THE PEOPLE’S SELECT COMMITTEE ON PAY EQUITY:
A Project In Participatory Democracy
Watchdog no. 171 (May 2026)
Disclaimer: Please note that although I reference the work of the Committee, I am not writing this article on behalf of the PSCPE but from my own political and personal standpoint.
On 6 May 2025 the Coalition Government of National, ACT and NZ First passed legislation overturning existing pay equity legislation and stopping 33 existing claims in their tracks. That night the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 was passed under urgency. This meant there was to be no select committee or public consultation process at all.
Minister Brooke van Velden and other Government representatives were unrepentant in their support for the new law. It became immediately obvious that their key motivation was financial. They saw potential costs to Government of many billions of dollars arising from existing claims, and wanted to shift this money to other parts of the Budget which was due to be delivered later that month.
When I heard the Minister defending her actions on the night of 7 May I was outraged. Up to 180,000 low-paid workers, mainly women, would be directly affected by this raid on the likely success of claims which would bring historically undervalued sections of the workforce up to pay parity with male-dominated professions. Women MPs who had earlier supported pay equity in nice speeches inside and outside Parliament were now defending – or staying silent – about what many of us saw as indefensible.
The next day I received a call from Marilyn Waring, feminist economist and former National MP, famed for her key role in Muldoon’s decision to call a snap election in 1984. She asked if I’d be willing to join her and eight other former women MPs from different parties to create a People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity, tasked with running the processes of public submission, consideration and deliberation that the Government should have done itself.
I could hardly say anything but “yes” even though the work was to be completely unpaid and would eat up a lot of time I could barely spare from existing commitments. The breach of faith with women, low-paid workers and their families was so outrageous that it felt an honour to be part of such a considered and potentially impactful response.
Shortly afterwards, Marilyn announced the official formation of the People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity (PSCPE). Members included four former National MPs: Marilyn Waring, Jackie Blue, Jo Hayes and Belinda Vernon; four former Labour MPs: Lianne Dalziel, Steve Chadwick, Nanaia Mahuta and Lynne Pillay; former NZ First MP Ria Bond; and Sue Bradford (former Green MP).
Like any regular select committee, ours had no chance of genuinely carrying out the tasks ahead without the support of experienced, qualified staff and administrative backing. We were aiming to emulate the quality of the standard Parliamentary process as closely as possible, starting from a financial resource base of zero. In the first few weeks, a Give A Little page raised $40,000, but this covered just a fraction of the true costs. Without the voluntary time and effort of almost all concerned, the project would never have got off the ground, much less succeeded.
We were incredibly fortunate to have the support of Beth Bowden, Len Cook, Morgan James-Tresidder, Anna MacLean, Saunoamaal’i Dr Karanina Sumeo and Bess Sutherland who worked steadily as secretariat, advisers and researchers throughout the PSCPE process. Amy Ross, one of the country’s leading experts in pay equity, was appointed as a specialist adviser. The project would have come to nothing without their contributions. The former women MPs played a necessary role but would have achieved nothing without their expertise, time and tenacious commitment to the project.
Within three weeks of the passing of the new law, a website was set up and submissions called for. Our main areas of focus were to:
Gather, review and evaluate evidence that should have been presented to Parliament had the Equal Pay Amendment Act not been rushed through under urgency.
Review the Government’s reasons for changing the law and for discontinuing 33 claims that were already in process.
Identify flaws in the legislation.
Make recommendations for ways and means to take remedial actions in both international forums and under domestic law, including measures that would learn from and improve past pay equity processes. (People's Select Committee on Pay Equity, 2026)
By the time the submission period ended the Committee had received nearly 1,400 substantive submissions. To hear the oral submissions 30 hours of hearings took place, spread out over a number of weeks. The first hearing was held in person in Pōneke while the rest took place online. All were live streamed and available afterwards. (Equity, 2026).
The PSCPE actively sought submissions not just from unions, workers, women’s and human rights organisations but also from business and employer groups. Various rightwing media accused us of not being interested in the views of “the other side”. In fact, we invited and welcomed all perspectives and were genuinely trying to grapple with how and why parties and organisations who had earlier supported pay equity had now turned their backs on what had been world-leading progress for women workers.
