Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Tēnā koe Madam Chair. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise to take a call specifically speaking to the financial review of the Ministry for Women and in my role as Minister for Women. I just want to talk very briefly about the priorities that the Government has for women why those are important and how we are in fact delivering on those. As Minister for Women it's my priority to work for a better New Zealand for all women and girls in New Zealand. The reason we have a Ministry for Women and have this role is because despite all the progress we've made over the past few decades still women are under-represented in Parliament. Women are under-represented seriously at local government levels. They're under-represented in governance and leadership of private companies and there is a large pay gap particularly for Māori and Pasifika women. So in my work in the past year the ministry has prioritised an action plan and work programme specifically about closing the pay gap in the public sector. We recently made progress announcing our action plan and right across the public sector organisations are focused on ensuring that they are making progress on gender parity in starting salaries that there are no barriers to women taking up roles in senior leadership. For the first time 50 percent of our chief executives in the public sector are women and we have a target for 50 percent right across the top three levels of management in the Public Service.The reason we do this work is because we want to live in a fair society and all New Zealanders would agree that women should be treated fairly that they should have the means to live a good life and since we still have not achieved gender parity across so many different aspects of society we have to sit down develop some action plans make sure that we're sorting out our own house and so that's what we're doing. But of course we want to set an example for private business and organisations so that they can achieve some of the same goals and I have to say that some private businesses already are doing even better than Government in the space.But as I said before closing the pay gap isn't just about gender. It's about recognising the ethnic dimension in that and that's why we must recognise that the pay gap for Māori and Pasifika women is significantly worse and that means that they are being underpaid—women are being underpaid in this country Māori and Pacific women are being underpaid for the work that they do. That is not fair. Another big part of our work programme—and I just have to give a shout-out in terms of eliminating gender-based violence and sexual violence—is the fantastic announcement that was made at the weekend by my colleague—and the Prime Minister—Under-Secretary Jan Logie who's led an impressive work programme right across 10 different Government departments. That will be transformational in terms of eliminating gender-based domestic and sexual violence and also providing that support and rehabilitation to offenders as well as to survivors and that is how we make a difference for women. That's how we eliminate violence and barriers to justice right across our beautiful country.So I'm very proud of the work that we're doing. This Government set a new target in terms of achieving appointments of women across public sector agencies. We increased it. Where the previous Government had decreased it to 45 percent we increased it to 50 percent because that's right and I'm happy to say that we're making very good progress on that goal. I also want to talk about just the importance of the unpaid work that is predominantly undertaken by women in our society. I think we still have some way to go to recognising and supporting that work but it is all part of how we transform our understanding of what our economy is really because what is the economy for? It's so that people can live good lives so that we have the resources we need we have a warm home we have an opportunity for meaningful work and we have enough resource to put food on the table to save some money for our retirement. The reality is that there is a huge gap when it comes to retirement for women and that is because so often women shoulder the burden of the unpaid work in society.But we have no society if we don't have women giving birth to children and raising them and so there are several steps that we need to take to recognise that. One is sharing the parenting responsibilities between parents—[Time expired]