Dalziel Lianne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Dalziel Lianne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:629;Page:1105] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 I have not quite worked out whether Pansy Wong is on the side that supports John Key’s takeover or Bill English’s takeover or whether she is staying with the lame-duck leader of the National Party. I found it ironic that she talked about not being able to find a restaurant open on Waitangi Day. I had a meal in Christchurch on Waitangi Day—a lunch—after I had opened an international conference in Christchurch. It was the Sixth International Cool Climate Symposium for Viticulture and Oenology. Viticulture of course is something that New Zealand is very very good at. We are able to attract international conferences of that standard to New Zealand because the Government is prepared to get in behind industry and the regions and make a real difference in this country. 
I am proud to be the Minister for Small Business in this country when I know that this Government set up a Small Business Advisory Group which the member Pansy Wong referred to. It put out a report with 19 recommendations in it and the Government accepted 18 of the 19 outright. The only one we had a difficulty with related to the way the issue was to be resolved—it was a proposal that we did not think was the right direction to go in. 
The National Party wants employers to be able to sack workers whenever they want to. The point that Pansy Wong did not make in her speech is that the reason people cannot afford to pay time and a half for workers is that they would rather pay them at the minimum wage to work on a statutory holiday. All the employers I have spoken to have found a different way of addressing time and a half for their workers on statutory holidays. A number of them have said to me that they did not have to pay penal rates under the Employment Contracts Act and that they did not have to pay any money back to customers during that period. They put on a small surcharge on statutory holidays and that covers time and a half for the workers. What is wrong with paying workers time and a half when everyone else gets a day off? That member Pansy Wong had a day off on Waitangi Day. She did not do any work. I was opening an international conference and proudly showing off the wonderful things that are going on in this country. That member should think very carefully about what she is saying. 
I am very pleased that I as the Minister for Small Business have my eye on a very direct programme of work. It is about improving business and management capability making transactions between small to medium sized enterprises and Government agencies easier enhancing communication between small to medium sized enterprises and the Government providing more enterprise education for school students and young entrepreneurs and maintaining a quality regulatory environment that eliminates unnecessary compliance costs and minimises necessary compliance costs. 
The thing I find absolutely ironic about Mrs Pansy Wong is that she thinks the reason that there is difficulty finding skilled workers today is to do with what has happened in the last 6 years when in fact it was the competitive market model that destroyed our tertiary education system. National scrapped the apprenticeships scheme in 1991. Mr Bill Birch was responsible for that. National members ask themselves why we do not have skilled workers in this country today. Well I can lay the blame for that at the feet of Pansy Wong’s very very irresponsible National Government. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: No please do not stop them Mr Assistant Speaker. They are just showing themselves to be the pathetic individuals that they are. 
My other point is that I found some irony in Don Brash’s talking about what was on the agenda for his caucus retreat last week. We have heard from the people who leaked all over the place about what really went on. I raise this issue as the Minister of Women’s Affairs. Don Brash was reported in a newspaper as having this to say: “I am leading the first session and that will be about where we are now and where we need to go in order to form the next Government. That will be a major session.” Well that will be a major session all right. National members would still be talking about it if they tried to tackle that one. “Dr Brash said that he was interested in looking at why more women voted for Labour than National. He did not think it was any reflection on him as the situation had not been better when Jenny Shipley was leader.” Well that is true and I will come to that in a minute. “It is not just the gender issue of the leader—it goes back quite a while and we have to ask ourselves ‘Why is that?’ Why did we comfortably win the vote among men but equally clearly lose the vote among women? Is it about policy about style about culture—what is it that women find less attractive about National?” 
Well I am afraid that Don Brash will never work that one out. If he has not worked it out already he will never work it out. It just proves he lives in a world of theory. He lives in an ivory tower. He has no understanding of what it is like for people on the ground. If there had been a change of Government last year then there would have been a temporary appointment to the position of Minister of Women’s Affairs. I think that the Minister of Women’s Affairs would have been Murray McCully. That is my first guess. My second guess is that it might actually have been the political correctness eradicator Dr Wayne Mapp. They would have been tasked with the role of getting rid of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs—and National members ask themselves why women have no interest in voting for the National Party. 
That was the overt part of the campaign. National was upfront about that; it wanted to get rid of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. But there were covert aspects to its campaign as well and I want the next National speaker to tell the House what the quid pro quo was that National offered for support from the Exclusive Brethren and the other right-wing conservative individuals and organisations that funded the billboard campaign. Who did fund that billboard campaign? The National Party spent over $2 million outside of the campaign spend and that was before it spent its own $2 million—$1 million on one side of the campaign and another $1 million coming from the Exclusive Brethren. 
What was the price that women would have paid for that? Would we all have had to be wearing scarves today? When I talk to younger women today I do not think they realise how much was at stake at the last election. I believe we would have had to go back in history to find what would be coming forward. It is interesting because in 1976 I remember looking at an industrial award that contained separate pay rates for men and women for doing exactly the same work. That is how the awards used to be printed until the Equal Pay Act of 1972 took effect in 1976. But the whole point I am making is that if National had become the Government again then we would have seen equal pay go out the window yet again for women as it did under the Employment Contracts Act. We are only starting to make ground again under the Employment Relations Act; it would have been a huge backward step if that had been the case. 
The bottom line is that Don Brash is very very frightened about any challenge to the natural order of things—any challenge to the mainstream. He is about disempowering those who expect to exert power. He is affronted as is anyone who believes that he or she is born to rule by the challenge that women have put to him—that is why has the National Party not been able to attract the support of women? The bottom line is that the majority of women have been turned off by the message not by the messenger and I think we need to look back at what happened when National was last in Government. We saw the repeal of employment equity legislation and the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act which scrapped national awards and introduced individual contract negotiations. The competitive market model was introduced into health education and accident compensation. 
Hon David Carter 
: Yeah—great. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The theory we were assured was perfect and I thank David Carter for confirming that that is exactly what National would do again in the future. As mothers as workers and as the heads of most single-parent households women were sacrificed at the altar of the free market. It did not matter who the relevant Minister was or who the Prime Minister was; it was homage to monetarist theories into the free market that did the damage—and that I tell Dr Brash is the reason why women will never vote for the National Party again.