Ladies in the House

I would have had this up soon­er but some­thing happened with the site and we lost it for a bit. But it’s back! And now I can tell you all about the event that was Ladies in the House, put on by The Wel­ling­ton Young Fem­in­ists’ Col­lect­ive.

Firstly a huge thanks and con­grat­u­la­tions to the WYFC for a great for­um. It ran far more smoothly than tele­vised ‘debates’ where politi­cians are forced to shout each oth­er down and noth­ing is actu­ally said. We got to hear the actu­al opin­ions and party stances on issues and policies that are rel­ev­ant to every­one vot­ing on Novem­ber 26th.

I have far too many notes so I’ll try and keep this as con­cise as pos­sible.

The Politi­cians:

• Paul Foster-Bell              (Nation­al Party Can­did­ate for Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral, @PARFosterBell)
• Jordan Carter                  (Labour Party List Can­did­ate, @jordantcarter)
• Steph­en Whit­ting­ton    (ACT Party Can­did­ate for Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral, @Steve_Whttngton)
• Holly Walk­er                  (Green Party Can­did­ate for Hutt South, @hollyrwalker)
• Jan Logie                         (Green Party Can­did­ate for Mana, @janlogie)
• Ben Craven                      (NZ First Can­did­ate for Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral, @_Ben_Craven_)

Paul spoke very highly of  Hekia Para­ta who he said is doing great work. He said that under the Nation­al gov­ern­ment there’d been a decrease in the pay gap between males and females 10.6% to 9.6% and that “any gap is too much”. This was later refuted by Holly who stated that the most com­mon meas­ure of gender pay gap showed that it now sat at 13% and was­n’t get­ting smal­ler.

Jordan stated that Labour was foun­ded on the prin­ciples of equal­ity. “Lib­er­al­ism is not enough”. He quoted the Labour line of mak­ing “the hard decisions for tomor­row, not the soft decisions for today” and that for the most fair and more diverse gov­ern­ment we should vote MMP in the ref­er­en­dum.

Steph­en stated that he believes the biggest issue for women is social dis­crim­in­a­tion and stands behind the ideal that everything should be fair before the court of law. He went on to say that the gender pay gap was not some­thing the gov­er­ment could fix as it was a res­ult of social expect­a­tion but that the patern­ity leave pay encour­aged pay­ing women less…

Holly then spoke high­light­ing the fact that cur­rently the Green party has the most bal­anced gender make up includ­ing the co-lead­ers Rus­sel Nor­man and Metiria Turei. She bought up the gender pay gap stat­ing that for uni­ver­sity gradu­ates, with identic­al degrees, the gap rose from 1% one year out of uni to 17% after five years. Holly stated Greens would bring in 13 months, 100% paid par­ent­al leave and rein­state pay for solo par­ents study­ing at uni, not just at Poly­techs.

Jan spoke and said she wanted to focus more spe­cific­ally on one major issue – gender based viol­ence. I guess she had this advant­age as Holly had already done a lot of promo for the Greens policies. Jay said that not just one policy could fix gender inequal­ity – it needs a hol­ist­ic approach. She strayed from her main focus slightly but raised a val­id point that not every­one iden­ti­fies as male or female and this needed look­ing into. Jay stated the Greens had a num­ber of policies to help those affected by domest­ic viol­ence – using bene­fits as a safety net, bring­ing in the $15 min­im­um wage, and work on state hous­ing and more, eg Women’s Refuge.

Now to argu­ably the most inter­est­ing speak­er of the even­ing – Ben from NZ First. He stated as soon as he stood up that the people who were meant to be there (Brett Pier­son and Mar­ise Bish­op) pulled out and he was very under­prepared. It showed. Ben was “stoked about” the fact that 4 out of 10 of the top MPs were female, con­tinu­ally poin­ted out that ‘there are lots of ladies in NZ First”  and even brought up a pre­vi­ous faux pas where he said there were “a lot of women behind the scenes” at NZ First. Prob­ably did­n’t need to draw atten­tion to it… Ben got con­sid­er­able mur­murs from the crowd, say­ing that NZ First will cut off the wel­fare of those who com­mit offences against women and chil­dren, seem­ingly ignor­ing the idea that it was pos­sible those not on wel­fare could also be per­pet­rat­ors. Ben really did seem out of his depth. I felt sorry for him in the end and I’m sure I was­n’t alone. He just did­n’t have the abil­ity to cor­rectly express his views in a suit­able fash­ion.

