Rural Women New Zealand Conference

Rydges Hotel
Rotorua

Rau rangatira mâ, tçnei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te râ – mana wahine. Tçnâ koutou, tçnâ koutou, tçnâ râ tâtou katoa.

Thank you Sherrill for the welcome and thank you too for the contribution you have made to Rural Women New Zealand as President over the past three years.

Under Sherrill’s leadership Rural Women New Zealand has continued to be
a strong advocate for your interests. The organisation continues to engage well with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs; and, about six weeks ago I met with representatives of Rural Women to discuss topics of concern to rural communities, including access to home-based care and health services, and issues around the victims of domestic violence in rural communities.

I will come back to these concerns in a minute, but first I want to acknowledge the huge contribution that rural women make to New Zealand.

One of the great things about my combination of portfolios – which include Commerce and also Small Business, as well as Women’s Affairs – is that I regularly meet extraordinary women who are creating or building business opportunities for themselves, their families and their communities.

Given the small percentage of our population that actually lives in rural areas now, you would expect these entrepreneurs to be almost exclusively running urban-based businesses, but that is not the case. I am constantly impressed by the level of innovation and entrepreneurship I see on farms and in small rural towns.

I note that the theme for this conference is ‘using the past to create the future’ and I think that is particularly apt for rural business-women, because many of the new businesses are built by using the existing resources on the family farm, or those in the surrounding community, and using these in new ways to create jobs and wealth.

A good example of that kind of innovation was highlighted at a
Ministry of Women’s Affairs event just a couple of weeks ago. Mana Wahine Week celebrates the achievements of Mâori women and one of the speakers was
Cathy Tait-Jamieson, co-founder, with her husband, of Biofarm Products.

Most of you will have seen Biofarm yoghurt in the supermarket.

What interested me was the story of how the product was developed. It grew out of the Tait-Jamiesons’ desire to use their dairy farm in an environmentally-sustainable way that would also earn them a good income. They faced some familiar hurdles when they were setting up, including difficulty getting finance because the business did not fit normal rural lending criteria. Their business attracted a fair bit of local scepticism because they were in their 20s when they registered the Biofarm trademark and it was at a time when farming organically tended to get you labelled as a hippy, rather than as a smart entrepreneur.

The Tait-Jamiesons now milk 150 cows and carry young stock on their
220 hectare farm. A similar-sized conventional farm would milk about 700 cows, but it would need to run 1000 cows to generate the around $3 million turnover being achieved by Biofarm.

A conventional dairy farm milking 150 cows would probably only employ one person, but Biofarm employs 12 staff: on the farm, in the factory and in the office.
No wonder that Cathy says that financially and environmentally, the business has stacked up well.

Cathy Tait-Jamieson did what so many entrepreneurial rural women are doing. She started with what she had – in this case a conventional dairy farm – and said ‘perhaps we could do better if we did things differently around here?’ She used the past to create the future.

I see those values coming through strongly in Rural Women New Zealand – strong confidence and pride in your roots, but a focus on the future and on rural women as business innovators and owners, as well as on the well-being and development of women and rural communities. The ‘gumboots and scones’ image of the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers was never really the whole story, because women have always been farmers in their own right. But now women are becoming much more visible as owners, managers and operators of agribusinesses.

Primary industry is still, and probably always will be, the backbone of the New Zealand economy. Many of the businesses that will create the wealth and jobs this century will come from that base – whether they are in biotechnology, organics, or one of the vast range of other business areas that build on New Zealand's heritage as producing some of the world’s smartest and best farmers.

It strikes me that there is also a strong alignment between those values and the key themes that drive the Labour-led government in which I serve. These government themes are promoting economic transformation; supporting families – young and old; and celebrating our identity as a nation – while all the time recognising the overriding demand for sustainability in everything we do.

I’m sure all these themes will be discussed in this conference.

There will be a strong focus on building strong rural businesses and on better supporting rural families.

There will be a focus on sustainability because that has always been a core issue for farming and because there can be no transformation of the New Zealand economy without truly sustainable agriculture. And though you may not explicitly discuss national identity, that may well be because you are too busy living it. It is hard to imagine a more New Zealand institution than Rural Women, nor one with a stronger heritage of service. I must say that for an 82-year-old though, the organisation is looking very modern. And that is because you have kept up with the times. Using the past doesn't mean living in the past.