There were many emotional, surprising and profound moments as we listened to submitters. Workers talked about the despair they felt when a claim they’d been working on for years was tossed out overnight, and of how the undervaluation inherent in their claim was now intensified by the open contempt in which this country’s Government viewed them.
Women’s, Māori, Pasifika, disabled peoples, human rights, community sector organisations, unions and employers offered a wide range of personal insights as well as broader analysis and research. The PSCPE’s final report carries many highlights from submitters. All submissions are available on the website. I encourage anyone with an interest to browse these sources and see or hear for yourself what people told us. The final report of the PSCPE, including a pay equity timeline, copies of submissions and a wealth of other background material is available at its website https://www.payequity.org.nz/
What struck me was how seriously people took the whole process. We knew very well that we weren’t the real thing and never pretended otherwise. It would have come as no surprise to any of us if people had felt it wouldn’t be worth putting time and effort into a submission that was simply part of some half-hearted attempt to replicate a Parliamentary procedure.
In fact, the opposite happened. Looking back at the quality, intensity and integrity of the submissions made, the process felt as serious and as worthy as any of those undertaken by select committees that I’d been through as a sitting MP. While the hearings rolled on from August to October 2025, work was also underway to research the background to all aspects of the questions under investigation in preparation for pulling a maximum amount of analysis and information together into a coherent final report.
On Tuesday 24 February 2026 the Report was launched at the National Library in Wellington to an overflowing crowd of submitters, supporters and media. The Committee then walked across the road to the Women’s Select Committee room at Parliament. There we presented the report in person to a small group of women MPs from the Labour, Green and National Parties, with time for follow up questions and discussion.
The full report of the PSCPE comes in at some 175 pages. The website also contains an enormous amount of background material. There are a plethora of media articles and reports. I invite readers to dive into these sources if you would like to explore any or all aspects of what we uncovered during our inquiry. Core chapter headings in the Report provide an overview of the scope of what was heard, researched and analysed. The Committee’s recommendations are not summarised in one place but are included as part of the relevant sections.
The Rule of Law and Good Law-Making
Pay Equity as a Human Right
Labour Market Experience and Economics
Pay equity, Kaupapa Māori and the Treaty
Pasifika Voices
The Employers’ Predicament
Fishing and Finding: Comparing Jobs
Against the Evidence: Examining Changes to the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025
There is no point in my trying to summarise everything here as you can go straight to the sections of the report online which interest you most. However, I will offer readers some takeaways from the key points made by Committee members at the February launch, to give you a flavour of what we heard and recommended.
Submitters were highly critical of the processes used by Government in passing this law.
There was no warning, consultation, select committee process, regulatory impact statement, evidence, or analysis presented.
The 33 claims already in process on 6 May 2025 were literally cancelled overnight, retrospectively.
The review terms of existing settlements were rewritten and the bar for future claims was raised very high.
Parliamentary urgency was not used to address a crisis, but to avoid public scrutiny.
As Lianne Dalziel said: “The only time constraint was self-imposed and the only timeframes driving the process were those that required decisions to be made in time for the law to pass before the Budget. This was clearly the real reason for the approach”.
The Committee recommended:
Changes to the use of urgency, focusing on whether there actually is an emergency.
A better approach to pay equity as a human right.
That changes to employment law should require a minimum period of consultation including targeted engagement with those impacted.
Submitters made the case that the new Act conflicted with the NZ Bill of Rights Act along with international treaties, including:
UN conventions on discrimination against women; economic, cultural and social rights; disability rights; civil and political rights; and racial discrimination.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention.
Serious concerns were raised about the reputational risk for the Government internationally because of what it had done, and about the Ombudsman declining Official Information Act requests for the release of redacted human rights sections in Cabinet papers which prioritised fiscal concerns over justice for some 180,000 workers. As Jackie Blue reported, the Committee found that:
The Government knowingly and willingly breached its international legal commitments under treaties on discrimination against women; cultural, social and economic rights – along with civil and political rights.