THEN there were ques­tions from the audi­ence, I’m going to bul­let point answers as I real­ise this is hardly con­cise!

Why are women in NZ more likely to die at the hands of their own part­ner or fam­ily mem­bers than in a car crash?
Jan (Green) – it’s ingrained sex­ism. The All Black cov­er­age dom­in­ates the news­pa­per for weeks while the Sil­ver Ferns win gets shunted to the back page.
Paul (Nation­al) – it’s cul­tur­al, hard for govt to change, Nation­al have giv­en more police, lower crime rates, some of which will be domest­ic viol­ence. Those who com­mit these crimes pay a levy for vic­tim sup­port.
Jordan (Labour) – agreeed with Jan and stated that this approach by Nation­al is a per­fect example of the ambu­lance at the bot­tom of the cliff rather than try­ing to pre­vent the issue. Poin­ted people to their Women’s Policy on their web­site. Paul then asks people to do the same but…that’s more dif­fi­cult as there is no Women’s Policy on their site.
Steph­en (Act) – people are less likely to talk/report domest­ic viol­ence than oth­er crimes. One way to aid this is through the shar­ing of doc­tors’ reports – in the USA women were found to more likely go to the doc­tor if viol­ence was tak­ing place & use it as a cry for help or as a way to raise the issue without ‘dob­bing in’ their part­ner.

To be fair to all parties – Women’s Policies can also be found on the Green Party’s web­site, how­ever I could­n’t find one on NZ First or Act’s sites.

What are the parties going to do about Abor­tion? Will the Act be reviewed? Labour – you had nine years and did noth­ing and Nation­al – you’ve had three and done noth­ing.
Jordan – per­son­ally pro choice but politi­cians fear the pub­lic, it’s a very touchy issue that needs care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion.
Paul – again his per­son­al opin­ion is the same – pro choice
Ben – says he is Pro choice, but expressed that he was not keen on abor­tion for minor cos­met­ic defects. The audi­ence was sur­prised to say the least, and not only because he seemed to have totally missed the point.
Holly and Jan – don’t believe it should be in the Crimes Act – which needs review­ing and that “it’s not about cos­met­ic issues but per­son­al choice”.

Sex Edu­ca­tion in schools – some people say we are teach­ing kids too much too young while oth­ers say we aren’t teach­ing them enough:
Jordan – a lack of Sex Ed is not a good thing & teach­ing abstin­ence also not a good thing – edu­ca­tion need to be increased.
Jan – teach­ing should be encour­aged to be around con­sent & desire.
Steph­en – says some­thing along the lines of  how we don’t want Cath­ol­ics pulling their kids out of school and home school­ing them.

The Bloke Test, the Veitch inter­view and the ‘Hot List’ – dir­ec­ted at Paul.
Paul – does the best he can. He says every­one has things they regret. Main­tains they’re not things he stands for. He does­n’t apo­lo­gise though, and I don’t believe it’s his job to apo­lo­gise for John Key’s actions. I also per­son­ally believe that the ‘Bloke Test’ is neither John Key’s or Phil Goff’s fault but is the fault of Stuff, Fair­fax media and the New Zea­l­and pub­lic who have come to believe this is what an elec­tion should be based on.

Adop­tion Act? Par­tic­u­larly around adop­tion by gay people and single people.
Steph­en – it needs to be reviewed. It’s ridicu­lous that gay couples can­not adopt yet a single gay per­son can.
Jan – it’s a 1950s’ legis­la­tion and Greens will review it.
Jordan – Labour will review Adop­tion act
Paul – believes the Act does need review.

OVERVIEW: It was a great event. A chance to see loc­al MPs in action dis­cuss­ing their take on issues raised by the people vot­ing for them. Again thank you and well done to the WYFC who not only held the event and provided this oppor­tun­ity BUT also offered cheese, crack­ers and juice at the end. The Greens got the most cheers, exclud­ing when Ben stated he had a girl­friend, while both Ben and Steph­en got the most mur­murs of dis­ap­prov­al. Both Jordan and Paul spoke well and did­n’t seem to step on too many toes while still main­tain­ing to express both theirs and their parties’ views. I really hope that this can become a reg­u­lar event, not only for Nation­al elec­tions but for loc­al elec­tions too.

Dis­claim­er: All I have writ­ten here is what I furi­ously typed into my phone. If I have missed some­thing – please com­ment. If I have mis­quoted some­thing – please com­ment. If you feel I have the wrong end of the stick – please com­ment. If you like the cut of my jib – please com­ment.