Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I want to dedicate this speech in reply to the Prime Minister to all those wonderful women with hardly a minute to spare. Although there may certainly be some men in that boat I do say women" advisedly.This is for all those women who are trying to care for their children as best they can and also those trying to care for their parents as well—all those women who are still doing most of the housework who are probably the only ones to notice that there is only one roll of toilet paper left. This is for all those women who still manage to squeeze in time to be down at the marae in their community and at the school gate. This is for those heroines who are doing all of this as well as working either full time or part time or trying not to be sanctioned by Work and Income which according to many people I have spoken to is almost a full-time job. This is for them.Political statements all too often to me seem to be about statistics and issues and political propaganda and not people. I want those women and the men who are doing the same jobs to know that we value them in this House. We want to make their lives a bit easier.The latest Statistics New Zealand report shows that although retirement is the most common reason men leave a job parental family responsibilities is the most common reason for women. Did you know that although 63 percent of men's work is paid around 65 percent of women's work is unpaid? And that the average woman gets only 84c for every dollar men earn. Māori women earn just 73 cents for early dollar Pākehā men earn and Pasifika women just 67c. This imbalance is unfair and it creates a social incentive for women to continue carrying more of the unpaid work. We need to start valuing women's work—paid and unpaid. Caring for and supporting others holds us all together as families as friends as communities and even as businesses. That needs to be acknowledged and that burden needs to be shared.I am thinking in this speech particularly of a caregiver I met last year who was a sole parent working full time on just over the minimum wage after years of work—she was holding people's lives in her hands every day. She was holding people's lives and dignity in her hands every day. She was bringing up her son as a sole parent and was bringing him to work with her because she could not afford to turn down extra shifts and she could not afford the after-school care. That is just wrong. It is not valuing her important work and it is also robbing families of their rightful income and support.This is something the Government can fix. The imbalance between men's and women's pay is mostly a result of underpaying women and it is mostly the Government that is doing this paying. The Green Party is absolutely committed to equal pay and in Government it will make sure the fight for equal pay is taken up proactively by Government and is not left to all those hard-working women on top of everything else to have to prove their case. The Green Party will make this a priority and will make sure that there is the money there to pay them fairly.Last week I heard the Prime Minister talk a lot but I did not hear much about making life easier for these amazing women and their communities and the people they are caring for. I do not understand why the Prime Minister did not talk about equal pay when there is supposedly so much work going on and it is going to be a significant part of the Budget. Women are working hard for their money and it is past time we paid them right."