Moroney Sue: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: General Debate[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1083. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):I think that was a very good decision that you have just made then—to call me. In the first 100 days of this Government many of the Ministers are looking at their programmes of what they will do what their priorities are for their first 100 days. Can I say that 51 percent of the population of New Zealand must be deeply deeply disappointed in the Minister for Women who has chosen as the priority in her first 100 days to remove eight letters and one apostrophe from the name of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs? That has been her first action: she is going to change it from being called the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to—wait for it—the Ministry for Women. That is going to make a big difference to all the women in New Zealand! [Interruption] Mrs King asks how much that is going to cost. We simply do not know. There will be the cost of a new logo there will be the cost of new signage there will be the cost of all the new stationery there will be the cost of new business cards—and this apparently is the thing that women in New Zealand are crying out for in the first 100 days!Well this just goes to show how out of touch the Government has quite quickly become in its third term. Removing eight letters from the name of the ministry—and important an apostrophe—is not going to make a blind bit of difference to the women who are facing increasing violence against them in society. We know that the numbers are rising incredibly fast in that area. We see in the news reports pretty much every day this week a heinous crime of violence against women being committed—pretty much every day in the last week in this country. And what is the Minister for Women doing? She is changing the name of the ministry.And what do we also hear about? We hear about the pay gap the stubborn pay gap in this country. We find the pay gap where women who have worked hard to gain qualifications—and last year 61 percent of the people who graduated from universities were women—find that when they take their first job immediately after graduation they are not being paid the same as men. They are being paid less than men doing exactly the same job with the same qualifications. So what is the Minister for Women doing about that? She is changing the name of the ministry. And what about the women who are struggling to feed and clothe their children? The growing child poverty in this country and the role that women face in that many of them on these new zero-hour contracts that the Government seems OK with and quite happy to support—what is the Minister for Women doing about that? She is changing the name of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and that is totally irrelevant to the sorts of issues that women face today.But she has come up with another great idea in her first 100 days and it is this. All of these problems that women face today in New Zealand can be fixed if only they would enter a beauty pageant—yes a beauty pageant. It sounds bizarre but it is true. This in the first 100 days is what the Minister for Women has prescribed as being the big “fix-it” for women in New Zealand. Why is the Minister for Women Louise Upston starting to fight and relitigate the debates of yesterday? Why is she doing that? We have had the debate about beauty pageants. It has been and gone. And by the way who opens the door is not a political statement; it is a way of getting from one side of the door to the other. That is all it is. Who opens the door is not important. Do not relitigate the issues and the debates of yesterday.We had the Minister at the height of the Roger Sutton sexual harassment fiasco going to Christchurch. Did she go and say anything about the Roger Sutton situation? No she went and put on a bit of high-vis gear and went and had her photo taken launching some new high-vis gear for women. She was in Christchurch where the debacle was taking place but she said nothing. It was up to Labour leader Andrew Little to actually come out and say that it was a fiasco that the press release was utterly and completely wrong. Good on Andrew Little because he had the courage to call it when the Minister for Women did not. The Minister for Women took 10 days—10 days—to watch and see where public opinion would go first before she dared to say anything against what Roger Sutton had done. So that is the sort of Minister for Women that we have at the moment. The Minister will not use the “f” word—she will not use the feminist word—but even Lorde calls herself a feminist. I am a feminist because that is the idea—the radical notion—that women are people and my husband is a feminist too.