The Government did not consider its international legal commitments around disability rights.
The Committee recommended that NZ’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) representatives work together for a ruling on the compliance of the 2025 Act with ILO Convention 100.
A key feature of the 2025 Act was the cancellation of 33 existing pay equity claims that had been lodged legally under the law at the time. Employers and unions that had been negotiating in good faith were told to resubmit under the new rules after 6 May 2025, if they still qualified. One of the most egregious aspects of this was that the Committee’s research showed that Ministers were doing the work behind the scenes to scupper the claims via the new law at the same time as employer and union parties were still being asked to participate in the process.
People continued to work for months in good faith, gathering information, consulting lawyers and committing time, energy and money to the pay equity process while the Government was fully aware of the change it was about to implement. As Belinda Vernon said: “The financial and emotional costs were significant. We agreed with submitters that the cancellation of claims lodged legitimately under the law existing at the time was not fair, was not just and was not justified”.
I spoke about this at the launch, saying that one of the most damaging changes made by the new law was the shift from arguability to merit right at the start of the claims process. What “arguability” means in this context is that from 2020 onwards unions could start a claim by briefly laying out key information about why they believed there was current and/or historic sex-based undervaluation taking place in a particular workforce. Claimants were expected to demonstrate historic, socially constructed, systemic disadvantage.
Employers then had 45 days to decide whether a union’s claim was “arguable”– that is, that the workers may have a case. Employers were required legally to take a “light touch” approach when they made the decision about whether to agree to proceed. If agreed, they would then go on to carry out a rigorous process of investigating the claim together with the union, to discover whether undervaluation was proven, and if so, by how much.
The 2025 reform got rid of this concept of “arguability” and talks about “merit” instead. Now unions have to basically prove their claim right at the start. In other words, sex-based undervaluation has to be substantively proven by one party, the workers, right at the beginning, before a claim can even get underway. As Te Pāti Māori said in its submission: “This turns a fair entry point into a legal barricade. This isn’t about making the system better; it’s about making it unreachable”. Many submitters told us it was highly unlikely their groups of workers would be able to make new claims at all in the face of this and other changes.
Lynne Pillay spoke movingly about the impact of the 2025 amendment on people with disabilities and those who support them. She said: “The Government didn’t just move the goalposts; it took them right off the paddock.” The Committee heard from submitters that:
People are in despair at the Government valuing cost-cutting over their lives, and the lives of the people who care for them.
The system runs on a workforce that is mostly women, and is chronically underpaid.
In a low paid and underfunded sector, the unions involved spent hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars while the Government was already planning to kill the claims.
Workers feel betrayed, and disability services are at a crisis point.
Disabled people are losing safety, stability and dignity.
Lynne also talked about the impact of the pay equity changes on rural communities. She reported that:
In their submission, three-quarters of Rural Women NZ members said they were deeply concerned about these reforms and fear for the survival of rural services in health, education and disability support.
Rural primary care nurses earn up to 35% less than hospital nurses.
43% of GP practices report nursing vacancies, with rural areas being hit hardest.
A pay equity claim for 120 rural midwives was wiped out overnight.
Rural communities feel abandoned.
Jo Hayes told the launch that Kaupapa Māori submissions were both very clear and diverse, providing both criticism and solutions through their kōrero. They requested Government to “not just embed Te Tiriti into the legislation but in all pay equity frameworks”, and asked that “treaty-based solutions be codesigned with Māori through genuine partnership”.
Submitters called for, among other things:
Intersectional and Māori-lead analysis in all workforce and pay equity policy making.
Government funding and partnership with wāhine Māori organisations to lead equity audits in education, health and social services.
That Government departments and funders apply pay equity principles across all contracted providers, including Māori and iwi providers.
That the Te Oruwaru factor scoring system (created over years of pay equity claim developmental mahi) be embedded across public and NGO sectors to ensure Māori-led evaluation.
