Collins Judith: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Collins Judith: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the National Party to support this bill. It has been a long time coming. Tonight I will talk about a few things one of them being women in combat. I am not sure that we have any women in combat at the moment—other than possibly in this House. I am not sure whether we have many women in the combat trades even though as I was assured by the previous speaker discrimination against women joining those trades has been removed. But I certainly remember a time when I heard the Government making a lot of noise about how we had our first woman pilot in the Air Force and how she would be one of our strike force people. And what happened? We lost the strike force. So I think at the end of the day this all becomes a bit of a moot point frankly. 
I have met our SAS troops and not one of them was a woman although they assured me that they were not discriminating against women. I said to them that I just wanted them to have really good troops and I am really glad those guys are there. If they happen to have some women who can do the job good on them but I asked them not to change standards based on race gender religious belief or anything else. They should just have the right people to do the job. 
Of course it is good to hear yet again that this is the Year of the Veteran. It really does open up the opportunity for us to talk about a woman who was one of the very few New Zealand women who have been combat soldiers. She was and is a war hero—Nancy Wake. Nancy Wake is a 94-year-old New Zealand woman who is the most honoured of the Allied servicewomen of World War II. She has been honoured by France the UK the United States and just about everywhere else—except New Zealand. Even the Australians honoured her and it took them a long time to do it because they said she was a New Zealander. What did our Government say? It said that she was an Australian. Well she is not; she is a New Zealander. Yes she lives in London. Yes she carries a New Zealand passport. Yes she is Maori. And no she has not been honoured by her own country. 
I find it really just a little too much to take to hear about this the Year of the Veteran and women in combat roles because we have one and we do not wish to honour her. The Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association has given Nancy Wake the Gold Badge. She is the first woman it has ever given that honour to. The RSA gave it to Nancy Wake this year and said that it was so it could try to do something about the fact that for some reason this country will not honour her. I know she left as a child. I understand all of that and none of it makes a scrap of difference. She never lived in the United States; she was never a US citizen. She never became a British citizen and she was not an Australian citizen yet we cannot honour our own. 
So we hear about women in combat. Where? Where will they be in combat? I see that Mr Mark is laughing and giggling and he would tell me that he knows exactly what I am talking about does he not? Well it is all pie in the sky because unfortunately it takes a little more than to say that we have equal pay and paid parental leave in the Army the Air Force and the Navy. That is all just great but at the end of the day we have to have a credible defence force. We have to have a commitment to that and to understand that we do not live in a benign strategic environment—and we never did. That was just pie-in-the-sky nonsense. That was all about deciding that we could not have a strike force. That was all about turning our soldiers our Navy personnel and our Air Force into adjuncts of other countries and that is not good enough. 
We heard today about how women do those great jobs in the services—and they do and they always have—it is just that the jobs have changed. I absolutely understand there are some people still in the services and some who have left who do not like the idea of women being in combat. Well frankly women die just the same as men. They have blood; if someone shoots them some bad things happen. That is what happens. Women die in war now whether or not they are part of a combat force. I understand that there are men who ask—and I have heard this from men and women—but what if our women soldiers were captured by nasty horrible terrorist types who raped and murdered them? I say to those people that I am sorry but they do that to men. That is the way it is. 
Ron Mark 
: They just don’t care. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Well they should care I say to Mr Mark. And we do—of course we do. The fact is that that is what happens but we must not turn our armed forces into some sort of organisation that says we will have so many women so many men so many of that and that sort of nonsense. Those people are in a serious business. They are not there to deal with quotas; they are there to deal with very serious situations—just as our New Zealand Police are. 
I do not believe for a moment that women who go into the armed forces go in without understanding that their lives may well be at risk because that is the nature of the job. They do not go in there because they are wussies. They go in there because they want to do a job and they want to serve their country. They also want to believe that their country appreciates them doing it. They want to believe that they will be looked after if they are veterans or if they are hurt and that their country will appreciate them and will not ridicule them or condemn them for doing the job their country asked them to do. That is what they will expect so we must honour that. 
In terms of some of the other jobs that women do in the services obviously many of them previously were nurses or they worked as clerks and in all sorts of roles. When those services were amalgamated and those women were able to move across into the—I will use that term—mainstream of the services some women probably felt that it was not what they had ever signed up to do. But I am sure that today’s new women in the services and many of those who have been there for quite some time feel very proud to be fully fledged members of our armed services. 
The first and foremost job of any Government is to protect its people and the first and foremost job of this Parliament is to make sure the Government takes adequate steps in order to do that. I do not think this Parliament necessarily does that job very well and I do not necessarily believe that this Government has a real commitment to our defence forces other than to be able to say: “Look at us we are going to call this the Year of the Veteran. Look at us we are going to bring this legislation in.” 
I congratulate Lynne Pillay as a back-bench member of the Government on bringing this Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill forward and I say good on her. But I also say to her that we have had 7 years of this Government and not one Minister has put his or her name to this bill. The Government has left it to a back-bench MP to do it. So where is the commitment? I think it is because Government members are ashamed of their commitment to our armed forces. They are ashamed to stand up here and say what happened to our one woman pilot in the Air Force. Well I can tell this House that she became the aide-de-camp to the Governor-General. That is what became of her—a fighting woman had to run around after the Governor-General holding open the door. That is what we did to our one fighting Air Force woman. Mr Mark laughs about it but I understand that he shares exactly my frustration. I mean how are we as women supposed to go out there and say that girls can do anything—and they do; we can hold open the doors. That is unfortunately what we do see when we do not have a real commitment to our defence forces and to our veterans. 
I will make a final plea to this Government and this Parliament to do the right thing by Nancy Wake. If we do not do the right thing and honour this woman we will never have the chance to do it again while she is alive. I do not want to be here saying: “Is it not great that we are honouring her?” when it is too late. It will be too late then she wants it now and the Government should do it. I say to the Government not to be so pigheaded in this Parliament as to say that it will not do it because I asked it to and because people like Ron Mark and Tariana Turia asked it to—the Government should just do it.