Media

‍Launch media + Committee Members and Advisers

Stuff:

Former MPs release scathing review into the Government’s pay equity law changes | Stuff

Law News

Report slams government’s pay equity reforms as ‘secretive, ‘mischievous’ and negotiated in bad faith - Law News

Herald

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/calls-for-political-parties-to-make-repealing-pay-equity-changes-a-bottom-line/5HUT2AVO2NHKBJCFSXASX6NGC4/

The Spinoff feb 24  Alice Neville

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/24-02-2026/pay-equity-select-committee-finds-flagrant-and-significant-abuse-of-power

Nanaia Mahuta

https://waateanews.com/2026/02/26/equity-mahuta-highlights-maori-impact-in-peoples-select-committee-pay-equity-findings/

Lynne Pillay

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/19-01-2026/the-pay-equity-changes-push-rural-services-closer-to-the-brink

https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/02/27/nzers-with-disabilities-expedient-collateral-in-cancelling-pay-equity-deals/

Lianne Dalziel

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/05/28/why-ive-joined-ex-mps-on-a-peoples-select-committee/

https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/02/25/parties-need-to-spell-out-pay-equity-intentions-in-election-year/

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/08/13/this-helps-make-the-struggle-for-pay-equity-real/

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/15/a-ramraid-no-one-was-expecting-outrage-over-pay-equity-changes/

Steve Chadwick

Pay equity change a 'real slap in the face' to women - Newsroom

Ria Bond

https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360953302/what-pay-equity-means-when-youve-lived-without-it

Sue Bradbury

'The battle for pay equity' with Kera Sherwood-O'Regan (DPA) & Amy Ross (TEU)a recording of this session will be made available eventually on the Te Tiriti-Based Futures website -   https://www.tiritibasedfutures.info/

4,000 word article The People's Select Committee on Pay Equity: A project in participatory democracy for publication in Foreign Control Watchdog.  https://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/  (Yet to be posted)

Marilyn Waring

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/07-10-2025/a-matter-of-social-justice-the-old-men-of-1972-who-got-pay-equity-right

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/04-02-2026/marilyn-waring-librarians-work-is-essential-and-still-treated-as-expendable

https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/12-06-2025/marilyn-waring-why-i-convened-the-peoples-select-committee-on-pay-equity

Karanina Sumeo

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/14-01-2026/how-the-pay-equity-reset-erased-years-of-progress-for-pacific-communities

Len Cook on Substack

https://open.substack.com/pub/statschap/p/the-day-that-challenged-governments?r=3s7zau&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Radio NZ

Nine to Noon Marilyn Waring

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2019017469/marilyn-waring-on-take-her-pay-equity-fight-to-the-people

Summer Weekends – Karanina Sumeo

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/the-weekend/audio/2019020257/saunoamaali-i-dr-karanina-sumeo-on-the-pay-equity-committee

Nine to Noon RNZ

Jackie Blue, Marilyn Waring

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2019024318/people-s-select-committee-releases-report-into-pay-equity

RNZ Checkpoint

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2019024374/formers-mps-say-pay-equity-changes-should-be-repealed

The Platform – Sue Bradford with Michael Laws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAtrV7wco38

NewstalkZB

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/audio/dame-marilyn-waring-former-national-mp-on-the-final-report-into-the-governments-pay-equity-law-changes/

Mikes Minute 

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/opinion/mikes-minute-whats-not-being-said-about-pay-equity/

Opinion Pieces

ODT Editorial Opinion

Fronting up on pay equity | Otago Daily Times Online News (paywall)

David Burton: The Troubling Legacy of Overturning Pay Equity Agreements. March 4, 2026.

https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/360958827/troubling-legacy-overturning-pay-equity-agreements  (paywall)

Ian Taylor:  

Rushed legislation, forgotten women, and the triumphant return of the word 'pillock'

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360683636/sir-ian-taylor-rushed-legislation-forgotten-women-and-triumphant-return-word-pillock

Martyn Bradbury

https://thedailyblog.co.nz/the-report-on-act-kneecapping-pay-parity-is-grim-reading/

Rob Campbell

https://ww.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360951511/sensible-strategic-non-political-case-pay-equity--

Dexter Tilo – Human Resources Director  (paywall)

https://www.hcamag.com/nz/specialisation/diversity-inclusion/government-urged-to-repeal-equal-pay-bill-amendments/566553

