Logie Jan: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: General Debate[Sitting date: 18 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13473. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I will change gear a little bit and I apologise to those who love the fray for not slagging anyone off in this speech. I would like to speak on the theme that was just raised by the previous speaker the Minister of Education about suffrage. This week we will be celebrating 120 years of women being able to vote for members of this House and that is a significant event for this country.I really want to honour the work of our foremothers and remind us all of their struggle to be able to improve the dignity of women in this country. There are really well-known women who were at the front of that movement—Kate SheppardMeri Te TaiMangakahia—but there were thousands of women behind them fighting for 24 years to be able to get that vote. It was 24 years after the first article that raised the possibility of women in this country getting the vote before we actually got it. There were 31 petitions brought in front of this House before we managed to get the vote. There were seven bills that were voted down before the eighth bill was finally passed. Women were ridiculed women were attacked and vilified for this work but they kept going because they believed in a woman’s right to vote and they believed that women being able to participate in this system would make our society a better place.And yet it was not until 1919 that women were actually able to be representatives in this House though I do need to acknowledge that Māori women gained the ability to be represented in the Māori Parliament much before that in 1897 and there certainly were parallel processes happening. But the first woman who was elected to our Parliament was Elizabeth McCombs in 1933. In 1949IriakaRātana was the first Māori woman elected. Then we had a big gap before Georgina Beyer the first transsexual woman was elected in 1999 and Luamanuvao Winnie Laban was also elected as the first Pacific woman. Maryan Street who is still here was the first out lesbian in this Parliament. Pansy Wong in 2006 was the first Asian woman—Melissa Lee: 1996.JAN LOGIE: —sorry 1996. Thank you. Mojo Mathers was the first deaf woman to be a representative in this Parliament in only 2011.It has been a long history in terms of getting representation and having our diversity represented and we still have a long way to go. In the early 1940s about 50 years after women first got the right to vote there had been only two women elected. When we reflected again in 1984 when the Women’s Electoral Lobby was set up there were only eight out of 92 seats in this House filled by women. The progress did not happen automatically. The struggle has continued.Thousands of women in this country have kept up the fight for improving the dignity of women and women’s representation going through that whole time and women are still fighting. They are still fighting for safety. They are still fighting for equal pay just conditions and a fair share of labour and representation. I do have to say that this Government is failing to deliver on their full human rights. It is failing to protect and promote women’s human rights on those issues.In terms of equal pay the Government has been given the opportunity to revise the legislation—and the Equal Pay Amendment Bill in my name would have done that in a very minor way—but the Government refused to do it. In terms of pay equity we know that in the case of the carers bill which would have provided for some pay equity the Government went back and changed legislation to deny that ability. It has failed to take action which has resulted in the unions having to spend some of the union fees of the lowest-paid workers in this country on trying to get equal pay for women. This country can do better. Women deserve equal rights and we will continue that struggle.