Shocking language distraction

Although many New Zealanders commonly use terms which would have been considered offensive decades ago, there are still words we would not expect to hear in our Parliament.

One such word was aired last week in the House by Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden.

The Hansard record of that occasion shows it as c with square brackets around the next four letters.

Curiously, there was no such sensitive punctuation around that word or the f-word when they turned up in some submissions made on various Bills.

The words appear in the Hansard record on those occasions in all their dubious glory, as presumably the utterers intended.

Research from 2021 on the language which may offend in broadcasting, commissioned by the Broadcasting Standards Authority, showed there had been some movement over the years since 2013, but the top two most unacceptable words in all broadcasting contexts remained the n-word and the c-word.

There had been jockeying for the top slot in that time with the n-word considered the worst in the 2021 survey (65% of those surveyed), compared with 57% for the c-word.

The question of whether it was acceptable or necessary for Ms van Velden to use the term last week remains.

The Labour Party set the scene for its use by asking Ms van Velden about something said in a political column by Stuff’s Andrea Vance.

The quote used in the question from former minister for women, Jan Tinetti about the contentious pay equity legislation did not include the sentence featuring the c-word used by Ms Vance.

It asked if stopping 33 pay equity claims was not a historic act of economic backhanding other women.

But its inclusion of reference to women ministers as girlbosses and a hype-squad, were apparently enough to provoke Ms van Velden to seek advice from the clerk’s office about the use of the c-word. She was told it was OK, so use it she eventually did.

Her hell-hath-no-fury-like-women-ministers-scorned performance lacked the impromptu brilliance of former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s tirade against the misogyny and unpleasantness she experienced day in and day out.

Women close to having their pay equity claims settled before the new law sent them back to square one, could be forgiven for finding irony in Ms van Velden’s passionate statement: "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".

They might have considered some of the terms used by Ms Vance were misogynistic, shocking, or inappropriate but would that override their view the introduction of the law changes was misogyny writ large?

There is no getting away from the fact the question from Ms Tinetti was a dumb move from Labour, allowing the coalition’s senior women ministers to take the moral high ground and promote themselves as victims of a misogynistic, unseemly, abusive, and vitriolic attack on them.

It is hard to understand why Labour did not just ignore the column. Finance Minister Nicola Willis had already penned a lengthy response to it which was published by Stuff.

When Ms van Velden’s outburst occurred, around a week after the shock of the introduction without warning of the new pay equity legislation and its subsequent passing under urgency, the furore around it had not abated.

While a succession of coalition ministers and the Prime Minister, with a surprising lack of imagination, accused Labour of "outright lies" there are plenty of questions which remain unanswered.

Do we know, for instance, how the change in the equity claim threshold for the proportion of women workers in a role from 60% to 70% was arrived at?

When there has been no opportunity to test the government’s thinking on any of the changes through a proper process, the Opposition has plenty of material with which to keep plugging away at the government.

Labour has had to admit its own goal.

Its future questioning on this issue must be calm, clinical, and comprehensive — all acceptable "c" words.