TelstraClear Pacific Arena
Manukau City

Rau rangatira ma, tenei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te ra – mana wahine. Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena ra tatau katoa.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you this morning. It is an honour for New Zealand to be able to host such an important international conference and to have such a large number of distinguished women here with us for the next week. I consider myself privileged to be asked to step into the shoes of the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, and speak to you today. She offers both her sincere regrets at being unable to attend and her best wishes for your conference.

When we have a meeting such as this, where every participant is an important leader in their area, it is always difficult to single out individuals to acknowledge.
I do feel, however, that it is important to acknowledge:

• Pan Pacific and South East Asian Women’s Association International President Papali’i Dr Viopapa Annandale
• New Zealand President Jenny Kendall
• Her Excellency, Susan Satyanand, the wife of our Governor-General
• Manukau Deputy Mayor Anne Candy
• Ambassadors and country representatives here today.

And finally, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of two great organisations, which are two of the three social partners I have in my role as Minister of Women’s Affairs: the Mâori Women’s Welfare League and PACIFICA.

You have an inspirational theme for your conference: Women Making a Difference through Peace – and it resonates well with today being Race Relations Day here in New Zealand.

Today your focus is on achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Seven years ago leaders from every country agreed to a vision for the future – a world with less poverty, hunger and disease; a world where mothers and children have better health and survival prospects; a world where those children will be better educated; a world with equal opportunities for women; a sustainable, healthy environment; and where developing and developed countries work in a global partnership to achieve this vision.

The eight Millennium Development Goals provide the countries around the world with a framework for development and targets against which progress can be measured. Marian Hobbs, when she was the Associate Foreign Affairs Minister, responsible for Official Development Assistance said:

“Achieving the MDGs is also a ‘must be’ because, unless we do something to reduce world poverty, we can forget about our children and grandchildren growing up in a secure international environment. And unless there is a secure international environment, our own economy will not prosper. Without development there is not going to be peace – and without peace we are not going to achieve the MDGs.”

This neatly ties the Millennium Development Goals back to your commitment to peace. The causes and effects are interchangeable – a vicious or virtuous circle whichever way you look at it.

When one compares the relative statistics that have galvanised countries to commit to the MDGs, we can see instantly why they are the focus of so many women’s organisations around the world. The consequences of world poverty fall disproportionately on women’s shoulders.

I have been asked to comment on the relevance of the MDGs to New Zealand women, and when we see that halving our maternal mortality rate would be a drop in the ocean compared to that required to meet MDG 5, (which is a commitment to halve the worlds maternal mortality rate), then it is right to ask that question. But I think the answer to that lies in MDG 8, which talks about a global partnership for development. The MDGs are not goals that developing countries can achieve on their own; and nor are developed countries limited to the specific measures contained in the goals in making their commitment a reality within their own nations.

I want to take that thought and expand on it in the context of New Zealand. My particular focus is on the commitment to equality and the empowerment of women; and in that regard what we can learn from each other.

New Zealand is often cited as a leader in the area of women’s representation in government, probably because we have a woman Prime Minister and, until recently, a woman governor-general. I often hear people say of New Zealand, that women are running the country. However, despite the fact that New Zealand women have had the vote for longer than anyone else in the world, (nearly 114 years), and we have also had the right to stand for parliament for 88 years, still only a third of New Zealand Members of Parliament are women.

This says to me that the legal framework is only one part of the equation. It is absolutely critical to have laws that protect all human rights and which promote equality. But the law is really the easiest step. Getting good government policy and programmes in place to make the law effective is harder. But the thing that is hardest, and which takes longest, is changing people’s attitudes and behaviours – that is because we are essentially challenging the prejudices that often prevent women and other sections of the community from achieving their full potential.

This is the area of change that I want to discuss today, because it is the area that governments cannot address alone and where organisations like PPSEAWA have such a vital role to play.

This year you are celebrating 75 years in New Zealand. The New Zealand branch was established when the organisation was just three years old, so for nearly eight decades you have been strengthening peace and friendship in this part of the world by working to protect the status of women and children; promoting education and family welfare; working to protect the environment; as well as raising funds and mobilising help at the local level. You are living the Millenium Development Goals.

You are unique in that you are the only international women’s organisation devoted to peace and understanding in the Pacific and South East Asia. Being able to see beyond the fact that the Pacific and Asia share an ocean, is not unusual today, but in 1928 that was an extraordinary vision. Then, with a handful of exceptions, the countries of this region were under some form of colonial rule and even in self governing nations, such as New Zealand, many people still saw their natural links as being with Europe, not with their neighbours in Asia-Pacific. Governments then were not thinking much about regional concerns or common interests, except in the narrow sense of promoting the nation’s interests.

Those women who established PPSEAWA at a meeting in Hawaii in 1928 had a different vision that recognised that women and children around the Pacific faced similar challenges and had similar interests. They also recognised that, by sharing their experiences and their expertise, and by working both regionally and locally, they could improve the position of women and thereby benefit society as a whole.

