Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
Dalziel Lianne: General Debate 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 I do think that that is a bit rich coming from the guy who led National to its worst ever loss in recorded history— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: What was it—21 percent? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It was 21 percent and falling under him. 
The reason I have my white camellia here this afternoon is that 114 years ago this Parliament granted New Zealand women the right to vote in general elections. This made New Zealand a world leader in terms of equal rights and it is a very proud day indeed that we get to stand in this Parliament it falling on the day of a general debate where we can talk about the advance of women in New Zealand over the last 114 years. Because of course that day marks the beginning of a time when gradually doors were opened and when gradually those glass ceilings were broken by women claiming equal rights with men. It is part of our identity as a nation that we commit to equality of opportunity for all our citizens. 
In a parliamentary sense when I became an MP in 1990 around a quarter of the MPs at that time were women. Today about one-third are women. So we have significant success in that area as well. Women have succeeded in achieving the highest positions and for a magic moment in time— 
Jill Pettis 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I apologise profusely for interrupting my colleague but David Bennett over there on the National benches just said: “Shut up you!” and I take objection. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley) 
: Well I think this is part of a robust debate. There are a lot of interjections across the House. Just continue thank you. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: For a magic moment in history the top four constitutional positions were held by women; now that number is three. New Zealand signed up to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1986 and as a nation we are of course committed to equality between men and women in the home in the workplace and in the community. In every reporting period since that first report in 1986 we have made advances except for one period in that time. That was in the 1990s. That represented a time when women suffered the most really in terms of a premeditated assault on their advance towards employment equity that was not signalled before the election in advance of the Government that heralded in those changes. The National Opposition at the time made no secret of the fact that it was going to change the industrial relations law. But no one could have predicted the wholesale demolition of a structure that had its origins in the same era as women’s suffrage. 
 But to introduce the Employment Contracts Act National first had to repeal the Employment Equity Act because there was soon to be no mechanism for delivering pay equity. The first case due to be heard under the employment equity legislation was that of public hospital nurses and police. What happened? Public hospital nurses ended up on 23 separate employment contracts scattered from one end of the country to the other with all the Crown health enterprises. Police whose pay the nurses were going to have their pay compared with of course stayed on a national award. Why were police still on a national award? Because they are not allowed to take industrial action. Were people allowed to take industrial action to have a multi-employer collective agreement? No they were not. So there was one rule for a male-dominated occupation and another rule for women-dominated occupations. National did not want to know the answer to the question about the pay differential between police and nurses because the Employment Contracts Act was going to abolish national awards. 
When we couple that with a virtual freeze on the statutory minimum wage over the 1990s it meant that our lowest-paid workers—overwhelmingly women—suffered as well. So nurses who were set back over 15 years in terms of their capacity are now at long last on track to pay equity. It has taken this Government’s election in 1999 the passage of the Employment Relations Act in 2000 the strengthening of the arrangements around multi-employer collective agreements—which were all opposed by National every single one of them—and a massive funding injection into the district health boards to deliver a pay jolt that has enabled nurses to be back on track for the employment equity journey they started before the election of a National Government in 1990. 
What is the common point in both of those times? It is a Labour Government—Helen Clark as the Minister of Labour in 1990 and Helen Clark as Prime Minister of New Zealand since 1999. That is what the women of New Zealand can rely on if they have a Labour Government. What they could rely on if they were ever to have a National Government would be going backwards to where the pay gap between men and women would again widen as it did in the 1990s.