Bennett PaulaHon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): Mr Speaker thank you for giving me the call and can I please thank the Minister for Women Julie-Anne Genter for that and for those nice memories actually of some of those women who I've had the great fortune to serve with and some of those that we do remember acknowledge and respect for all that has gone before us.I couldn't help having a little smile as you were speaking. Someone said to me yesterday that her daughter is studying New Zealand history in school and then she was kind of horrified to hear that it was in the 1980s. Ha ha! So I'm kind of pleased that this is a bit further back and we're really looking genuinely at our history again to Elizabeth McCombs in 1933—of course she won in a by-election when her husband died—and then in 1942 with Mary Grigg who was our first National Party woman MP. But to the House she too became selected in a by-election when her husband unfortunately died. I did wonder if a few women were looking at their husbands slightly differently at that time and thinking it might be a pathway.Hey I am going to indulge slightly. I want to acknowledge National's Dame Hilda Ross. She is a woman that we hold in high regard. She was someone who gave so much service. Of course her seat was in Hamilton. She'd served on a local body. She'd served on the hospital board I think it was at that time in about 1941. She had done such a lot as far as her service—her service started actually in the influenza outbreak in 1918 I think it was. What she did during that time of genuinely in the 1931 earthquakes in Napier—she was someone that actually rushed to that place and was handing out parcels. It was all about service to women to children to families and to the disadvantaged. She then saw a path to actually serve back which was via Parliament and to get herself selected. She's a woman that we hold in particularly high regard to the point where we have the Dame Hilda Ross trust. I did think it's an opportunity for us to think about what we do in giving back. One thing that we often say is that the words are all good but unless we are genuinely making it easier for other women in particular who want to get into Parliament then it's all nice sentiment but we're not actually getting on with it. So we thought we'd get good and practical as National women. And I think we started it Louise Upston about five years ago from memory and we decided we really genuinely would get stuck in. So what we did was we kind of took over the Dame Hilda Ross trust through the National Party. We started raising funds and having fundraisers and a variety of different ways that we did that. Now what we realised is that for women today it's actually the path into Parliament.I often say to people that in Parliament itself I believe that we're treated pretty evenly. We get the same pay we get the same conditions and we get the same respect and disrespect at times for the way that we act. We're probably as badly behaved. You can get a bit caught in the gendered language. But quite frankly I think some men in this place are treated pretty appallingly for how they look or speak or dress or do on all sides of the House by the way. So I'm not sure that is gendered any more. But I do think the path here is still a bit more difficult for women so we wanted to recognise that. In our party now when a woman is putting their hand up to be a candidate we actually genuinely mentor them. We help them go through speechwriting. We put money into training for them for the fundraising that we've done. We recently have had a conference that we called WIN—Women Influencing National—and we invited them here and we had a range of speakers. Then we talked about how they can influence our policy that we would be taking in next year. Also as I say with those candidates once they get pre-selected we recognise that it's a really difficult time. You're needing babysitters all of a sudden if you're not used to being out at night trying to meet delegates. You're having to get a brochure printed. You may need a new outfit so that you feel good when you're standing in front of a crowd asking them to vote for you. So we give them a donation of $500 and say Spend it however you like." and when they get here we then now try to wrap around how we can do things differently. I do look at some of my new colleagues because when they came in we said "Right well we did a bit for you. What can we do next?" I reckon that's the lesson for us from those women that have been before: what is our role as women parliamentarians to do practical things for the next girls and women that might want to step up and be counted?"