Beaumont Carol: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:673;Page:19865] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak on clause 11 and on the issue of honorary members. I have to say just by way of a general comment that this whole debate on the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill has been fascinating. Learning about the different categories of membership I think is particularly interesting. I am a little disappointed I did not get to speak on clause 10 on companions because it really— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: That’s why I gave you one now. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: Yes thank you for giving me a call now Mr Chairperson. I do think the companion category is a particularly interesting one. We are talking about people who are outstanding. 
In respect of the honorary member category according to the website of the Royal Society “The Council may grant Honorary Membership to an Ordinary Member who in the Council’s opinion has rendered eminent service to science technology humanities or the Society.” 
I was looking at the honorary fellow category. Honorary fellows are not normally resident in New Zealand and I wondered whether the same was true for honorary members but it does not say so. I hope my colleague Grant Robertson the fine member who has brought this bill to the House can clarify this point for me. An honorary fellow is not normally resident in New Zealand but it does not say that in terms of an honorary member. But I looked at the list of honorary members and I will just repeat the definition: an honorary member is an “Ordinary Member who in the Council’s opinion has rendered eminent service to science technology humanities or the Society.” It does not say that honorary members are not normally resident in New Zealand but as I scrolled down the list I saw that most of them if not all seem to not live in New Zealand so perhaps Mr Robertson could clarify that for me. 
I was going to tell the Committee about the gender breakdown of companions. I think I will still do that and tell the Committee about the gender breakdown of members. I think it is really important to look at these issues. In terms of companions there are 35 current Companions of the Royal Society of New Zealand—nine of them are women and 26 are men. 
I am afraid that the ratio looks a whole lot worse though for honorary members. At the moment there are 56 honorary members of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Of those 56 honorary members 53 are male and three are female. Those are not particularly good gender statistics. I do not want to be stereotypical but it may reflect the fact that in the past women perhaps have not been encouraged into the science areas and we probably do have a gap in terms of the number of women who have trained in what we would call the traditional sciences. My colleague Moana Mackey is of course a scientist and as we now know a professional member of the Royal Society of New Zealand. She is nodding so I think she is telling me that it is still relatively rare for women to study the traditional science areas and perhaps get to those higher levels. I have certainly seen that for myself when visiting a number of science companies where one can see a lot of women at the technician level as Ms Mackey says. One of the things that I am sure the Royal Society is very aware of is the need to encourage more young women into the sciences. 
In fact we need more New Zealanders generally in the sciences. We know there is a gap there and we know that the sciences are absolutely critical to our economic future but perhaps Mr Robertson could tell me whether he is aware of any particular efforts being made by the members of the Royal Society to encourage more women into the sciences. In particular I wonder whether the role of companion or fellow is to do just that. 
As I say I am pondering whether honorary members are people based outside of New Zealand; and if not what is the specific difference between an honorary member and an ordinary member? It is not quite clear to me from the Royal Society’s website what that distinction is. It just says that honorary membership is granted to an ordinary member for eminent service. We know that at a certain level of eminent service can see one potentially become a companion so I would like to know what the distinction is between an honorary member and an ordinary member or indeed a professional member like my colleague Moana Mackey. 
Clause 11 makes a consequential change to take account of the humanities being included.