The PSCPE noted the WAI 2700 inquiry which centres on the alleged denial of the inherent mana of wāhine Māori, and the systematic discrimination, deprivation and inequities they have endured. The Committee has been in touch with the Waitangi Tribunal and others standing with the Inquiry. All our submissions, research and findings will be available for the WAI 2700 claim.
Steve Chadwick began her kōrero at the launch by saying: “None of us will forget Tony McComb’s submission at our opening here in the National Library. He reminded us that his great-grandmother, Elizabeth McCombs (the first woman elected to the NZ Parliament), said in her maiden speech in 1933, ‘I wish to work for the women and children of this country, and I hope to see the day when women will receive equal pay for equal work’”. He continued: ‘Here we are in 2025 … if she were here today, she would be appalled’".
Steve went on to report that one of the strongest features of the Committee hearings was the number of young people who made submissions. Some spoke movingly about their frustration of losing the hope of ever gaining pay equity in their current job. Others talked about being put off training in women-dominated professions because they couldn’t afford to take on student loans for jobs like nursing, caregiving, teaching and social work where inequities continue and the ability to continue or make new claims had just been wiped out.
We had many submissions from Pasifika workers and frequently heard the statistic that for every dollar a Pākehā man earns a Pasifika woman earns 75 cents, amounting to half a million dollars over a lifetime. As one submitter noted, the 2025 Act “robs our communities of long overdue justice”. Steve said: “We know that pay gaps remain hidden, unmeasured and politically unaddressed. This allows inequity to persist unchallenged. Mandatory reporting and recording – especially for Pacific women – was one of the strongest and most consistent recommendations”. As Steve spoke, I noticed a Pasifika woman in the front row of the launch with tears streaming down her face. It was hard not to cry myself, at what has been lost.
Submitters from aged care, disability support, health, education support, libraries, veterinary nursing and the community sector described persistent vacancies, high turnover, and increasing reliance on migrant labour simply to maintain minimum service levels. Submitters reported:
Vacancy rates in double digits.
Constant churn in the workforce.
Ongoing recruitment and retraining costs becoming a permanent feature of operations.
Experienced workers leaving for Australia for better pay.
Qualified workers exiting for higher-paid male-dominated sectors.
Younger workers not training or entering the workforce because the income doesn’t justify the cost of training or the cost of living.
As Ria Bond said: “This is not a temporary labour shortage. It is a structural workforce imbalance. If we align pay equity with workforce and immigration strategy, we strengthen domestic supply, reduce churn, improve service stability and lower long-term fiscal risk. This is not simply about fairness. It is about workforce sustainability, labour market integrity, fiscal prudence and upholding the dignity of both workers and those they serve. The submitters made this connection very clear”.
Nanaia Mahuta was unable to attend the launch due to an aircraft delay but forwarded a copy of her brief on what we’d heard regarding employer perspectives on pay equity. She noted:
In effect, the changes grant employers veto power over any new pay equity investigations. It is important to remember the Government is talking about itself as the major employer of the vast number of workers for whom pay equity claims have been cancelled.
Only one private sector employer had been party to a pay equity claim from a private sector union – Workers’ First, representing veterinary nurses. Their employing bodies did not make a submission.
The new act prohibits workers from raising new claims for ten years without any review period.
Employers are permitted to withdraw from multi-employer claims at will, with no requirement to provide reasons or opportunity for challenge.
Nanaia said: “In effect, these changes grant employers veto power over pay equity investigations through a rigid comparator process. If no ‘suitable’ male comparators exist within the same profession, as is common in female-dominated sectors such as nursing and teaching (including many Māori and Pacific sectors), women are left at significant risk of remaining underpaid, perpetuating hardship and inequity”.
Marilyn Waring was the final speaker at the launch. She offered a succinct description of the comparator process that had been developed over years of joint efforts by employers and unions to develop and agree a good faith pay equity bargaining process, which began with extensive and in-depth work assessment interviews of workers Key points included:
Both parties had trained interviewers and worked together.
Employers and unions analysed the interview data to build an agreed role profile that was then scored according to 15 factors across skills and experience, responsibilities, effort and working conditions. This was collaborative, time-consuming work.
