Kedgley Sue: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 As a feminist and as someone who has fought for women’s equality I find it slightly galling that we are celebrating here the idea that it is somehow a great step forward for women to have the right to kill and be killed in combat on the front line. However if there are women who want to go to the front line and into combat positions far be it from me or the Green Party to try to stop them from doing so. We will therefore be supporting the Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill. 
However I want to make one point which is that once we start to have women participating in combat zones and fighting on the front line we need to have greater protection or greater assurance of their safety and in particular of the safety of their unborn children. We learnt through the Agent Orange select committee inquiry how much future generations can be affected by a chemical like that. We sent our troops into Viet Nam and our Government—certainly—was oblivious to the fact that our troops were being exposed to Agent Orange and that the dioxin would continue to affect future generations resulting in deformities in the second and third generations. As someone said recemtly when people go to war it is not just the generation that actually goes to war that is affected but also future generations. 
Now we have a similar situation today with regard to depleted uranium. What would happen if we sent women into the combat zones where depleted uranium is being used? Depleted uranium is a radioactive product of uranium enrichment. It is used to coat ammunition such as tank shells and bunker-busting missiles. But the problem is that even a tiny particle of depleted uranium if ingested can cause a range of horrendous health effects including birth deformities. Tonnes of depleted uranium have already been dropped on Iraq on Afghanistan during the Gulf War and even in Yugoslavia. Some studies have been done on exposed populations. For example in Basra there has been a 242 percent increase in malignancies. In Afghanistan some children born in areas where depleted uranium has been used have been born with no eyes with no limbs with tumours protruding from their mouths and eyes and so forth. That is the reality of the effects of the weapons of war that we are continuing to use today. 
Obviously we should be concerned about men’s exposure to depleted uranium and not merely women’s. However we need to be particularly concerned about our women troops even though it is true that our male troops who were exposed to Agent Orange ended up with a range of health effects that have been passed down to future generations. We need to be especially careful about protecting our women troops because in Viet Nam one sees the truly horrendous effect on generations of children born to women who were exposed to Agent Orange. Hundreds of thousands of children in Viet Nam in village after village have the most incredible birth deformities because their mothers were exposed to Agent Orange. 
So if our women troops are on the front line with the freedom to kill and be killed—this new wondrous freedom for women which Ron Mark has said is not newly acquired—we do need to be very careful that we protect not just those women from depleted uranium and other horrendous weapons that are being used and have been used in the past but in particular that we protect future generations. Women may be pregnant and not realise it. Exposure to one particle of depleted uranium if ingested could cause a whole range of effects and birth deformities. It is entirely possible that women fighting on the front line could come back home and give birth to children with deformities as a result of that exposure. If we are to send our women to the front line I believe we have to have some guarantee that future generations of New Zealanders born to those women will not have birth deformities as a result of the wondrous new freedom to kill and be killed—or to have that opportunity—on the front line.