Policy, not fashion, puts callousness on display

Otago Daily Times

27-05-2025

Finance Minister Nicola Willis was irked by the interest in her Budget day outfit.
She was questioned about wearing an overseas label on the big day, rather than showcasing a New Zealand designer to support the local fashion industry.
Does anybody care whether Christopher Luxon's ill-fitting suits are local and made of New Zealand wool, and gasp if they aren't?
All the same, I confess to laughing at his confused-cleric-worshipping-at-the-altar-of-the-lamb look when he popped a promotional T-shirt over his suit. Daggy.
It is hard to imagine Ms Willis committing such a fashion faux pas/crime.
As one of my previous columns showed, nobody turned a well-coiffed hair over the fact Air New Zealand uniforms are mostly not made here or that any wool in them is also not local.
Concern about that as a poor example setter might have been more relevant than agonising over one posh frock, but then, as a sheep farmer's daughter, I am biased.
Petty finger-pointing about women politicians' clothing has gone on for far too long here, and elsewhere.
Fellow senior minister Chris Bishop thought the story about Ms Willis' frock was ridiculous and the decision to run the story sexist.
Both he and Ms Willis made reference to the decade of my birth in their comments.
Ms Willis, on RNZ: "Let's focus on the politics. This line of questioning as far as I'm concerned belongs in the 1950s."
Hear, hear.
And, what else belongs in the 1950s? Oh, that little business of the gender pay gap.
Ms Willis wants us to talk about her Budget.
Let's talk about how lowly paid women saved her Budget, women who might have got some of the $1.8billion Treasury had allowed for pay equity settlements this financial year, part of the $12.8b Ms Willis has clawed back over four years.
No posh frocks for them, New Zealand-made or otherwise, I am guessing.
Coalition politicians say the previous system was a mess, even though it had cross-party support when introduced.
They say all manner of things were being confused with pay equity but have yet to come up with even one example of a group which was seeking pay equity but not deserving of it.
In the absence of any evidence about what was so appalling about the law as it stood, apart from the fact it would cost a lot eventually, I cannot see this as anything other than a belittling, disrespectful money grab by a government which is shortsighted and callous about the poor and downtrodden.
If one more politician regurgitates the desperate superficial nonsense about how the comparator process has worked, Parliament might be able to hear my screams from here.
It has been three weeks now since the proposed law was unceremoniously foisted on us and then rammed through Parliament with no public input.
If the government thought a few weasel words from its women ministers, the dropping of the "c-word" in Parliament, and the thrill of the Budget would damp down the outrage about this, they are frighteningly naive.
This week, the formation of a cross-party group of former women MPs, at the instigation of the redoubtable Dame Prof Marilyn Waring, ensures the issue is going to stay around at high level for a while yet.
The group will make up a "people's select committee" to have a go at doing the job our current government parliamentarians thought unimportant.
Those on the committee are Jackie Blue, Jo Hayes, Belinda Vernon, Lianne Dalziel, Ria Bond, Steve Chadwick, Nanaia Mahuta, Lynne Pillay and Sue Bradford.
The women will independently examine the amendments to the Equal Pay Act passed under urgency, considering submissions and holding hearings.
Dame Marilyn told 1News she had a lot of difficulty in seeing pieces of legislation of such magnitude passed without evidence before the House.
"We want to know why such a large number of women who are not well paid became the collateral damage, really, to balance a Budget."
Ouch.
The aim is to gather the evidence the government should have.
She told RNZ she was sure there was evidence, "but it has not had a vehicle for publicity".
"It has not been brought together in a consolidated, rigorous way for people to make their own decisions, as opposed to just listening to a lot of kind of high-flying cliches."
The committee will be inviting a range of key people who submitted on the legislation the previous time it was amended, along with the 33 groups whose claims were stymied by the law change.
Submissions are open now until July 31, hearings will follow and the report is expected to be completed by Christmas.
Ding, dong merrily on high. Just in time for election year.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.