When scoring was completed, the parties moved to the comparator phase, where they could choose from an extensive list of comparators from settled claims – for example customs officers, railway engineers, cadastral surveyors, air traffic controllers, fisheries officers – or look for new comparators.
Once both parties had chosen and agreed on appropriate comparators, research work was done for the claimant’s and the comparator’s roles through a detailed factor scoring system.
Marilyn concluded: “The Committee found no evidence to support the Government’s suggestion that ‘claims have been able to progress without strong evidence of undervaluation’. What we found was a world-leading human rights vehicle, and a robust pay equity assessment methodology with incredible research integrity, ethical practice, detailed planning, and built-in cooperative inquiry. Yes – you can compare librarians with fisheries officers. The system is full of checks and balances. It is a highly rigorous, meticulous system that saw New Zealand placed as a world leader in working to overcome the historic and ongoing exploitation of women workers”.
The People’s Select Committee on Pay Equity has been an interesting experience where two very different political trajectories in my life (community-based activist/MP) have in some ways come together. I have often thought about how the PSCPE compares with other efforts in participatory democracy in which I’ve been involved, particularly the six-month-long Alternative Welfare Working Group (AWWG) project, which culminated in the launch of its “Welfare Justice” report in December 2010.
The PSCPE has been a very different experience, although there were inherent similarities: the appointment of a group of comparatively high-profile individuals to seek and hear submissions; the provision of secretarial and administrative support from some supporting organisations; and the production of a final substantive report based on a mix of submissions heard and research carried out by committee/working group members and support crew.
The Committee was hugely reliant on the reputation of Marilyn Waring to both drive its formation and lead its processes. Her role as someone who could recruit former women MPs from four divergent parties and gain the support of some of the most qualified people in the country in their different skillsets as a volunteer labour force would be hard to replicate in other circumstances, at least on this scale.
The quality and experience of those involved in the project and the support it gleaned from unions, women’s organisations, human rights groups and many other individuals and organisations gave it the ability to recreate as close a simulacrum to a real Parliamentary select committee as you could hope to achieve. We were assisted by our own Committee Clerk; a former Government Statistician; top pay equity experts; communications and media advisers – and more.
The PSCPE did have similar issues with funding to those many community-based initiatives face. While there was a surge of donations at the start, and a few organisations offered some paid staff time, the project was not well-resourced. I was acutely aware of the irony of a group of (mainly) women working for free in the name of helping end the chronic undervaluation of women’s work.
The big question will now be: to what extent will the work of the Committee influence and assist the fundamental goal of returning our country to a just, rigorous and workable pay equity regime? This will be the true measure of any longer-term impact it may have. But already we see the potential of its research, submissions and reports in backing human rights work internationally and the WAI 2700 Inquiry locally. Unions and other organisations have a plethora of rigorous research and recommendations with which to advocate for not only a return to a functional pay equity system but also an improved one. MPs and political parties who support the kaupapa have ready-made material for Parliamentary questions and further policy development.
There has also been a sense of energy and movement building around the project which has crossed some of that tricky Parliamentary/street organising edginess. I believe the PSCPE has contributed to developing a sense of unity and solidarity between and across traditional union/non-union and political party boundaries, at least on this issue. It is, after all, a matter of justice for all women, and for all workers in affected occupations, not a kaupapa necessarily trapped on the left-right spectrum. I would like to thank everyone who has been part of this project for everything you’ve done. It has been a great example of solidarity in action across some surprising lines at times. Ngā mihi nui kia a koutou.
Sue Bradford is a lifelong activist and organiser, with a particular focus on issues around unemployment, poverty, low-wage workers and families. She was a Green MP for ten years (1999 – 2009). She currently works for Kōtare Research and Education for Social Change in Aotearoa.↩︎
Watchdog 171 -- May 2026
Non-Members:
It takes a lot of work to compile and write the material presented on these pages. If you value the information, please send a donation to the address below to help us continue the work.
Foreign Control Watchdog, PO Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa.
Email