NZ First submits members’ bills the way other parties write press releases. This week, one made it all the way to the house, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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Coalition parties fall in line
National and Act have voted through NZ First’s Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill at its first reading, declining to treat it as a conscience vote and instead voting as blocs, Harriet Laughton reports for The Post. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori all voted against it as parties. A National spokesperson said the caucus wanted MPs to “hear the public’s opinion on the bill through the select committee process”.
Not everyone in the coalition is enthusiastic about the bill’s passage. Senior minister Chris Bishop has previously called Jenny Marcroft’s members bill a “distraction”. “Is this the biggest thing on the planet? Talking about the definition of a woman? I would argue, no,” he told 1News.
Opposition parties took a stronger line. Green co-leader Chloë Swarbrick called it “absolutely despicable”, Labour’s Camilla Belich said it was “pointless and a complete waste of time”, and Te Pāti Māori called it “legislative erasure of trans people”.
What’s in the bill
The bill is a short one. As Glenn McConnell reports for Stuff, it would insert biological definitions of “woman” and “man” – “adult human biological female” and “adult human biological male” – across all legislation, affecting how courts interpret the law without obliging anyone to change how they speak or identify. NZ First leader Winston Peters framed it as following the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that biological women met the legal definition of a woman under British equality law – New Zealand was merely “catching up”, he said.
Act leader David Seymour offered a more personal rationale, saying he hoped the bill would discourage terms like “chest feeding” that he claims is being used instead of “breastfeeding”. Speaking as attorney-general, Bishop said he had another issue with the bill as it stands: it “breaches the right to be free from discrimination” he said, as its definitions of an adult are inconsistent with definitions elsewhere in NZ law.
The biscuit tin as marketing tool
The gender bill is, by NZ First’s standards, a rare achievement – one of the few members’ bills the party has submitted this term to actually reach the house. As Fox Meyer reported yesterday for Newsroom Pro, NZ First has entered 19 members’ bills since the coalition took office, despite having just four MPs eligible to submit them. Party chief of staff Darroch Ball confirms the approach is deliberate – submit a bill, generate headlines, then withdraw it and replace it with the next one.
The Spinoff’s Joel MacManus documented the practice last November, when NZ First swapped its woman-and-man definitions bill in favour of a fireworks bill; it was, he wrote, “almost as if it were just performative virtue signalling and not a genuine attempt at legislative reform”. Political scholar David Jenkins told Meyer the strategy was effective and “risk-free” – either the larger parties shift toward NZ First’s positions, or the party has simply kept itself in voters’ minds at no cost. Ball is unapologetic. “We want to ensure that we communicate with the voters about who we are, why we’re here, why they should vote for us,” he said.
English first, two and a half years later
The gender bill wasn’t the only NZ First policy advance of the week. The Public Service Commission issued new branding guidelines requiring all ministries to place “New Zealand Government” above “Te Kāwanatanga o Aotearoa” on their websites – fulfilling a NZ First-National coalition commitment that had sat unimplemented for more than two years. Public Service minister Paul Goldsmith issued the directive, telling RNZ’s Craig McCulloch it was “a coalition commitment that hadn’t yet been achieved. Now we’re doing it.”
The delay had already prompted Act MP Todd Stephenson to write to then-minister Judith Collins in March warning of “growing concern” that the English-first policy was not being “visibly implemented”, as the Herald’s Azaria Howell reported. At the time, Collins said she was focused on the fuel crisis, “not style guides”. Speaking yesterday, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was unimpressed. “Frankly I don’t care what order the words go in. I’m more concerned about the government doing the job that New Zealanders expect it to do.”
