A flagrant abuse of power

When the regime rammed through its law gutting pay equity and stealing $13 billion from the women of Aotearoa, it didn't bother with a select committee process. That might have let people have their say - and worse, seen the media report on what they were saying, which would have been bad for the regime. But a group of former MPs organised their own select committee process to do what parliament had refused to. Now, it has reported back, calling the process an abuse of power, a breach of human rights, and a violation of the rule of law:

The committee described the processes of planning for and enacting the legislation as a "flagrant and significant abuse of power".

It also found the law breached the Bill of Rights, the Human Rights Act, and the Regulatory Standard Act principles, as well as a number of international conventions that New Zealand was party to, including International Covenants on Civil and Political, and Economic and Social Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

[...]

Committee members also said it could find no evidence in available Cabinet documents or parliamentary debates to support scrapping the scheme.

There are a lot of recommendations, chief of which (of course) is limiting the use of urgency for laws restricting fundamental rights, as well as statutory consultation requirements and constitutional recognition of pay equity as a human right. All of which would be a good start. Both Labour and the Greens have pledged to repeal the Act and restore pay equity if elected; it would be good to see them also commit to constitutional reform to prevent such an abuse from ever happening again.

You can read the full report here.

A terrible idea

RNZ reports this morning that the regime is conspiring to abolish the "demographic ministries":

The Public Service Commissioner is considering a major shakeup of several government agencies, including the Ministries for Women and Pacific Peoples.

Sir Brian Roche is refusing to rule out that they would be absorbed into larger ministries and said "all options are on the table" and he was "not going to get into ruling things in or out".

To point out the obvious - which the white men running this government don't seem to have noticed - these ministries exist for a reason. They exist to give a formal voice in government to people that the power structure systematically ignores. Like women, who are ignored distressingly often, despite being a majority of the population.

Abolishing them wil remove those perspectives. It will mean that women, Pasifikia and the disabled will not be heard in government, and policy about them will be made without them. This isn't just misogynist, racist and ableist - it is also a mistake. The lack of those perspectives will lead to worse policy and expensive but unexpected (to the bland white econodudes in the regime) outcomes.

The fundamental problem here is that said bland white econodudes do not recognise that they do not know everything - that there are entire worlds outside their experience, which they don't bother to model because they're "not important" (to them and the things they care about). We've known this for decades - Marilyn Waring literally wrote the book on it - but they prefer their models of perfectly spherical people in a vacuum, and if reality doesn't match, well, it is reality, and the annoying reminders of it, which must change. This is not a recipe for good policy. It is not a recipe for good governance. And it is certainly not a recipe for happy politics. And this regime needs to have that rammed home when we vote them out at the next election.

(Meanwhile, as for Rimmer and his cries that we shouldn't have ministries for specific types of people, that's rather rich, coming from a guy who had a whole ministry for weirdo libertarians created just for him. He should just smeg off back to the far-right thinktank which spawned him and stop fucking up our country).

What do we do with a lawless Speaker?

Yesterday, Speaker Gerry Brownlee purported to eject Chloe Swarbrick from the House for the rest of the week after she implicitly called regime MPs "spineless". The decision did not comply with parliament's standing orders, so Swarbrick turned up today to litigate that and give Brownlee a chance to admit he made a mistake and move on. Instead, he doubled down on his wrongness, named her, and had her suspended for 24 hours on a partisan vote. But in his incoherent rage he fucked that up too, so he had to do it a second time.

We were then treated to 20 minutes of litigation over the decision, its (lack of) past precedent, and whether Brownlee was simply making it up as he went along (he is) - during which Winston Peters, who had just voted to suspend Swarbrick, disagreed with Brownlee's decision and his own vote (which is another data point on his senility, I guess). Brownlee cycled through justifications, which ultimately came down to him - a purportedly "neutral" chair - being personally offended by Swarbrick's call for government MPs with a spine. Which apparently justifies a week's suspension, because an old white man's widdle feelings were hurt.

The decision was arbitrary and capricious. It ignored the rules parliament is supposed to operate by. In a normal government institution, there are remedies to prevent such lawlessness: the Ombudsman and (ultimately) the courts. They exist to prevent such abuses of power, and force government agencies to follow their own rules. But thanks to Parliamentary Privilege, such remedies are unavailable. Which invites the question: what do you do with a lawless Speaker? What do you do when a significant constitutional figure behaves like an arbitrary tyrant? What is the check and the balance here?

