The issue this government hopes you forget about
On Friday, all over Aotearoa, workers ranging from midwives to teachers to nurses wore purple to show their support for pay equity. Today is International Women's Day. We're going to see a lot of MPs who have destroyed the chance for so many women in this country to have pay equity. My hope is they'll get roasted in the comments - share this post on their pages, push back on their BS, challenge them and call them out. It all matters.
Below is a piece written by teacher Jo Brunskill. She outlines what you can do to support pay equity.
Jo is a secondary teacher with a background in supporting neurodivergent young people. She now works as a union negotiator and pay equity advocate. Jo lives with her three tamariki in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
All images are by the incredibly talented Naomi Madeiros.
Please, on this day, also consider the plight of Palestinian women. I have published a piece commissioned by a writer in Gaza, mother Yasmin. Please read it and share it.
Arohanui Emily x
Emily Writes
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Almost a year ago, on May 6 2025, the Government announced it was using urgency to alter the historic pay equity process agreed to under 2020 amendments to a long-standing law, the Equal Pay Act 1972.
It's hard to put into words how devastating these amendments were for working women in Aotearoa.
More than 180,000 women discovered their active pay equity claims were extinguished – overnight.
More than 100,000 women with settled pay equity claims could no longer access reviews to check their pay hadn’t slipped back into inequity.
This attack impacted whānau, patients, students, and communities.
We rallied. We pushed back. There were strikes, protests, petitions. The People's Select Committee was formed to review the decision with the thoroughness that workers deserve.
But since then, the Government has continued its assault on workers (and Uber drivers, and rough sleepers, and te reo Māori, and the NZ curriculum).
Meanwhile, the global landscape is literally exploding. The US and Israel have attacked Iran. And Israel has carried out strikes on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Qatar, Yemen, and in Tunisian, Maltese and Greek territorial waters. We have seen Minnesotans' courageous actions against ICE, and anti-Trump protests on the streets in the United States. Massive anti-war protests have taken place across the globe.
We’ve also been distracted by ice skating rivalry (both real and fictional), bobsled crashes, and theories about Trump’s devolving health and sanity. It’s easy to be distracted. It's OK to be distracted sometimes! We all need a break from the relentless madness.
But we need to revisit the problem of pay equity.
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Last week, the People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity published their final report. It’s damning, to say the least. The Committee, made up of 10 former members of parliament from across the political spectrum, set out to provide the opportunity for individuals, unions, NGOs and even current political figures, to provide feedback on the bill.
They did the Government’s work for them, because the Government failed (or were too cowardly) to do it. And while they were at it, the Committee weeded through scores of OIA documents and Cabinet papers.
What did they conclude?
The Committee found that the Government’s changes were a ‘flagrant and significant abuse of power’.
Amendments were made without any evidence or genuine justification. The motivation to amend the Act seemed to be for financial and ideological reasons. To "save their budget." Some of the changes were made solely to exclude large groups of workers from accessing pay equity (such as secondary teachers).
The Committee reports that the Coalition's amendments will have disproportionately higher impacts for wāhine Māori and Pacific women. What's more, the Government’s pay equity changes damage Aotearoa‘s reputation on a global stage.
And they found that the Government "wilfully and knowingly" acted in breach of international legal commitments and conventions, the Human Rights Act and Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Due to these findings, the Committee called for the 2025 amendments to be repealed. They recommend further steps to enhance the pay equity process.
(You can read the full report here, or a summary here.)
Why should I care about pay equity?
Pay equity provides access to a decent wage for the care and service roles that we so desperately rely on, including:
- Your ageing parents’ care worker or hospice nurse
- Your midwife, who treated you and your pēpi with respect and dignity when you were at your most vulnerable
- The teachers and teacher aides who are inspiring and teaching your tamariki and rangatahi, all while looking after them during the day so you can have a job
- The librarians who are supporting the community and granting access to knowledge
- The nurses and social workers who care for us all
Pay equity can encourage young people to pursue this work, and support workers in women-dominated professions to stay in their roles.
As the People’s Select Committee puts it: "where pay equity settlement improves workforce stability, productivity, and reduces welfare reliance, it will have a strong, potentially long-term, fiscal benefit."
And, in 2021, the OECD estimated that "closing gender gaps in participation and pay could lift GDP by 5-10%."
Pay equity is good for the economy and good for communities. It’s also the right thing to do.
Today is International Women’s Day. And even if you’re not a woman yourself, I’m sure you know someone who is. And I’m absolutely certain that she’s bloody wonderful.
We deserve to be equitably valued for our work.
What can you do about it?
This Government loves it when we just give up. When the struggles of life are so intense that we barely lift our eyes away from them, and we claw desperately for distractions from the horrors.
But here's something we cannot look away from: In just eight months, we get to decide whether this Government gets to stay in power. They want us to think it’s a done deal; that there’s no point in trying to shift the narrative.
So, we have to organise.
- Step 1: Check your enrolment is up to date or enrol to vote, here.
- Step 2: Help your friends and whānau to do the same. Bonus points if you can find some 17- to 20-year-olds who have never voted before and help them sign up.
- Step 3: Talk to people around you about the issues that matter to you – Te Tiriti, food, safe housing, fair and equitable pay, the environment, education.
This Government has a horrific track record on all of those issues. We cannot afford another three years of the Chaos Coalition. We need to take the opportunity to vote them out, this election.
And that means we need to take action now.
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Emily Writes
Emily Writes