Russell Deborah; Salesa JennyEMPLOYMENT RELATIONS (EXTENDED TIME FOR PERSONAL GRIEVANCE FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): I move That the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.Today is a pretty happy day for women in Parliament. Today we are celebrating having achieved 50 percent women in this House of Representatives. It has been a long time coming—women in New Zealand first fought for and gained the vote way back in 1893. We were one of the very first self-governing entities in the world to ensure that women had the vote. But it took until October 1919 before women were allowed to stand for Parliament. So it took quite a bit longer before we even had the right to be on the floor of this House. Then from there on the first woman MP was only elected in 1933: Elizabeth McCombs for Labour. From then on there was only a handful of women in the House. In fact it took until 1981 before more than 10 percent of the House was female. It waivered and waned a bit over the years. When MMP came in we got more women in the House. By 1996 the House was 35 percent women. We had our first woman Prime Minister in 1997 the second in 1999 and the third in 2017. But in terms of getting to 50 percent women in the House it has only happened in the last few weeks. At the 2020 election 58 women were elected; not quite there we need 60 women to have half of the House. But with the way that MMP operates in that people come and go during a term of a Government we have finally reached the stage where there are 60 women in this House—50 percent of this House is female. I salute in particular my own party and the Green Party for the heavy lifting they've done on this. It has taken a long time for this big achievement step by step by step and there is still so much more to do; in fact that is the case with all sorts of issues that concern women. Today this bill the Employment Relations (Extended Time for Personal Grievance for Sexual Harassment) Amendment Bill takes another one of those small steps for women. It is a bill which makes a small improvement but it has large implications.The basic proposition of this bill—and it has come back from the Education and Workforce Committee with this basic proposition untouched—is of extending the time during which a person may take a personal grievance for reasons of sexual harassment. As the law stands at the moment if a person has experienced sexual harassment and because of that they wish to take a personal grievance they can raise that matter within 90 days of the last instance occurring of sexual harassment. That's not very long. It's not very long for a number of reasons that I will set out in a moment. But if this bill progresses through Parliament as we hope it will then that time will be extended out to a whole year. So that is the proposition of this bill and as I said it has come back from the select committee unchanged.The select committee has done a wonderful job of clarifying some of the matters of ensuring that the bill specifically addresses some issues that had not occurred to me as I drafted the bill. But the select committee has examined them and has improved the bill in this regard. I'm sure that the members of that committee will talk to those improvements as they take their turn to speak on this bill.But let me tell you why I regard this as having large implications even though it is such a small matter. The large implications are because extending the time for raising a personal grievance from 90 days to a year recognises the special nature of sexual harassment. It is insidious. It is shaming. It occurs because of a power differential. It is traumatising. All too often it is not all that obvious; a person cannot quite understand what has happened to them. All too often sexual harassment is just brushed off—Can't you take a joke?" "It's just a word." "Oh it's just a small pat on the back." "Oh come on you really want it." Those sorts of attitudes are used to brush off sexual harassment and treat it as being of no moment. That means that the person who experiences it sometimes goes "What's happened to me? Was that real? Did it actually matter? Maybe I'm just making it up." When that happens and if the sexual harassment is particularly bad or pronounced it can be traumatising. The reason it can be traumatising is because the person who experiences it is disregarded is treated as an object and is treated as being of no worth—or if they have worth it is only their sexual value that matters. That is why it can be important to have the longer time available.The other thing about sexual harassment: it can be an employer—and that's a common enough case—a boss a manager a fellow employee also a customer perhaps someone who's just bigger and stronger perhaps a fellow employee who is just making those truly nasty jokes. It can come from any direction.Now the important matter here is that it is sexual harassment that occurs in a workplace. Employers have an obligation to provide a safe workspace for their employees. So there is no personal grievance for sexual harassment that occurs outside of a workplace but if it occurs in the context of a workplace then a person can take a sexual harassment claim. So that is the basic nature of this bill.You might be saying however "Is this a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Do we really need that time?" I contend that we do because of the traumatising nature of sexual harassment but I also want to point out that it is not a rare problem; it is not unusual. If perhaps this only occurred very rarely then perhaps we might not worry so much. Though I suppose I would still argue that we need to give people the proper amount of time.But there was a 2018 law society survey done by Colmar Brunton and what they found was that 31 percent of women and 5 percent of men working in legal environments suffered from sexual harassment. That's the interesting thing about sexual harassment. I began talking about this bill as a step for women and that sexual harassment is a problem for women but it is a problem for men too. Men do experience sexual harassment. But like all of us men may end up—even if they don't experience it themselves—in a workplace where it is tolerated or accepted or part of the general atmosphere. For many many men that is a deeply uncomfortable place to be. So it's not just that men can also be victims of sexual harassment; like all of us they may have to tolerate a workplace where it occurs. So if we can fix this problem and take some steps towards fixing this problem then we take steps for men too because after all the patriarchy does harm men too. That is why this is a good bill.In concluding my time I want to thank a few people who have been so important in this bill. I want to thank lawyer Zoë Lawton who ran a MeToo blog and collected stories in particular from the legal profession about where sexual harassment occurred. Zoë advocated for a change in the law. It was Zoë who proposed this change and discussed the bill with me. So Zoë Lawton thank you for your work in bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I am very proud to have taken this work forward on your behalf.I would like to thank the Education and Workforce Committee—ably indeed brilliantly led by Marja Lubeck—who worked through some of the issues in the bill and clarified it. So it is now a better bill than when it first appeared in front of them. I'd like to thank the officials who assisted with that.I would like to thank my intern from the Victoria University programme Rowan Selwood-Eyles who spent part of her internship working on this project with me which I know she found satisfying and enjoyable. Rowan thank you for your help.Most importantly I would like to thank the submitters who submitted on this bill. I read all the submissions. There were 43 of them—39 in favour three against and one irrelevant. There was overwhelming support for this bill. Many of the submissions—26 of them—wanted the bill to go further. I trust that the members of the committee will address some of those in their speeches today.So thank you to the submitters. Thank you to those who brought this issue to me. This is another small step for you.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to."