Meanwhile, like the (far more serious) lynching of Te Pāti Māori, this shows that Parliamentary "order" is just a tool for the partisan oppression of the opposition by the regime. And everyone can see it. It's another nail in the coffin of the idea of a neutral Speaker, and another shovel of earth on the grave of Parliament's legitimacy and social licence.

If you don't like this, the Standing Orders Committee is currently calling for submissions on parliament's rules for next term. So you can submit, point out the problems with arbitrary decisions and parliament's procedures for maintaining "order", and ask them to fix it it. If you care enough, you can even suggest solutions. Though honestly, that's really a "them" problem; its fine to say "this is a problem, and you parliamentary big brains who know and care about standing orders need to find a way to stop it". And if they refuse, then they can face the consequences for parliament's reputation.

More misogyny from National

How misogynistic is this dogshit regime? Since 2020 the Public Service Act has included explicit legal commitments to pay equity and diversity in the public service workforce.

This government is repealing them. Today they introduced a new Public Service Amendment Bill, which (among other things) repeals pay equity and freedom from bias from the "good employer" principles, and removes the promotion of diversity and inclusion as a duty of chief executives.

Reading the bill's Regulatory Impact Statement, there's a lot of mealy-mouthed bullshit about how these are things better addressed through the public sector workforce policy statement, and how "different governments take different stances on these matters". Clearly. This government, for example, does not believe in pay equity. It wants to pay women less. It also does not believe the public service should look like Aotearoa, preferring instead one which looks like local councils (where for a while there were more bald old white men called "John" than women as councillors). That position is simply not shared by the people of Aotearoa. And if we're allowed free and fair elections next year - currently in doubt due to regime plans for voter suppression - we should throw this misogynistic pack of wankers out on their arses.

National supports sexism

That's the only possible conclusion we can draw from their decision to legislatively terminate all pay equity claims, and make future claims much harder to win:

Workplace Minister Brooke van Velden announced the moves to raise the threshold for proving work has been historically undervalued to support a claim, on Tuesday saying changes back in 2020 had created problems.

"Claims have been able to progress without strong evidence of undervaluation and there have been very broad claims where it is difficult to tell whether differences in pay are due to sex-based discrimination or other factors."

Claims were concentrated in the public sector, with costs to the Crown of all settlements so far totalling $1.78 billion a year, she said.

"The changes I am proposing will significantly reduce costs to the Crown," she said.

So, they're explicitly going to balance the government's books and pay for landlord tax cuts and new war toys by paying women less. Sexist fuckers.

But there's a reason we have a legislated process for this: because the alternative is that workers go to court, and win a settlement that way - as they did in 2015. And if National cuts off that route, then it gets "negotiated" through industrial action - which, given that nurses are significant claimants, means hospital shutdowns and their healthcare metrics being shat out the window. But I guess their thinking is that that will all happen later, in another budget cycle, so it all gets ignored in favour of the short-term goal of making the books balance this year.

And that's what you get for putting the white male businessman parties in charge. I hope we all remember this at the next election, and kick them out on their arses.

Labour dragging its feet on pay transparency

Last year, the Education and Workforce Committee recommended that the government legislate for pay transparency to prevent employers from secretly discriminating. This ought to be a bread and butter issue for Labour - discrimination sees women (and particularly Māori and Pasifika women) paid significantly less than men. But since then... crickets:

[T]he timing of any legislation remains uncertain.

Tinetti said on Tuesday that the Government was committed to ensuring all women were paid fairly and a pay transparency system was “one lever that may help in closing the gender pay gap”.

But she wouldn’t say whether she expected to introduce a law change in the current parliamentary term, explaining that the work being conducted by Nacew was still underway.

Realistically, while legislation could be introduced, there's no chance of this being passed by the election. Which means Labour foot-dragging has basicly seen this delayed for a full Parliamentary term (and maybe buried it forever if there's a change of government). Effectively they've sold out their core supporters to sexists, racists, and capitalists. Heckuva job, Labour; I hope you're proud of yourselves.

A howl of ugliness

Farmers are protesting today, invading cities with tractors and utes in protest against water and climate change policy. The core message of their "howl of protest" is meant to be "no farmers, no food" - which rather undermines their own case, given that 80% of the food they produce is exported. We could drive half the farmers in Aotearoa out of business, be massively environmentally better off, and still have more than enough cheese for everyone. But of course, they're also displaying their ugly side, with signs displaying racism, gun nuttery, more racism, and of course sexism, misogyny, and an obsession with dead political ideologies. And we haven't even got to the weird conspiracy theorist stuff yet!