Human Rights Commission

https://waateanews.com/2026/02/25/national-pay-equity-law-changes-undermine-human-rights-committee-told/

https://tikatagata.org.nz//news/peoples-select-committee-on-pay-equity-report-confirms-law-changes-undermine-human-rights

Political Parties

Greens

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2602/S00150/greens-welcome-launch-of-peoples-select-committee-report-on-pay-equity.htm

Act and Labour

Brooke van Velden suggests new report on pay equity ‘a waste of time’, Labour cautiously endorses repeal | The Post  (paywall)

Interest.co.nz feb 25

https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/137349/labour-vows-repeal-pay-equity-changes-stops-short-full-blueprint

Morning Report, wed 25

Weekly Political Panel for 25 February 2026 Nicola Willis https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/587875/pay-equity-backlash-is-hyperbole-finance-minister-says

Union Responses

PSA

https://community.scoop.co.nz/2026/02/pay-equity-peoples-committee-does-what-govt-refused-to-and-exposes-its-betrayal-of-women/

TEU

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2602/S00144/report-shows-national-act-and-nz-first-betrayed-nz-women.htm

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED2603/S00008/teu-calls-on-tertiary-leaders-to-back-pay-equity-this-international-working-womens-day.htm

E Tu

https://waateanews.com/2026/02/25/national-e-tu-backs-peoples-select-committee-call-to-repeal-equal-pay-amendment-act/

LIANZ  Library Association

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2602/S00591/the-library-association-welcomes-the-report-of-the-peoples-select-committee-on-pay-equity.htm

NZNO

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE2506/S00008/nzno-backs-peoples-pay-equity-select-committee.htm

National Union of Public  Employees

https://www.nupe.org.nz/post/pay-equity-in-crisis-what-the-people-s-select-committee-revealed-about-the-2025-law-change

Health Care Workers

https://kaitiaki.org.nz/article/business-lobbyists-code-names-and-treaty-breaches-peoples-voice-damning-on-pay-equity/

https://kaitiaki.org.nz/article/dont-be-defeated-thats-what-they-want-government-blasted-at-pay-equity-report-launch/

https://kaitiaki.org.nz/article/purple-passion-a-week-of-health-care-workers-showing-their-true-colours/

Employers

Aged Care Sector

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2602/S00145/aged-care-sector-reiterates-commitment-to-equitable-pay-for-care-workforce.htm

NGOs

BPW

https://waateanews.com/2026/03/13/national-bpw-nz-welcomes-peoples-select-committee-report-on-pay-equity/

Rural Women NZ

Pay Equity Crucial for Rural Communities - RWNZ

‍

The People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity release their findings at 10am today  (February 24, 2026) at the National Library, Wellington.

The Committee of 10 cross party former women Members of Parliament received 1390 substantive submissions and held 3 months of hearings on the pay equity legislation enacted by the Coalition Government in May, 2025.

They describe the processes of planning for and enacting the Equal Pay Amendment 2025 as  “a flagrant and significant abuse of power”.

The Committee found breaches of: the Regulatory Standards Act principles, the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee Guidelines, the New Zealand Bill of Rights, the Human Rights Act, ILO Convention 100, the International Covenants on Civil and Political, and Economic and Social Rights, CEDAW, the UN women’s Convention, and the Conventions on the Rights of People with Disabilities and the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

The Committee found the retrospective cancellation of existing rights and remedies was a serious violation of the rule of law. Funded sector employers, charitable organisations and unions spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours, with other resource consequences, on the 33 cancelled claims.

The Committee found that no evidence was produced in any of the accessible Cabinet documents, in press statements or in the parliamentary debates, to support the demolition of the world’s leading pay equity regime.

The Committee found that no budget savings were made in cutting pay equity – the funds were reallocated to other government expenditure and Coalition Government priorities.

No Minister, or briefing bureaucrat, and no speaker in the parliamentary debate, demonstrated any knowledge of how comparators (librarians with fisheries officers)and factor scoring work.

The Committee found that it is a sophisticated, highly rigorous process of co-research between worker and employer negotiators. The only evidence of attempts to game the system the Committee could see were in the behaviours of government agencies.

.

The full report will be available on the PSCPE website at 10.00am February 24.

The event will be live streamed and  can be accessed on the PSCPE website www.payequity.org

The Timeline of key moments in Aotearoa’s pay equity system - What changed, when, and why it matters - can also be accessed on the PSCPE website www.payequity.org

For more information please contact Pamela Fleming, 0274575677

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