RUTH RICHARDSON National MP 1981-1994. First (and so far only) woman to be Minister of Finance, 1990-1993
She was sitting next to her mentor, Fran Wilde. “Muldoon looked across and said ‘I know who you’re going home with tonight’, the implication being that Fran and I were lovers. We both laughed at him.”
King considers her greatest contribution came in her time as Health Minister with measures such as extending free breast and cervical screening and the availability of IVF.
She was also the Health Minister who received the report on the under-reporting of cervical cancer from Gisborne, and implemented the recommendations.
She says MMP has improved opportunities for women, although it is still hard to get safe electorate seats.
She is disappointed that Labour’s attempt to introduce measures to improve that by holding female only selections was derided — but pleased it kept the 50 per cent goal of representation. Richardson recalls going to a business event as National’s finance spokeswoman in the lead-up to the 1990 election.
A man asked what qualifications she had to be finance minister. She ran her hand down her back and replied “spine”.
The “Mother of All Budgets” in 1991 rather proved that, as did other measures aimed at getting a massive deficit under control. Her reign was nicknamed Ruthanasia.
Richardson was accused of hanging women out to dry with the welfare cuts she presided over and for opposing the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. But she says feminists come from all walks of life — not just the left — and she had been one since “year dot”.
Things that are now commonplace, were not when it was happening to her.
She kept her maiden name when she married and her husband Andrew quit his job to take care of daughter Lucy in the 1980s.
Richardson has gone down in history for taking her baby Lucy to Parliament to breastfeed. She had to return when Lucy was just a few weeks old.
Labour’s whip Jonathan Hunt had agreed to a “pairing” arrangement in which a Labour MP’s vote would not be cast if Richardson took time off for Lucy after her birth. However, that was withdrawn after objections to Hunt by some Labour women, she says.
“That’s why I had to bring Lucy to Parliament at . . . 3 weeks. It was the Labour women, led by Ann Hercus who plunged the knife. I’m sure if they had their time again they wouldn’t behave as they did.”
Richardson recalls another time when feminism triumphed over tribalism.
Rape law reform was before a select committee and its future was in the balance. Richardson said she and Helen Clark came up with a cunning plan to go to their respective caucuses and “shame them” into supporting it by saying the other side was voting for the reforms.
“And so we got it through.” The talk of collegiality does not last long.
As the interview draws to a close, Richardson turns to the Labour Government of today.
“The gloss is coming off now,” she declares.
She later emails with a suggestion of a soundtrack for the Herald’s Suffrage edition.
It is Walking in the Sun
Deans. Unattributed, NZ Herald, September 12, 1923.
“I do not know how far this class of woman-workers are supposed to go. They may even be sent on to the board as shearers. I sincerely hope women will never descend so low.”
A. A. M. Garmson, Lyttelton Times, June 30, 1894. Countess Margit Bethlen, NZ Herald, February 28, 1931.
“Women will never be healthy, will never be free, will never being able to shake off their present physical inferiority, which is the product of their costume, until they dress themselves sensibly.”
Mrs Dietrick, letter to the editor, Evening Star, March 2, 1895. Unattributed, Observer, September 25, 1897.
“The mass of women will never rise superior to the mass of men.” Melbourne Punch, NZ Mail, October 20, 1898. Clara Giveen, English suffragette accused of arson, NZ Herald, July 14, 1913.
“To oust women from what are called ‘men’s jobs’ would be against progress and against what the public wants. Women will never let men put the clock back in that way!” — Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette, NZ Herald, May 13, 1938.