Meanwhile, parts of Germany just received two months' rain in two days, causing massive, unexpected floods which have left 58 people dead. The US and Canada are experiencing another heatwave, and a huge chunk of the US is on fire again. And we may be about to get another freak rain and flooding event in Westland. In these circumstances, protesting against climate change policy is as irresponsible and sociopathic as being an antivaxxer. Oh, wait!

Basicly, this sort of messaging is likely to be... unpersuasive with urban Aotearoa. Where "unpersuasive" equals "as popular as a proverbial unpopular thing". Which means it is unlikely to be persuasive with the government either. Urban Aotearoa is where the votes have been for decades, and the first rule of government is "learn to count". Maybe farmers should learn that too?

Good riddance

When aged care workers won a court case and a huge legal settlement for equal pay, the then-National government responded by introducing legislation to stop anyone from doing that ever again. Now, the new government has scrapped that shit:

The government is throwing out pay equity legislation introduced by National, saying it makes it harder for people to make a claim for fair wages.

Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter said the legislation was deliberately designed to put barriers in the way of women who wanted to make a pay equity claim, and would be replaced.

[...]

The government will start work on new legislation to adhere to principles agreed by the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity - a group made up of business, union and government representatives.

Ms Genter is confident improving the legislation will be straightforward.

"We already have the agreed principles from the joint working group and I don't think it will be too difficult to go back, to take those barriers out of the bill, replace them with something that truly reflects those agreed principles, and is going to make it easier for women to have a process and a pathway to equal pay."

Good. National's bill responded to inequality by entrenching it (for the profit of its sexist business cronies, of course). Now they're gone, hopefully we'll see some real progress towards closing the gender pay gap and ensuring that there is equal pay for work of equal value.

Here's hoping

Back in May, National, ACT and United Future got together to vote down Jan Logie's Equal Pay Amendment Bill. The bill would have provided greater information and transparency around gender and pay, allowing discrimination to be uncovered and corrected. But now that the balance of power in Parliament has changed, it might be back:

A defeated private member's bill that would force the private sector to open up its books and reveal more about gender pay differences may be resurrected as a Government bill, in an effort to narrow the gender pay gap.

The Women's portfolio, to be held by Green MP Julie Anne Genter, was one of many allocations that were released today by Prime Minister-designate Jacinda Ardern. Genter said one of her top priorities was to close the gender pay gap, "both in the public and private sector".

Asked about bringing back the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, which was voted down in May this year by the narrowest of margins, she said: "That is a Green Party bill and certainly one of many things that I''ll be investigating in the role, and trying to win support for with the new Government."

Good. Because we have a real pay equity problem in New Zealand, and we need to fix it. Clearly, current policies aren't working so new ones are needed. And removing the secrecy which hides employer sexism would be a damn good start.

Time for pay equity

National has responded to the recent aged care workers case with a bill that would make it harder for women to gain equal pay. Fortunately, the Greens have a better plan:

The Green Party would require all workplaces to measure and disclose the pay gap between men and women employees if it gets into government.

The party released its pay equity policy today, saying it would ensure that women were treated equally and paid better.

Co-leader James Shaw said his party would require employers to collect data on the wage rates for men and women, by adding gender to pay roll data.

If any employee or union asked for the information, the employer would have to provide anonymised and aggregated data about the pay and gender of other people doing the same work.

Seeing the difference in pay rates in black and white would encourage employers to change their approach, the party said.

And if it doesn't, then the victims of their discrimination will have the information they need to prove it. This approach is used in Scandinavia, and it works. We should do the same here. But to do that, we need to get rid of National, and change the government.

National: The sexist party

Women have been fighting for over a century for pay equity. Yesterday, Parliament had an opportunity to do something to advance that struggle, via Jan Logie's Equal Pay Amendment Bill. The bill would have implemented recommendations of the Human Rights Commission for greater information and transparency around gender and pay, allowing discrimination to be uncovered and corrected. Instead, National voted it down:

A private member's bill that would have provided greater evidence with which to fight gender pay discrimination in New Zealand was lost in Parliament tonight by 59 votes to 60.

Green MP Jan Logie, said the Equal Pay Amendment Bill had been supported by a large number of women and women's organisations.

[...]

But it was opposed by National, Act, and United Future on the grounds it would add greater compliance to businesses and that it could compromise privacy.

And there we have it: the fundamental right of women to equal pay has been shut down because it might slightly inconvenience (mostly old male) business owners. Its a telling illustration of National's priorities, and of how we'll never get any real progress on this issue voluntarily (remember: the huge pay equity settlement was forced by court action, and National fought it all the way).

