Beaumont Carol: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Beaumont Carol: Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18847] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 It is a great pleasure to rise and speak to the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill and to acknowledge my colleague Grant Robertson who I believe has taken this matter very seriously in bringing forward this bill. I acknowledge his work on it and his representation of this organisation which is based in the electorate that he so ably represents Wellington Central. 
As others have said the purpose of this bill—I thought I would remind people—is to amend the Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1997 to “(a) incorporate humanities into the object and functions of the Royal Society of New Zealand: (b) rename the Academy Council: (c) amend the standard for the election of Companions of the Society: (d) amend the election process for Councillors of the Society.” I will talk about one of those purposes in this call although later on I will come back to others. 
Incorporating the humanities into the object and functions of the society is the core part of this bill and I think it is very very important that it is done. It makes a great deal of sense. Others have talked about their areas of studies. I did a degree in social sciences. Arguably it would already fall under the authority of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Social sciences would be seen as science for the purpose of currently belonging to the Royal Society. 
However when we look at a subject or a series of subjects we can see that a number of them are made up of different components. Take the subject of geography which is the subject I majored in. Human geography is certainly a social science. Physical geography is clearly a science. And there is something in between all of that when we look at people’s relationship with the land and how they organise and place themselves on the land which is what the study of geography is really about. That can be conveyed through poems music art and a whole range of mechanisms that one might call the humanities. So in fact many subjects are effectively interdisciplinary in nature. It seems to me that one of the advantages of this change is to recognise that many many subjects touch across a whole range of areas and that makes that traditional division no longer useful. Take environmental studies; again we can see it has physical social and humanities elements in it. 
I want to give a particular example because it is one that I have recently been looking at. It is the issue of violence against women. That issue can be studied at a university for example as part of women’s studies sociology or history which is one of the humanities. The reality is that it is interdisciplinary. The fact of the matter is that creating this new object and function of the Royal Society is entirely appropriate. 
I want to illustrate that a little bit more. At a conference I was at over the weekend we were talking about the issue of violence against women. As many in this Chamber know it is a very serious troubling and pervasive problem. We can look at the problem from the point of view of the history of it. What is it that society has experienced over generations in relation to violence against women and where has it come from? What has been the underlying reason for the sexual and other forms of physical violence that women face? What has created that? Is it an issue of power perhaps? Is it because of the view that men own women and can treat them in any way that they want? Certainly if we look at the relationship between men and women in a historical context we might come to that conclusion. 
At the conference I was at in Australia over the weekend we were shown a T-shirt. It was illustrative of what one might loosely call art—one of the humanities that under this provision is now being incorporated into the objects of the Royal Society. This T-shirt had a very ugly drawing of a woman who was bound and bleeding and the words that went with that were “Relax it’s just sex”. That is a deeply troubling image. I think that image is quite powerful; the words are powerful and the image is powerful. My point is that up to that point in the conversation at the conference we had been talking about numbers about the number of women who have violence inflicted upon them. We had been talking about politics and what the political response was. 
While I am talking about that I note that $86 million of new money has gone into the issue of violence against women and girls in Australia—A$86 million of new money—and there is a 12-year plan to tackle the issue. Sitting there I could only compare that with what is going on in New Zealand where we are cutting funding in the area of violence against women where refuges have had their funding cut by $700000 and where Te Rito and child advocates have had their funding cut. 
I come back to my point which is that we were having a political discussion on the issue of violence against women and children. At that point the T-shirt was shown. 
Jo Goodhew 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I am really struggling to work out how this fits with the purpose of this bill and I ask for your assistance in that matter. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am listening to it. It is a wide-ranging debate and it has been for the whole of the debate. I am quite happy to let the member go on but I caution her to try to keep it pretty close to the bill. 
CAROL BEAUMONT 
: The point I am trying to make and I will spell it out for the member opposite so that it is clear is that clause 4 states that the purpose of the bill is to include and incorporate the humanities in the objects and functions of the society. The point I was really making was that social sciences are already included in the definition of the society and in its coverage. The physical sciences are already included. What is being added in is what one might call the humanities. I was trying to point out—just so the member opposite understands—that many areas of study are now interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary and elements of all three of those things may come into play. 
The example I was giving and it was foremost in my mind because it was so powerful was the issue of domestic violence and the study of domestic violence. A number of different subject areas including those in the humanities try to explain what the problem is about and the consequences of it. The T-shirt I referred to was a graphic representation that somebody had made. They had not done it for shock value. It was on sale as a serious but very troubling statement of attitudes about violence towards women. My point was that the politics is probably covered as a social science but the imagery and the words of that T-shirt which say a great deal about the issue of violence against women and girls perhaps are not. The value of this change to the Royal Society of New Zealand Act is that it will incorporate the humanities and those distinctions will not be relevant any more. Subject areas like women’s studies environmental studies and many others that are interdisciplinary will certainly not have any strange or arbitrary distinctions made in particular elements. I think that is very important because how we understand things as people how we learn and how we convey knowledge is not in just one manner. We can learn a great deal about particular topics by for example looking at a cartoon. A visual representation of an issue can often convey a great deal more than a chapter in a book. 
So I support this bill and I acknowledge again the work of my colleague Grant Robertson in bringing this bill to the House. I think it is important that we debate these types of distinctions and I am really looking forward to outlining a little further the definition of “humanities” which is referred to in clause 4 which outlines the purpose of the bill. It states it is to “(a) incorporate humanities into the object and functions of the Royal Society of New Zealand:”. I think there will indeed be a lively debate on the definition of “humanities” which is included in clause 5. There has been some interesting discussion as I understand it in the Education and Science Committee about that definition and whether it is sufficient to outline what we are talking about in the purpose of this bill. With that I look forward to resuming this debate later.