It's Time -- To Fight
Pay Equity Amendment Bill passes through all stages under urgency late last night
The pay equity deal is a punch in the guts; it’s an alternating between wanting to shout and cry, and then, on the other hand seeing what a bitter gift it all is.
The government voting as one to destroy the fight of women over decades is both extraordinary and yet also eerily mundane - for it is everything this government has done to too many already:
Disabled, poor, homeless, Māori, unemployed, nurses, doctors, public servants, workers overall.
As I wrote last July: First they came for the Māori, but I was too busy making dinner
Who was paying attention?
Brooke Van Velden announced the plan yesterday with a measure of professional pride:
The days of women “fishing for discrimination” are over.
“Equal pay is about gender based and sex based discrimination. Genuine discrimination. We believe that those settings have been muddled.”
In other words, there is no real discrimination here.
Get in line:
Behind the men.
Who in turn, will mostly stand under the “wealthy and sorted”.
For no claim of yours from hereon will succeed under our terms. And the 33 claims in progress are dead on arrival.
It’s as ACT and National suggested for another group too:
Māori do not genuinely experience racism. Take away their rights to claim in future, take away their voices, as fast as we can.1
Every single member of this govt is responsible for this moral decline in our society and government.
And they’ve all rallied in support of this bill - from Chris Bishop to Winston Peters, from David Seymour to National’s Minister for Women, Nicola Grigg, who authoritatively assured us “this is positive news for women.”
No, it’s not on Luxon alone - and New Zealand should never forget.
Although all the coverage has been about womens’ impact, as my friend Stephanie Cullen wrote, it’s not just women that will suffer this loss - it’s men, and entire industries too.
Every industry with large proportions of females suffers this set back today - that means less men and motivated, deserving women as carers, nurses, teachers, old age attendees, vet nurses, vet assistants, dental assistants, dental nurses, librarians, hospice workers.
Do you need them?
Do we?
Do they matter?
Do we?
Does the country?
It’s like that old tripe that motherhood or parenthood is an unmeasured discipline and unpaid work - when it is in fact the most valuable and influential profession in the multi-verse - irrespective of what GDP or any statistic or economist2 tells me.
Still, no-one needs to tell Judith Collins what a poisoned chalice National’s breathtaking incompetence has led them all to.
She knew.
She knows.
Nicola Willis’s clear bungling of her 2025 Budget finances, precipitated by the obnoxious, arrogant, reckless calls at every step3, has led National to the ultimate deal with the Devil today.
The budget hole - based on National’s promises, and not to be mistaken for what is fiscally sensible4 - will be huge for them to be this desperate.
Seymour was gloating that this is ACT’s brainchild and work, and that it is his party and his protégé that saved National’s backside.
The bill has passed as of now.
Under urgency.
Without one member of the public able to provide feedback.
They didn’t even try the disingenuous few day, non-publicised public consultation trick.
A measure of their intense desperation.
They didn’t comply with government standards.
Not even bothering with the critical Regulatory Impact Statement, a standard for all law proposals in NZ.
They redacted all human rights considerations under the excuse of “legal privilege” too:
The Regulation Minister, who told us his goal for his shiny $76 million new Ministry of Regulation was to ensure “rigour” and good practice for all law proposals, said nah, it didn’t matter.
Women are angry.
Human rights advocates are outraged.
Humans are hurting.
Done by the right wing government — but dusted?
Never.
It’s time Aotearoa, New Zealand.
It’s time to stand up and fight.
Just ask Winston Peters, Shane Jones, Tama Potaka, Karen Chhour and James Meager - Māori colleague figureheads who have all been so willing to do the government’s bidding.
No disrespect to economists, many of whom I rate and respect
Landlord tax cuts of $2.9b, $12bn of new borrowing for $14bn of tax cuts, Kiwirail ferries cancellation costing over $1bn etc.
Bernard Hickey reference
I've been thinking about van Velden, I do that quite a lot because she's my electorate MP. She's said at ACT conferences that Milton Friedman is her favourite economist. We know Atlas is one of many networks of think tanks coming from those Mont Pelerin Society economists: Hayek and Friedman being the best known. Having done some digging, I don't think this amendment is about the budget for ACT, is about using the budget to hide their goal of undermining worker rights. As with Reagan and Thatcher, who both had Friedman as their economic adviser, they understood step one to a free market and neoliberalism, was undermine worker rights. Step 2 undermine education so you have an illiterate/ drone workforce. Van Velden told us who she was at that ACT conference. She is mini Thatcher. With that comes massive business closures, doubling of unemployment, massive erosion of worker rights and transfer of wealth to the already wealthy. Don't be fooled by thinking this was about a single annual budget, that was the smokescreen and a way to blame National and Willis.
I would like a woman opposition MP to put in the ballot box a private member's bill that would introduce legislation mandating that female government ministers and parliamentary undersecretaries' salaries be reduced to 92c in the $1 paid to male government ministers and parliamentary undersecretaries.
Would the clown car coalition government support that?