National is the sexist party. If you want equality, vote for someone else.

Why is basic equality so hard for Labour?

Vernon Small has a piece in Stuff this morning about Labour's efforts to get a more representative caucus, and how they're finding it "too hard":

It may come as a surprise to some that Labour is still committed to its aim of achieving a a gender-balanced caucus after the next election.

Because in light of recent events – not least leader Andrew Little's shoulder-tapping of Willie Jackson, the recruitment of former police union boss Greg O'Connor and Paul Eagle's unopposed selection in Rongotai – you might be forgiven for thinking it is being honoured and breached at the same time.

In fact, it is also being not-so-subtly redefined. The aim when the policy was announced in 2013 was to target balance at certain key polling points, since anything more nuanced would be impossible without knowing a vast number of variables in advance –who won what seats, for instance.

But there is an acknowledgment now that it simply cannot be achieved at 25 per cent (without sacking a whole lot of male MPs), is near impossible at 30 per cent and could be in view at 35 per cent, though by no means assured even then.

Why is Labour finding this so hard? The Greens don't - they simply alternate genders along their list, woman, man, woman, man. They're imbalanced if they get an odd number of MP's, or if there's a mid-term replacement, but its a clear commitment. Electorate seats complicate this somewhat, but an equal list would be a great first step - and its not as if Labour has a problem selecting great woman candidates for winnable seats.

The problem comes down to the issue Small highlights: the reluctance to "sack" (or rather, give lower list priority to) those underperforming, stale male MPs. People like Trevor Mallard and Clayton Cosgrove, who are simply being a parliamentary waste of space. These are not people who are earning high list placements - hell, last election they campaigned on winning their electorates rather than the all-important party vote, effectively shafting their party (and now Mallard can't even be bothered doing that). So why are they being rewarded? Labour is not short of talented women, and they shouldn't be excluded just for fear of offending dead white incumbent males.

"A stupid idea"

That's what John Key thinks of equality around the Cabinet table:

Prime Minister John Key says the idea of promising a gender-balanced Cabinet is "stupid" because appointments are made on talent, not gender.

Speaking on The Nation on Saturday, Key dismissed the call made by Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Jackie Blue, who would like Key to follow in the footsteps of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who last year unveiled a Cabinet which was half female.

[...]

But Key told Nation host Lisa Owen "it would be stupid" to promise a gender-balanced Cabinet.

And then he trotted out the usual excuse that Cabinet appointments are made on "merit". Yeah, right. I think Murray McCully, Tim Groser, and Sam Lotu-Iiga are proof of the absurdity of that idea. But even if we accept it, it just pushes the question back another level, from "why doesn't National select women as Cabinet Ministers" to "why doesn't National select women as candidates / MPs?" And I think we all know the answer to that question...

Sexist bullying in our Parliament

If you watch Question Time daily, you'll have noticed that there's a lot of sexist bullying that goes on in Parliament, with National's predominantly male backbench trying to shout down and intimidate female MPs. Today, New Zealand First's Tracey Martin used a point of order to complain about this. The National backbench took the opportunity to prove her point for her, interjecting to shut down her point of order. You can watch the whole sorry display below, from 8:27:



It has become blatant enough that even National's Speaker David Carter conceded the point. And hopefully now we'll see an end to it. Otherwise female MPs should start publicly naming and shaming the bullies so they can be driven out of politics. There should be no place for this sort of bullying in our Parliament.

"Merit"

In 2004 the then-Labour government wanted to reduce sexism in the public sector, so it set itself a target that 50% of new board and committee appointments would be women. In 2010, National decided that that was too hard, and lowered the target to 45%. So how well has it been doing? The Herald crunched the numbers, and the answer is "appallingly". Only seven Ministers were actually meeting their target. Meanwhile, most lagged in the 30-percent range (when the target was set women were 41% of board members), and six of them were appointing women to fewer than a third of places:

Mr McCully and Mr Bridges appointed less than a quarter board position to women. Mr McCully appointed 23.63 per cent women to boards in 2014 and Mr Bridges appointed 24.56 per cent.

Mr Brownlee appointed 26 per cent of positions to women and Mr Smith appointed 27.84 per cent of positions to women.

Prime Minister John Key appointed 29.17 per cent of board positions to women.

But of course, when asked about this, they claim to appoint on "merit". I guess they use a special dictionary in which that word is a synonym for "penis". Meanwhile, to the rest of us, its pretty clear what is going on: bad, old-fashioned sexism. The message is clear; National hates women, and thinks their place is in the home (or in low-paid professions such as cleaning) rather than in the boardroom. Isn't it time we had a government which tried to fix this problem, rather than exacerbating it?

