Pay equity passing is an attack on the working class

The wide effects of the urgent legislation Luxon just passed to save his own ass

Last night, Luxon did something impressive.

He announced a law so backwards, he managed to make the nation forget that in the Woke year of 2025, men can be nurses and teachers too.

A male model pretending to be a nurse

I’m what some people would consider a woman, so I feel quite comfortable saying that this rushed retraction designed to plug Nicola Willis’s billion-dollar budget holes (yes, plural) isn’t an attack on women, it is an attack on the entire working class.

It’s also an attack on women, of course; an attack launched by the very woman who passed the initial equity-creating legislation. Brooke Van Velden has, overnight, shot past Maggie Thatcher on the podium to first place for being a “woman’s woman”, scrapping her own gender-equality legislation in order to save her sister-under-another-mister from having to do some slightly difficult sums.

I believe the kids call that “girl maths”.

Emily Davidson died throwing herself in front of a horse to fight for women’s rights. Brooke Van Velden couldn’t even throw herself in front of Luxon’s trembling finger.

Thank goodness Van Velden wasn’t leading the suffragettes. We’d still be chained to the stoves.

Let us look at the realities of what this bill will do: billions that was set to flow into the pockets of underpaid workers will now instead be diverted to defence spending, not even to furnish our troops and personnel with more wages and better conditions, but to replace our aging equipment with equipment that may not even be all that useful by the time the war rolls around.

(And it will roll around.)

source: ACLED

I am not against spending on defence by any stretch; it is desperately needed, well-timed considering the global situation, and I think we should probably be spending even more. But it is nothing but poorly-executed sleight of hand to announce new helicopter purchases one day before clumsily cutting billions of dollars from your budget, setting back union pay negotiations half a decade or more — at least enough time for you to get out of dodge.

It is also a rort to present these wage rises as costing the country too much when the budget blowout was caused by the fated-for-failure taxback for landlords and other high earners that Luxon was told from the start wasn’t costed out properly.

This refund issued to our richest sometimes even included backpay and the coalition rushed legislation through, just as they did tonight, to avoid causing any inconvenience or monetary loss to those who can most afford it, showing just how much more our government cares about donors than voters.

It is a mirage, too, to present the destination for these dollars as pockets, or bank accounts even, because that is not the reality working New Zealanders live. It is not just a woman who misses out on her higher paycheck because of this bill. It is her husband and children, who have a bit less food on the table or a few fewer dolls this Christmas. It is a son or a father sending less money home to his family from overseas. It is a young male healthcare worker still stuck with thousands in student loans, scraping by with cents on the dollar as the repayments come out. It’s all the people working part time who will end up needing emergency assistance or support from foodbanks, or who will miss medical treatments or meals or university classes because they had to work more shifts to make up for money that was promised never came.

Money that was promised to them by Brooke Van Velden, David Seymour, Christopher Luxon, and the Parliament that passed the law granting them it in 2018.

A younger Brooke Van Velden posing with one of the constituents she has broken her promises to.

After 7 years, only two workforces have succeeded in securing pay-rises under this new legislation, but dozens more were in the process and some were very close to finalising agreements. That work has now been wasted; all that time lost. They must start over. Women and workers will have to wait for a Labour government to get back in and treat them like people and not burdens on the state, despite them providing the labour we depend upon to live our luxurious first world lifestyle.

The gap between the haves and the have-nots very nearly shrunk there for a minute.

Thank God Seymour and Luxon had something to say about it.

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From the author:

First, a very big apology for being absent so long and without notice. I promise this substack is in my top three priorities, right after my mental health and my family, both of whom have been very demanding of late.

You may have noticed there have been some name changes around here! I’ve finally fully outed myself after agonising over the decision for several months, mostly because I‘ve messed up and doxxed myself a couple of times already and also because I have zero faith I won’t continue to do it in future.

I’m of the internet safety generation, so it goes against the grain to exist under my real name here or to allow online personas to be linked to me IRL. But politics is old fashioned and proper names are preferred over internet pseudonyms. And I’m nothing if not a people pleaser.

The name of this publication (if I can call it that) then also had to change, as “sapphi’s substack” wasn’t quite communicating… well, anything really. I always meant for it to be a placeholder, like a lot of the bones of this set up, but apparently I have a fear of commitment and an embarrassing inability to invent nomenclature. After coming up blank for several months despite thinking very hard, I caught Winnie’s party address in which he called society woke and the left “Cultural Marxists”, and it was as though lighting had struck.

I was very taken with this term. I thought it communicated such lovely sentiments I snapped it up immediately.

The term “Cultural Marxism” has been bandied about on the internet before as a pejorative for the Woke (full credit to AAVE), but I think being used by a deputy leader of a small country to describe what is really a very normal 21st century society was a big boost of its profile. But I do understand what Winston and the right mean with it — Marxism is about economic equality, about structural economic equality, about creating economies that structurally support equality, and culturally and socially, that has become the world we live in in a number of different spheres.

We’ve agreed we should pay women the same as men and let people love who they love and wear what they want and call themselves what they like and not murder, rape, torture, lock up, imprison, institutionalise, accuse, scorn, shun, shock, and shame them for daring to do so. We’ve agreed racial equality is important, and indigenous equity something our lawmakers should strive for. We’ve even agreed to treat disabled people as if they have individual desires and dreams and needs and wants and problems and personalities and agency — most importantly agency — before this coalition government decided that was just too expensive.

All that to say, I think “leftism” as a name is rather bland and I am happy to identify as a Cultural Marxist instead. What a metal name! I’m sure Winnie meant to summon memories of Soviet-era communist suppression succeeded by economic collapse, but I was born in the 90’s so I missed all that and instead think of Karl Marx as a wise and kind grandfather who’s name I would be proud to take.

I did attempt to roll the changes to this stack out slowly, and by the calendar day I did, but I also posted bugger all in that time so I’m sure as a result my efforts will go mostly unnoticed and this transition will seem as sudden as if I’d done nothing at all.

(I will at least keep the dildo hitting Stephen Joyce and the man atop the snail for a while. I wouldn’t want to disorientate anyone)

Thanks as always to all who read, subscribe and share, and especially for your patience when I disappear in and out of existence. I hope this will mark a more consistent posting schedule if not now then soonish.