Echo Chamber: Winston Peters still wants to know what a woman is
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Sitting under urgency this week in light of the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, parliament has had its mind stuck on a particularly large set of voters: women – their work, their protections in the workplace, how much they're worth, how they've compared themselves to men. But, how could the opposition possibly accuse the government of undermining women if there is no legal definition for these beings? Much to think about.
So – given everything – it made sense for National backbencher Nancy Lu to be the first to speak during Wednesday's question time and ask some cosy questions intended for her fellow female colleague, Nicola Willis. But the finance minister was nowhere to be seen – until she walked into the chamber halfway through her cabinet colleague Paul Goldsmith speaking for her, saying something about 'fiscal discipline'. Willis ran-walked to her desk, while everyone around her roared with laughter – half the chamber with her, the other half at her.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins, who often has the energy of a school kid desperate to remind the teacher there was homework due, shot to his feet to raise a point of order. Mr Speaker, he began, we seem to be in a perilous position – I have never seen in my 17 years in this House a minister speaking on behalf of another minister who has now shown up. So now what?
No, there's no need for this, the minister is now in the House and is thus able to answer her own questions, Hipkins was told. 'We could go on for a long time,' Brownlee remarked. Hipkins is the kind of man to take that as an invitation, rather than a warning, but instead he gave in.
Willis took over. But when Lu asked what it might take for the government to achieve its fiscal strategy, the opposition benches beat the minister to it. 'Showing up on time!' Labour deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni cried. 'Taking off women!'
With Christopher Luxon out of town, Winston Peters played acting prime minister and assured Hipkins that, 'with the usual caveats', he did 'most certainly' stand by the government's actions. He also most certainly didn't accept Hipkins' assertion that changes to the pay equity process would be a balancing of the books at the expense of women workers, especially when the opposition leader should be more concerned about 'what a woman is'.
'Is his definition of a woman someone who gets paid less than a man?' Hipkins pressed.
Still in the process of being passed under urgency this week is the Wildlife (Authorisations) Amendment Bill, which would retrospectively authorise the 'incidental killing of wildlife that inevitably occurs during the carrying out of otherwise lawful activities' (as is the official line). The bill comes on the back of a recent High Court ruling that the Department of Conservation had acted unlawfully in allowing Waka Kotahi to kill protected species while building a Taranaki highway.
An attempted sleight of hand on Peters by the Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, questioning how long the government had given the public to submit on the bill, had caught out the wrong person. That was a question better suited for the select committee, not the prime minister, Brownlee told her. 'There isn't one,' Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick reminded the speaker. 'It's under urgency.'
But Peters was willing to answer anyway: 'Long enough for us to come up with some very sound, practical and workable legislation.'
And anyway, Peters declared, Davidson's concerns about the Department of Conservation now having to meet these new expectations would be softened if she just asked everyone around the country to put their hands up and volunteer for the agency, and they definitely wouldn't mind not being paid for it.
The suggestion had Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi in stitches, the two barely holding themselves together as they convulsed with laughter behind their desks. Would they just be women volunteers, Waititi suggested.
Nearly 45 minutes of question time had passed before the workplace relations minister Brooke van Velden, who made it her task to update the pay equity scheme ahead of the budget, was questioned in the House. Labour's Jan Tinetti wondered if the minister agreed with NZ Herald political editor Thomas Coughlan that the act's amendments and the process of passing them under urgency were 'deeply wrong?'
No, van Velden said, she didn't care for Coughlan's reckons – she had another well-respected journalist on her side: Mike Hosking. Just the mention of his name sent the opposition benches spiralling with laughter, and the speaker asked van Velden to hold off on quoting the Newstalk ZB host until 'the excitement settles down'.
Hosking had praised Kristine Bartlett – a 'hero' and 'very likeable woman' – whose activism transformed the Equal Pay Act into what it was. But then the feelings-obsessed Labour Party leapt all over it, and now mechanics were being compared to rest home workers, and someone ought to do something, he reckoned.
'That's why Brooke van Velden has announced pay equity is going to be, quite rightly, tipped up and sorted out,' van Velden finished.
At the end of the session, Brownlee gave Goldsmith an opportunity to shout out one of his own portfolios, one oft championed by the government already: arts and culture (and heritage). Goldsmith seemed surprised anyone had even noticed the pin on his lapel – it's NZ Music Month, he replied, and that is the badge I am wearing. 'I thought you could say something more than that!' Brownlee scoffed.
Meanwhile, Swarbrick threw her hands up in the air in disbelief of the minister's ignorance. Her hands flailed above her head, ran through her hair and dragged down her face as Brownlee offered Goldsmith two more chances to let parliament know that there was in fact an NZ Music Month event happening in the building within a matter of hours, and members were welcome to attend. It must have been a frustrating session to be the Greens co-leader – alongside union members and environmentalists, musicians make up the other third of Swarbrick's voter base.
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