Appalled

The more I read about Roger Sutton's sexual harassment, the more appalled I am. And reading the allegations, I'm left asking the same question as Danyl: how can you not be sacked for this? Behaviour like that is not acceptable in any workplace, and everybody should know that. If the State Services Commissioner thinks it is acceptable - and that's implicit in his admission that he would not have asked Sutton to stand down - then he is completely out of touch with modern workplace standards and utterly incapable of upholding the values of our public service - in short, a sexist dinosaur who should stand down himself.

(And that's without even getting into the ethics of Rennie's tacit endorsement of Sutton during his PR exercise yesterday...)

For fuck's sake, this is the New Zealand public service, not Mad Men. We expect better.

(Meanwhile, now that Sutton has breached confidentiality - something Rennie tacitly endorsed with his presence - does that mean we can actually sack him now, rather than giving him a golden handshake and unblemished record which leaves him free to harass and abuse again? Or will the SSC boy's club forgive that too?)

David Cunliffe: Sexist

It looks like David Cunliffe can't resist the urge to indulge in sexist abuse. In a column for The Ruminator, he begins:

A couple of months ago I was asked to write a post for the Ruminator and, rather optimistically, I agreed.The original brief was to respond to a post by Judith Collins. My post was going to be about snapper, not trout. But considering that issue, along with Judith’s leadership aspirations, has floundered, I’ll try another hook.

So Judith Collins is a trout. Geddit? Geddit?

As Collins points out, we can imagine the outcry from Labour if one of National's male MPs called a Labour woman a trout. Except we don't have to imagine it - remember this mess from 2007 when Nick Smith called Judith Tizard a witch?

Cunliffe is supposed to be leading a party dedicated to equality. He needs to act like it. Starting with an apology for this cheap, nasty sexism.

"A distraction"

The Labour Party got together over the weekend for its annual conference - the first for David Cunliffe as leader. And while they made several important policy announcements - focusing KiwiBuild on Christchurch to ease the post-quake housing shortage and introducing a Kiwibank-style government-owned insurance company to introduce competition to the market (a move which immediately gained the opposition of the foreign insurance oligopoly) - and a couple of important policy decisions around superannuation and the TPP, a lot of the media coverage has focused on their introduction of a gender quota to bring balance to the caucus over the next two elections. This is a perfectly reasonable idea; the Labour caucus should look like New Zealand, and that means fair representation for women. And its not as if Labour is short of talented women to represent it; the problem is that these women are not being given a fair shot due to electorate seats being full or tired, talentless male incumbents. Using the list to correct this imbalance and produce a caucus that represents women fairly, according to their proportion of the population, is a sensible move, and exactly what the list is for. The only losers in the process are mediocre men.

...who are currently raising their voices in abundance. Male editorial writers and male cartoonists seem to think fair representation for women is the end of the world. They are also united in labelling it "a distraction". But the people it mainly seems to be distracting are - you guessed it - mediocre old men who realise that their days of undeserved advantage are numbered.

The Royal Succession Bill

Last year, the British government decided to end a thousand years of sexism (but not 350 years of religious bigotry) and alter their royal succession. Now, thanks to some unrepealed colonial baggage, we have to pass a law to enable it.

The bill is here. It abolishes male primogeniture and the exclusion of those who marry "Papists" (to use the odious language of the Act of Settlement), but fails to remove the exclusion of Catholics. In that respect, it is fundamentally incompatible with New Zealand values and the right to be free of discrimination enshrined in the BORA. But then, so is the monarchy itself. It is undemocratic, it is snobbish, it is foreign. It is British, not Kiwi - nothing to do with us.

Obviously, if the UK needs this law passed to tick all the boxes on their changing the succession for their monarchy, then it would be improper to refuse (just as it would have been improper pre-1986 for them to have refused to pass any bill requested by the elected New Zealand government). But rather than just tinkering around the edges of this undemocratic institution, we should take the opportunity to do away with it entirely and replace the foreign figurehead with an elected one.

An embarrassment

So, Business NZ are sexists. Who'd have thunk it? Its not as if we haven't had plenty of other examples of the rich dead white males they represent expressing similar views. But apart from being morally odious, and a poor commentary on the views of their members, it also tells us something else: that they have no idea about employment law. New Zealand women have had the right to take a year's maternity leave for the past 25 years; all Sue Moroney's bill changes is who pays for some of it.

But then, that's Business NZ in a nutshell: permanently 25 years out of date. And an embarrassment because of it.