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ACT Party deputy leader and the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Brooke van Velden, has sparked controversy by swearing during question time in Parliament today, May 14.
Van Velden was responding to a question from Labour Party MP Jan Tinetti, who asked her how “unilaterally stopping 33 pay equity claims was not a historic act of economic backhanding other women?”
The question follows a scathing recent opinion column written by Stuff senior journalist Andrea Vance about the Government’s reforms this week of the Equal Pay Act.
In her column, Vance referred to a group of female Government Ministers in derogatory terms such as “girl bosses”.
“Turns out you can have it all,” Vance wrote.
“So long as you’re prepared to be a c*** to the women who birth your kids, school your offspring and wipe the a*** of your elderly parents while you stand on their shoulders to earn your six-figure, taxpayer-funded pay packet.”
In response to Tinetti’s question, van Velden said: “I disagree with the comments made, and particularly the note of the use of the term ‘backhanded’, which refers to Andrea Vance’s article, which was quoted from this weekend.
“I do not agree with the clearly gendered and patronising language that Andrea Vance used to reduce senior Cabinet Ministers to ‘girl bosses’, ‘hype-squads’, references to ‘girl math’, and ‘c****’.
“The women of this Government are hard-working, dedicated, and strong.
“No woman in this Parliament nor in this country should be subjected to sex-based discrimination.”
During the general debate in Parliament this afternoon, National Party Takanini MP Rima Nakhle further criticised Vance’s column and referred to Vance as “disgusting”.
She asked: “Where are our standards, and what are we saying to our young girls when the Opposition members across the House, not one of them has stood up and condemned the disgusting use of the ‘c’ word from a disgusting journalist last week.
“They’re silent on the ‘c’ word, but they’re not silent when it comes to manipulating a situation to harvest votes.
“It’s disappointing, and I encourage them to not manipulate the broken hearts.
“If they’re going to say there are broken hearts of people, to harvest votes, but to call out disgusting behaviour, just like we often do on other matters.”
