Roy Heather: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Roy Heather: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
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HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of ACT New Zealand to speak on the third reading of the Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill. I am delighted to say that ACT will be supporting this bill at two levels. Firstly because it is the right thing to do from our political party’s point of view and secondly at a very personal level I am delighted as a serving territorial soldier to see that at last this area is being addressed. 
This bill is in fact a very simple bill. It will correct an anomaly that has existed in our law for many years. It will also see compliance with international law which is very important and something that I think the New Zealand Defence Force is very keen to see as well. 
Women have for many years participated not only in the armed forces—we have heard the numbers involved from many members and I will not repeat them—but also in overseas deployments and have been serving in the world’s hot spots. I would like to reassure Sue Kedgley who raised some very valid points about women and men serving overseas that this is already the way things are. Women are significantly contributing to defence and to the serving of their country and this law will just see that gap that anomaly that exists in the law rectified. 
I think very few would doubt that women have added significantly to the Defence Force since their involvement. In those very early days I think—and probably my colleague Ron Mark will back this up—it was pretty hard for women in the Army. They were very much a minority and considered as such. But as time has gone on that has changed significantly—in fact out of sight. I have to say that since my involvement with the Army which has been just over a year long now I have not suffered at all. I have not even really seen or experienced any adverse comment or effect as a woman in the armed forces. I think everybody would agree that this is very much as things should be. 
Women have been adding significantly to the Defence Force for many years and have been deployed. Even the two speakers before me who have apologetically confessed to being old-fashioned and not really approving of women’s involvement in the armed forces would not doubt that women have added significantly to this area. 
Women are just as men are these days judged on competence in the Defence Force. I have spent time with the Army but I have also visited the Navy and spent a little time with the Air Force. In each of these areas competence is absolutely the final benchmark by which everybody is measured no matter what gender he or she is. To join any of the services to go on courses to train and to deploy there are levels of competence that must be met. Nobody goes on an overseas deployment nobody is sent by our country to a troubled hot spot around the world—or indeed on peacekeeping missions—unless he or she meets that desired level of competence. 
So it is not just a matter of sending our womenfolk away with our menfolk to war to peacekeeping missions and on overseas deployments. It is a matter of each and every one of those servicemen and servicewomen meeting a particular level of fitness having the necessary skills and meeting the competence levels that are required for each and every one of our people who go overseas. 
There is also a very practical reason for supporting this bill and for addressing the human rights side of this particular legislation. It is an issue that I raised in the second reading. In days gone by there has been an issue of female combatants having served overseas and having been injured then being ineligible for war disablement pensions because of their gender. Because our law has defined combatants in the past as male—and until this legislation is passed that is still the case—it has meant sadly in a couple of cases that some women have been ineligible to receive war disablement pensions from our Government. This of course is something that is absolutely unpardonable. From this very practical position it is important that the human rights aspect of women serving is addressed and addressed urgently. I think nobody would find that a satisfactory state of affairs at all. 
As I said we do have a number of women serving overseas and we have many overseas at the moment. Ron Mark mentioned some women serving in Bamian. The territorials are also making up most of the complement of those serving in the Solomon Islands at the moment as part of Operation RAMSI. I know that one of the soldiers who has just returned from serving a 4-month deployment there is a woman. Our territorials are actually doing slightly better than our Regular Force colleagues when it comes to female presence. 
For the future particularly when the Territorial Force is called in to supplement our overseas deployments and overseas missions and to stand side by side with the Regular Force soldiers in the Army it will become more and more likely that there will be women involved in those deployments and in those missions. That alone is reason enough to put this legislation forward. 
I congratulate Lynne Pillay who was the initial instigator of the bill and Lianne Dalziel on picking it up as Government Minister responsible for the bill. As I say ACT will be supporting this bill. We are pleased that every party in this House is doing so. It is the right and proper thing to do and from a very personal perspective I am delighted to see it come before the House and pass unanimously as it will do very shortly. On behalf of the women serving in the armed forces in New Zealand I also thank those members who have stood and made very kind comments about the contribution that women have made to the Defence Force. In this day and age that is right and proper. Thank you.