Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
[Volume:629;Page:1812] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 Last week women gathered around the breakfast tables to celebrate International Women’s Day. I attended two of those breakfasts as Minister of Women’s Affairs. It was a wonderful day to set aside political differences to reflect on the achievements of women in New Zealand and to contemplate the improvements that are still to be made. I was proud to identify how well women have done here in New Zealand. In playing leading roles in politics in the head of State role and also in our largest corporation in the country women have done very well. But when we look down a layer—and this was the question I asked—where are the women who are coming through? Where are the women who will take up leadership roles in the future? 
I also asked whether the young women who are coming through to those roles know how recently some of the rights we take for granted today were legislated for many of them in my lifetime. Equal pay itself came in in the 1970s access to safe legal abortions was passed in 1977 discrimination based on gender was made unlawful in 1977 with the Human Rights Commission Act rape within marriage was not an offence until the 1980s and domestic violence was not taken seriously by a range of Parliaments for a number of years. The rights that women take for granted in this country today have been hard fought for and not easily won but they are just as at risk of being taken away from us unless we know what they are and how to stand up for them. 
I believe that the National Party has a shameful record in terms of women in Parliament and a shameful record in terms of women in senior positions both in Cabinet and in the shadow Cabinet. It has punished the last two women MPs for the crime of not agreeing to policies they were not consulted on despite being the spokespeople on those policies. The heyday for the National Party was when the Minister of Finance was Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley was the Minister of Social Welfare and Minister of Women’s Affairs. They were women who dominated the political landscape. I did not agree with their policies nor did I admire their policies. But I have always admired women who have been prepared to stand up for what they believe in to argue the issue to debate the policy and to not play personal politics with individuals. 
I did not agree with Ruth Richardson’s and Jenny Shipley’s policy prescription for the nation in 1990. We had the benefit cuts we had the Employment Contracts Act and we had the 1991 Budget which unleashed National’s competitive market model on health housing education and accident compensation—everything that underpins a decent society which the leader of the National Party had said he would bring to New Zealand in 1990. We had been promised that in the election campaign. It was a low point for women—that is the point that I am making—in terms of the impact of National’s policies on families especially in State housing areas. 
But in all that time of robust debate—and the debate was robust; I was there—I do not remember the two chief protagonists for the National Government Jenny Shipley or Ruth Richardson personally attacking anyone or exposing their families to the kinds of things that we have now seen in this House. Ruth Richardson said before the 1990 election that a National Government would never engage in disgraceful personal attacks but instead would attack the real causes of problems. Jenny Shipley is also on record as saying she did not support personal attacks. 
The National Party has now got itself into a situation where its leader does not assert his abhorrence for what has happened in this House—and what we have heard was abhorrent. Dr Brash’s predecessor—and I am sure his hopeful successor—now says that because Judith Collins did not say when talking about David Benson-Pope that his children’s father was a pervert it was OK to call David Benson-Pope a pervert. Well that was not OK. Everyone in this country knows that Judith Collins went too far in this House—everyone except the National Party. The National Party is sticking up for that appalling behaviour and I cannot understand why the leadership of the National Party is adopting that position. I say “the leadership” because I know that there are MPs on the Opposition side of the House who agree with me that Judith Collins went too far and who are appalled at what she did in this House. They are embarrassed that a woman could sink to such depths and that the leadership of the party is prepared to condone it. 
What crocodile tears we have had from the Opposition side of the House! I have been on the receiving end from members on that side too.