Nicola Grigg1 was given one of the safest blue seats in the country - Selwyn, Christchurch.
She holds multiple ministerial portfolios including Trade & Investment, Women, Agriculture, and ACC. Not a bad role.
Last year, Grigg said she entered Parliament with Luxon and developed a strong friendship with him.
This week she affirmed that loyalty, telling Parliament:
"I always agree with the Prime Minister."
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A former NZ journalist and John Key political staffer, Grigg has pedigree - she’s the great, great, great granddaughter of Sir John Hall, a former Premier2 and advocates for rural communities.
But as Minister for Women, Grigg raised eyebrows this week for her passionate defence of the government’s pay equity move, insisting it was all “positive news” for women.
Developments that brought pay equity campaigner Kristine Bartlett to tears and scuttled 33 in progress pay equity claims for over 150,000 Kiwis.
It’s really a tale of two women though.
One who cares for the most weakly represented of us, and another who just doesn’t.
One who is willing to fight for womens’ rights and recognition, and another who is unfraid to diminish, deny and effectively trample them.
Kristine Bartlett:
“It’s really gut wrenching.”
"I just feel so sorry for these women workers & employees. They don't know what situation they're going to end up with now. It's terrible, it's sad."
“What’s going to happen to these low-paid workers?”
“I feel as though women have just been let down so terribly today.”
Bartlett’s long years of fighting, and personal sacrifice, had helped aged care workers be paid more that just minimum.
It was a significant moment in 2017.
Like so many undervalued areas, aged care is an important profession, one which matters deeply, but is often undervalued.
Allowing realistic pay equity claims elevates these professions, and also helps the people that rely on them.
It attracts more skilled and willing workers into those careers which I personally think are some of our most important.
The scuttled claims3 include ECE teachers (who are already under attack from ACT’s ECE changes that have changed the law so relief teachers are now paid mimimum wage), support workers, youth workers, social service workers, hospice care, nurses, counsellors, psychologists, librarians, primary and secondary teachers etc.4
Many of these claims were multi-year suits, in progress and with an immense amount of work, procedure, and discipline invested.
Seymour already admitted the pay equity changes are just about the money for National and their “savings” are now expected to be massive.
Newsroom’s Laura Walters notes it could involve tens of billions over the coming years. ‘Savings’ borne on the back of women, and all those who work in and rely on those industries, will now be booked into National’s 2025 budget & forecast.
As Chris Hipkins said, it really is a case of “robbing Paula to pay Peter”.
Green and Labour have both committed to rolling it back, as it’s revealed National knew this move could open the government up to lawsuits if they weren’t careful — but the trick is National won’t really care by then.
They’ve taken money from women and these industries, and will claim “fiscal responsibility” and “record investment in capital and health” etc. in the next years.
I suspect, in future, they will also contrast their “strong forecasts” to revised Labour or Green ones as “proof” Labour and Green are not good with money.
Narrative control is the right’s strong suit, and it’s the same here.
Minister for Women Nicola Gibb claimed the pay equity law was only about “fixing a failed system”.
Mike Hosking told his many viewers this is good news and he’s “a fan”.
Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?
Doesn’t make it correct, but still, I was floored by the amount of false claims on Facebook and elsewhere echoing these lines.
I don’t want to belabour it, but as the Star Wars franchise Andor’s Senator Mon Mothma said correctly -
“Loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous (of all).”
Ultimately, ACT are libertarians who work for the corporate and high wealth class, and unions are enemy #1 to that ideology (on par with the green and environmental movement).
Stripping workers’ rights and fair pay for workers is integral to their ideology - both of which they started the day they got into office, using their 8% electoral power to remove fair pay agreements, reinstate 90 day trials, ignore workplace safety, ice unions out of meetings, refuse to even meet with NZ’s largest union, attacking unions, demean unions5 etc.
It’s all a big win for ACT, as Victoria notes, and it’s a win for National to tell their voters and the large swathes of supporters and centrists that it will be National which is “fiscally prudent” and “capable of keeping the budget in check”.
Some Democrats thought Roe v Wade would be enough to keep Trump out of office - it wasn’t.
Perhaps National is betting on economics being bigger than womens’ rights here too.
Time will tell.
PS Below is a note written by Nancy McShane, Queen’s Medal recipient 2022 for Services to Women and Equal Pay, to the Minister for Women - in response to Grigg’s claims that this move was “positive news for women”.
Bartlett was named Kiwibank New Zealander of The Year in 2018
Nicola Grigg is loyal to Luxon, telling NZ she “always agrees” with him
A statement from Nancy McShane to Nicola Grigg
“For any woman still under the illusion that the coalition’s vetoing of the Equal Pay Amendment is a good thing for women’s rights:
Here’s some history for you:
In 2017, the then National government brought out a Bill in parliament, the purpose of which was to disestablish the Equal Pay Act of 1972.
I know this because I was one of the PSA union’s women members who marched to parliament to stop this from happening
Had that Bill been successful, it would have taken the Equal Pay movement in this country back 50 YEARS.
Fortunately, our union’s lobbying was successful.
Labour, the Greens and, yes, even NZ First did not support it.
Equal Pay became a key election issue and that, together with the incandescent rage of a great many women around New Zealand, helped change the government.
Once in power, rather than trying to make it harder for New Zealand women to be paid their worth, the Labour government brought in the Equal Pay Amendment Act, a piece of legislation designed to make it quicker and easier for women to be paid fairly.
The PSA’s pay equity claim for DHB Administrators was the first to be settled under this new legislation.
I was on the bargaining team for this claim and can assure you the process we used was, exhaustive, robust and independently audited to ensure non-bias.
To now hear a female member of the coalition government cast aspersions on the integrity of that process utterly outrages me!
Our claim was settled in 2022.
It ended decades of pay discrimination for DHB Administration staff who had been repeatedly left behind in pay bargaining due to repeated underfunding from the government.
It seems we have barely got our heads about water, and now National is at it again!
Make no mistake: This party is a serial offender when it comes to disempowering women.
They tried and failed to disestablish the Equal Pay Act, now they’re effectively doing the same thing by vetoing the Equal Pay Amendment Bill.
Meanwhile, teachers, midwives, librarians, care workers and the predominantly female staff employed across a wide range of roles in our hospitals must pay the price – all to fund tax cuts for landlords and the smoking lobby!
I am incensed beyond words and every other person in this country should be, too, irrespective of your gender!
Whatever your political leanings, please do not support the actions this government has taken in vetoing the Equal Pay Amendment Act!
This goes against everything our nation stands for, including our strong history of defending and progressing women’s rights!
Nicola Grigg: In your role as Minister for Women, I call upon you to do the right thing. Stand with the New Zealand women you are supposed to represent and denounce your government’s actions! The removal of this legislation harms low paid women in this country, many of whom are essential workers. They should be dignified with a fair and equitable wage, not sacrificed to cover tax breaks for the wealthy!”
Nancy McShane
Co-Convenor, PSA Women’s Network
Queen’s Medal recipient 2022 for Services to Women and Equal Pay
ODT reports the late Nikki Kaye was a “great friend” to Grigg.
Once the premier of New Zealand, and MP for Selwyn.
Numbers include 95,000 teachers (including 25,000 secondary teachers, as well as primary and early childhood teachers), and 65,000 care and support workers.
Note: Simeon Brown does the same. Judith Collins is the only government MP that appears to be willing to converse to unions in this term.
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