Rural Women New Zealand continues to work strongly on behalf of its members’ interests. I mentioned earlier that I had met about six weeks ago with representatives of Rural Women and I would like to refer to some of the issues raised then.

These included a number of concerns about funding for home-based care in rural areas including regional variations in pay rates and reimbursement of travel costs for home-based care workers. The Minister of Health is acutely aware of the issues and is doing what he can to ensure that they are addressed within the context of the funding framework that exists.

The first thing he did was to require DHBs to have a travel policy in place as a pre-condition to increased funding. This has meant that all DHBs are addressing the issue. It has meant differences around the country which is frustrating for a nationwide provider like Rural Women through its service delivery arm, Access Homehealth. But the improvements have been real and it is now a question of getting the DHBs to operate more collaboratively to standardise the application of the policies.

The second step for the Minister has been the pre-Budget announcement two weeks ago of the most significant increase in health funding for older persons service that we have seen in a long time.

This includes (over four years):

• $150 million investment for the aged residential care sector;
• $81.2 million to bolster home-based support those aged 65 years or more;
• $46 million for assessment treatment and rehabilitation services along with carer and community support services provided by district health boards
• $128 million for inflation and to fund volume increases

The investments in the aged residential care and home-based support sectors are targeted at lifting pay rates, which I fully endorse as Minister of Women's Affairs, recognising that women make up the vast majority of this low paid workforce. It is important that the work that they perform is properly valued and this pay boost will go a long way to addressing that need.

Another issue raised was the impact of family violence and sexual violence on rural women, and the difficulties in delivering support services for victims in rural areas.

New Zealand’s levels of family and sexual violence – forms of violence where women and children make up the overwhelming majority of victims – are
a national disgrace. Working to eliminate such violence is amongst my highest priorities as Minister of Women’s Affairs, and it is high on the government's agenda.

But these are not things that governments can change on their own. Legislation is only part of the solution. We need to see a significant change in attitudes and behaviour. But that doesn't just mean for perpetrators of violence; it includes those who accept violence as inevitable, or who think it is a problem for someone else to solve. Violence is our problem, not someone else’s, and only we can fix it by working together as a society.

The solutions are complex and will involve government working much more closely and co-operatively with non-government organisations than has perhaps happened in the past.

In the past year we have established two Ministerial taskforces to address these forms of violence.

The Taskforce for Action on Violence within Families was set up last year and has Women’s Affairs chief executive, Shenagh Gleisner, as its deputy chair. The membership is made up of chief executives and other senior staff of relevant public service agencies, plus representatives of non-government organisations working in the area.

I welcome Rural Women New Zealand’s desire to become involved in the work of the Taskforce, because we will only make progress on eliminating violence if government, non-government organisations, and communities work much more closely together.

The Taskforce has published its first work programme, which includes significant additional funding for support services run by the voluntary sector and a strong emphasis on changing attitudes towards violence. You will see part of this work in a couple of months when a major social marketing campaign is launched.

I would also encourage you as an organisation to think about how you can influence change in your communities. Groups around New Zealand can apply for funding through the Community Action Toolkit process managed by Family and Community Services (FACS). The next funding round is in June.

In March this year we established the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence, based on a similar model. It is currently mapping out its work programme, but again, this will see government working co-operatively with non-government organisations. I acknowledge that we also need to do more work to understand and address the different causes and impacts of such violence on different communities, including rural communities, and to do this we will need to engage more with organisations like Rural Women.

I was struck by the point that was made about how small communities can be isolating environments for the victims of both sexual and family violence. When everyone knows everyone then it can lead to people wanting to cover-up what has happened.

Perpetrators often rely on the shame that is seemingly transferred to the victims of their crime, and we must do more as a society to stop that from occurring, because it is the perpetrators of this violence that must be held to account for their actions. It is the only way to reduce the violence. Silence perpetuates the violence.

On that serious note, I want to thank you for your interest and for the work you do to ensure that rural communities are strong, healthy and vibrant. Because of your multiple roles, you work longer in paid work than many other women, as well devoting longer hours to sustaining your families, and more time supporting the community through voluntary work. I’m not sure what that says about your work-life balance, but I do know that New Zealand wouldn't be what it is without you. You make a major contribution to the New Zealand economy and an even greater one to society. You typify what it means to be a New Zealander.

I wish you every success with your conference, with your businesses, with your families and with your communities. Thank you for granting me the honour of helping to launch this conference. I am looking forward to this evening and having the opportunity to talk with some of you more informally.

Thank you.