NZ News
Nash replacement named as mums in parliament unite against ‘offensive’ comment
National MP Katie Nimon says decency has prevailed and women are vindicated following Stuart Nash’s resignation as a New Zealand First candidate.
Nash, a former Labour cabinet minister who was in the race for the Napier seat against Nimon, labelled her lazy for taking parental leave.
The comment was roundly condemned across the political spectrum as sexist and misogynistic, and he resigned on Wednesday night.
That left an opening in the Napier electorate which has been swept up by Te Kira Lawrence, a woman and sitting Napier councillor who has switched from being the party’s East Cape candidate.
Nimon has not heard from Nash since his comments and resignation.
“I just like to think that decency prevails,” she told RNZ.
“In all of this a lot of women have felt … personally vindicated, just to see that there are consequences for being hotheaded and thoughtless with your words, because actually what he said wasn’t even true.”
Nash said Nimon took nine months off after having her son, Lochie.
In reality she returned to electorate work when he was ten weeks old, and returned to Parliament after six months.
“It’s really hard, and I think that it’s my responsibility to be honest about it too,” Nimon said.
“There is no right way of being a working parent, and you’ve got to do what works for you.”
Nimon said the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Speaker Gerry Brownlee and National’s whip Stuart Smith had encouraged her to take all the time she needed.
“Every time I was either in the House late or in select committee for long hours, that was my choice, and I love that I didn’t feel guilted into it, didn’t feel like it was my obligation,” she said.
“We have such an amazing team of strong women who have all done it before as well. They show me that example, but I also remember I’m an example to others.”
Nimon said she’s heard from people across the political spectrum who have told her they do not stand for Nash’s comment, and supported her work.
“Hopefully all the women and working mums and working parents out there are feeling really good about themselves today.”
Mums of Parliament agree: it’s hard work
A number of other sitting MPs have had babies while in Parliament.
Nimon inherited a baby bouncer from Minister for Women and National MP Nicola Grigg, who had first received it from Labour’s Camilla Belich.
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Grigg spoke to RNZ from her office furnished with a portacot and pram, nappies in the cupboards and teddies scattered.
She recalled pacing the streets delivering leaflets during the 2023 election campaign, heavily pregnant, before taking some time off to have her son.
“It is hard, and there’s no point even trying to deny it, we work really long hours, we have a punishing travel schedule, children don’t sleep when they’re told to sleep,” she said.
“But you know what? You just make it happen. Jacinda Ardern, as the Prime Minister of New Zealand, made it happen. I’m making it happen.”
Grigg said Nash had no choice but to resign.
“There is absolutely no place for people like that in our House of Representatives.”
Belich said being a mum in Parliament was hard work.
“I’m grateful to the mothers that went before me in the House,” she said.
“I didn’t have hesitation that I couldn’t be a pregnant MP, and I think that that’s a real testament to a lot of those mothers who who went before and showed that it could be could be done.”
The strength of public backlash against Nash’s comment showed attitudes towards working mothers had shifted, she said.
“We should always be working to try and make sure that Parliament is a place that everyone can aspire to be a part of, and we should be accommodating no matter what stage of life they are at.”
Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime was the first person to breastfeed in the House, after rules changed in 2017 to allow it.
She received a lot of support for that, she said, but there was also vitriole.
“The fact that I am a māmā influences the way that I do politics, my thinking, the things that we fight for,” she said.
“As somebody who is a mum and a member of Parliament, I found [Nash’s] comments offensive. I know how hard it is to do both of those jobs.”
Green MP Julie-Anne Genter has had two babies while in Parliament – one of them, two months after former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
“We want our house our House of Parliament to look like the rest of New Zealand, and if you’re missing out on parents of young children, then you’re missing out on a really important perspective in your representation,” she said.
Genter was glad Luxon had condemned Nash’s comments.
“I’d like to see him do that more with other misogynistic and homophobic and racist comments from some of his cabinet colleagues.”
Source: RNZ
Latest News
Opportunities to mitigate multi-million-dollar RNZ budget blowout likely missed – experts
Multiple opportunities to identify and mitigate a multi-million-dollar budget blowout at RNZ appear have been missed, according to the former executive director at Audit New Zealand.
The public broadcaster on Monday revealed a near $12 million shock financial loss after a litany of financial blunders, which will now lead to sweeping job cuts.
The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.
CEO Paul Thompson took responsibility for the result, and said internal reports gave an inaccurate picture of the finances, meaning the scale of the loss only became clear in October.
RNZ’s former chief financial officer Hilary Parker resigned unexpectedly in early October.
The board said it would commission an independent review into what went wrong.
Independent contractor Stephen Walker, who left the Audit Office earlier this year, said the size of the loss was surprising, as was the length of time it took to identify it – months after the financial year ended.
Supplied / OAG
“Probably more of a concern is that they had seemingly been unaware that they were running up a significant deficit until they were in the preparation stage of their annual report in October.”
Walker said public entities typically produced monthly financial reports.
An interim audit also took place before the end of the financial year, he said, but if the organisation hadn’t identified significant losses at that stage, the auditor could also be in the dark.
“It seems that there’s a real weakness in forecasting and budgeting that’s occurred here and that the monthly accounts, when they’re produced, either haven’t identified these significant variances against budget or the magnitude of them really hasn’t come to light until right towards the end of the financial year,” Walker said.
“And really at that point, there’s no opportunity for the chief executive, the leadership team to take, and the board to take, any corrective action because the year has effectively been completed.”
Walker said the “significant miss” was difficult to account for given it was more than 10 percent of RNZ’s total funding.
He said based on RNZ’s annual report, financial complexity didn’t appear to be a factor.
“This $11.8m loss isn’t made up of one particular item … it seems to have been contributed to by a number of separate expense lines running over budget. So I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with complexity.”
Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget. Staff costs also came in $3.2m over budget, including $1.4m in redundancy payments.
Professor at Auckland University’s business school Norman Wong said based on media reports the issues identified were “significant and troubling”.
Supplied / University of Auckland
“But recognising the sale of land as income in their budget is a basic error that one would have expected to have been caught and corrected well before it got to this point.”
With funding reductions at RNZ over the past two years, Walker expected greater scrutiny of financial results.
“Virtually every public entity has had their annual budget reduced. And so you would expect … the leadership team on a monthly basis and board – I’m not sure how frequently the board will consider the information – but you would expect them to be interrogating the results on a regular basis throughout the year,” he said.
Walker said initiating an independent review was the correct course of action and that he’d want to understand what information the leadership team and the board were regularly receiving.
He said he’d “love to say” surprising financial results were rare, but conceded they occured on a semi-frequent basis during his time leading the Audit Office.
“The benefit of independent scrutiny by the Audit Office – and the auditors providing that support to the Auditor General – [is] that the reporting is fairly presented at the end of the year, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.”
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