point out that despite the good work that this Government is doing Māori and Pacific women still for example experience more of a pay gap than others there is a higher percentage in lower-skilled work and there are still major issues that disproportionately affect Māori and Pacific women including family and sexual violence. That is why representation is so important. As a Pacific woman we don't just look at our New Zealand Parliament and want to move forward with making sure that we do get to the 50-50 percent representation—we're at 40 percent at the moment—but we look across our Pacific region. Many of the Māori and Pacific women in this room have been working hard to try and support Pacific countries with also lifting representation keeping in mind that the average across the Pacific region when you exclude New Zealand and Australia is only around eight percent representation for women. I want to acknowledge the fact that progress needs to continue to be made. We aren't at 50 percent yet and there are areas where women are still disproportionately disadvantaged to a certain extent. And I want to acknowledge the Speaker and his role that he has played in making this place more family friendly. There are younger members of Parliament in the New Zealand Parliament now. There are more women members of Parliament and as a consequence there are more children of parliamentarians. In fact when we got into Government I remember the Crown car drivers saying that they had to go out and do an urgent shop for car seats because they'd never experienced this many children of Ministers before. I think that's a very strong signal that not only are we increasing the representation of women but we have a younger representation in this place as well. I want to point out to the House that not only for women but for parents in general being an MP being a Minister being a Prime Minister is not a part-time job. It is more than a full-time job. If anything all of us that have children—and I have two; when I first came in my eldest was 10 when I came in the second time I had an 18-month-old baby because I thought I'd be productive during that three-year sabbatical. We understand coming into this place that this job is demanding and that if anything is going to be part-time it is our parenting that is reduced to part-time actually. So we are reliant on our grandparents on our extended family members on our partners to pick up the slack there in respect of supporting the raising of our children. So I wanted to make that point: this is not a part-time job for anyone in here. I'll end with some words from a very popular Labour Party karaoke song for Labour women; I won't sing it I'll just do the words:[We are] woman hear [us] roarIn numbers too big to ignoreAnd [we] know too much to go back and pretend'Cause I've heard it all beforeAnd I've been down … on the floorNo one's ever gonna keep me down again