Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I'd like to begin with a whakataukī: me aro koe ki te hā o Hine-ahu-one—pay heed to the dignity of women. It's such an honour to stand and take a call in this general debate today as we celebrate 125 years of suffrage. It's a particular honour for me because as someone who's worked for most of my life in the women's rights space I chose to move to New Zealand all those years ago largely because this was the first country in the world where women won the right to vote. As many others before me have said I stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before me Māori Pacific and Pākehā women who have fought. Women also like Elizabeth Yates the elected Mayor of Onehunga who was elected on 29 November 1893 the day after New Zealand women led the world by voting in a general election for the first time. She was the first woman to record her vote in the Onehunga electorate at that general election.I also acknowledge another mayor Dame Sukhi Turner former Mayor of Dunedin and for a very long time considered one of the most prominent New Zealand politicians of Indian origin. I acknowledge women from the diverse ethnic minority communities across Aotearoa who have fought over many decades to organise their own women's auxiliary wings and their own organisations and there were many women of Chinese and Indian origin who did this here in New Zealand and their histories are part of our history as well: women like Shantiben Parbhu and women like Rukshmani Kasanji women who fought to be able to express their ethnic and religious identities as New Zealanders and women who fought the isolation that many women from ethnic minority communities faced at the time. Without all these women I wouldn't be here today.I stand here as a migrant woman of Indian origin a woman who calls Aotearoa home a woman who the Prime Minister would call youth adjacent" and as I found out this morning the 143rd woman member of the New Zealand Parliament. Yet there's more to be done. We have a persistent gender pay gap and for Asian women we're paid less than our male counterparts and less compared with Pākehā men and women as well. Gender-based violence affects us all but there are still issues like forced marriage and dowry abuse that persist and disproportionately affect ethnic women. We are under-represented in virtually every level of leadership including in our own communities.I stand here and speak to and on behalf of women for whom ethnicity and gender collide to make it even harder for our voices to be heard. I spoke to a young woman New Zealander of South Asian descent recently and what she said has always stuck in my mind. She said "I grew up thinking of myself as every other New Zealander. But it was only when I applied for jobs or board positions that I had my otherness fed back to me; that suddenly I was different."We get asked if we're Indian Chinese Filipino "fill in the blank" or a New Zealander. Where are we really from? We also get those other questions about children not having children: if you have children it's a problem; if you don't it's a problem—we get those too. Our New Zealanders from different ethnic communities may speak different languages. We may speak English with different accents. We may have different skin colours celebrate different festivals be of different faiths come from different contexts and backgrounds and think differently about different things. That's what diversity is about and that is why we are strong as a nation.We are all New Zealanders and we have a right to play our part in shaping New Zealand's future. As I acknowledge Kate Sheppard the most famous suffragette and founding president of the National Council of Women (NCW) of New Zealand the umbrella organisation of women's organisations I also acknowledge that that same organisation has today for the first time at its helm a Kiwi-Indian woman and I acknowledge the leadership of Vanisa Dhiru as the national president of the NCW New Zealand. Kia ora. Thank you."