Dannevirke Rural Women meet MP Nicola Grigg

Nicola Grigg, Associate Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Women, popped in to Merrylees Hotel in Dannevirke to talk to Rural Women.

Nicola Grigg is following in the footsteps of her great-grandmother as an MP.

Mary Grigg, the first National woman MP, stepped up to take the seat on the death of her husband in 1942.

“She stepped up because she had a role to play,” says Nicola.

“I’ve always sort of carried that story in the back of my head that if she can do it, I can do it.

“Don’t get me wrong, it is tough out there, but we do it because we have a purpose.”

Nicola was speaking to a group of Rural Women in Dannevirke on her role as associate minister of agriculture.

She told the women she was from a farming background of six generations of farmers.

“I just felt there’s not enough rural representation in Parliament and least of all from rural women.”

She says where she thinks the Government has moved away from the primary producers is passing through laws that are “actually completely and utterly removed from what’s happening at the grassroots”.

She felt it was no coincidence that the laws that didn’t work were a result of having no engagement with the rural sector.

“If you think water policy, if you think about meat, all that stuff, all these things have been really contentious to the rural sector.

“There was no engagement and if there’d been engagement you might have found a happy medium.

“You might have got somewhere down the middle and found something that actually works.”

A lack of engagement with the rural sector was suggested as a reason why some laws didn't work.

Nicola says the Government was now in a phase where it could start to implement its own legislative agenda.

She says looking at New Zealand, the economy was “terribly fragile” with a high inflation rate for a sustained amount of time and high interest rates, leading to confidence being rock bottom.

“Our job is to start removing the red tape, repealing the stuff that hasn’t worked, getting the bureaucracy out of the way and actually creating an environment whereby agriculture can actually have the confidence again, to do business, and, more importantly, the confidence to invest in their business to grow, because we need agriculture to grow.”

She went on to talk about work to review where things were at, and upcoming amendments to the Resource Management Act.

Nicola emphasised the changes being made were all “within the bowels of environmental imperatives”.

“I don’t want anyone to go away thinking we’re going to let farmers have a free ride and you can have your cattle running through the river and it’s all going to be fine.

“But we just believe [that] the pendulum swung too far in one direction. We think that there is a more happy medium whereby there are rules that are put in place to preserve our waterways and preserve our environment, but that we are able to keep producing food. That’s really important.”

Nicola’s other portfolio is minister for women which she says “dovetails” to her agricultural portfolio.

“As you all know, behind every good man is [a] better woman.”

She says she often goes to visit farms and meets the farmer, then his wife who is often the accountant, stock manager, the person who fills in the farm environment plan and the safety audits.

“You’re booking the trucks, getting your kids off to school, you’ve got everything going on.

“You deal with stock agents, you deal with everyone. So you are actually the CEO.”

Nicola says the value of rural women has been “absolutely underrepresented”.

“I think we need to do a body of work about the value of women on farm because nobody has any clues. It’s never been measured because they’re not paid.

“We actually need to get a handle on the economic impact that rural women have, and so that’s a piece of work that’s sort of in the back of my mind.”

Nicola Grigg, Associate Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Women, with Wairarapa MP Mike Butterick felt there had not been enough rural representation in Parliament.

Nicola was currently focusing on closing the gender pay gap, which is currently about 8.7%.

She says at retirement, women will probably have about $300,000 less than their husbands for doing the same job, due to such things as maternity leave, unpaid work or having to work reduced hours.

“There’s always sort of these inequities within the economic structures of this country at the moment. So driving down the pay gap and increasing women’s wealth is really important.”