Personally I’m not surprised that it was women who were among the first to see Asia and the Pacific as a single region with shared interests and concerns. It is often women who see the connections between people; who are willing to share problems and work co-operatively for change that will benefit not only themselves, but also their community.
That’s because women know that a strong community is fundamental to securing the wellbeing of the families that make up the community.

Governments sometimes struggle to make these kinds of connections even now, although I suspect that this will improve as the number of women in government increases. But no matter how good governments become at working to address social, economic and environmental issues globally, regionally, nationally and locally, they will never be able to achieve alone, what can be achieved in partnership with focused, well-organised non-government organisations – civil society.

The longer I work in government the more convinced I am that it is that genuine partnership approach, based on mutual respect, that works best of all.

A moment ago I mentioned that the law can only do so much – and that good government policy and programmes can make good law more effective – but that real change only comes when people change. For this to occur we need to work with organisations and communities that bring different perspectives and skills.

Even in New Zealand, we still have some way to go in working co-operatively with the non-government sector, but I would like to mention a couple of examples to illustrate the benefit of working together.

One area where we try to do this is in international forums involving the rights of women, where the New Zealand delegation is usually made up of representatives from both the government and civil society. For instance, at the 51st session of the Committee on the Status of Women, which has just ended at the United Nations in New York, the New Zealand delegation was led by the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Shenagh Gleisner, but included Diane Mara – National President of PACIFICA, who made a major contribution to the proceedings.

PPSEAWA has consultative status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, so I know you understand the importance of ensuring it is not just government voices that are heard in international decision-making.

While non-government organisations do have such channels at the UN, we often include civil society representatives as part of our team because it brings a wider perspective to the discussion and because it helps us honestly discuss, not only where we are doing well, but where we are struggling to make progress.

That Status of Women meeting was a follow-up to the fourth world conference on women, with a focus on the elimination of discrimination and violence against girls. While New Zealand has generally made good progress eliminating many forms of discrimination against girls, our record on eliminating violence against women and girls is nothing to be proud of. This is the second issue I want to discuss, because it is another area where we are beginning to work much more closely with communities and with non-government agencies, and where the solutions can only come from a whole-of-society, rather than just a government approach.

New Zealand has a fairly comprehensive set of laws that are designed to protect women and children (and men) from violence within the home. Most of these laws have been in place for a long time, but despite this, New Zealand still has high rates of violence. No part of society is immune from family violence, but women are more likely to be victims than men. In 2001 for instance, 85 per cent of reported family violence cases involved women as the victims.

The government is tackling this violence at the highest level through a Taskforce for Action on Violence within, Families which supports a Ministerial Team. The Taskforce is made up of a number of chief executives of government departments – to help ensure the issue is at the top of the agenda in the state sector – as well as senior members of the police and the judiciary. Critically however, it also contains representatives of non-government organisations working in the area, because we need their hands-on experience and advice.
When the Taskforce released its first programme of action about seven months ago, it had a strong focus on changing attitudes and behaviour, and on improving support services, many of which are not delivered by government.

Of course, part of the programme of action focused on the government’s own interventions but we recognise that the big changes will come, not so much from improved government programmes, but when ordinary New Zealanders are prepared to say no to the violence in their homes, their families and their communities.

In recognition of this, the Taskforce’s first programme of action includes a nationwide social marketing campaign that will aim to change attitudes and behaviour toward family violence. This is a long-term campaign, which will target different forms of family violence, including addressing the attitudes and behaviours of men who are violent toward their partners. The campaign will be based on solid research and continuous evaluation.

So we are targeting attitudes, but we are also working to strengthen the non-government agencies that are our partners in the effort to eliminate violence against women.

The point I am making is this - there are things government can and must do to help stop violence, but we recognise that we can’t do it all on our own, especially when the focus is on attitudes and behaviour.

As I indicated earlier, it is organisations like PPSEAWA who are able to contribute much more than governments when it is not the law that requires changing, but the hearts and minds of people.

Your mothers and grandmothers had a vision of a peaceful, co-operative Asia Pacific where women’s potential is recognised and where women and children are able to make a full contribution to society. You are working to make that vision a reality through a series of practical programmes and by coming together like this every few years to share your ideas, your problems and your solutions. And I am sure that your daughters and grand-daughters are also alive to that vision, and are beginning to make their contribution felt.

So thank you for what you have achieved already. The world needs organisations like PPSEAWA that look beyond any artificial boundaries that separate us as women and see what we share in common as women.

You also provide a practical example of what co-operation can achieve across a wide region and remind us how important it is to learn from each other across cultural divides.

The impacts of poverty weigh heavy on the shoulders of the mothers of this world and the consequences of unrelenting poverty and gross inequality provide a fertile ground for violent conflict within and between families and nations. And that is why the Millennium Development Goals are vital to all nations, developed and developing though they may be.

So thank you for living the dream of Women Making a Difference through Peace and I trust that you will find your time here in New Zealand, both stimulating and rewarding.

Thank you.