Blow struck for suffrage

Press, 20 September 1980, Page 1

Blow struck for suffrage

PA Wellington The member of Parliament for Lyttelton (Mrs Ann Hetcus) will remember the eighty-seventh anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand as something of a personal victory. For, by asking the Speaker (Sir Richard Harrison), Mrs Hercus got the photograph of New Zealand’s first woman member of Parliament, Labour’s Mrs Elizabeth Reid McCombs (Lyttelton, 1933-35), moved from an obscure position in the corridors of Parliament to a prestigious position. On Thursday evening, in time for yesterday’s Suffrage Day, the photograph of Mrs- McCombs was moved from the cold of

“Siberia,” a draughty stairway leading to the General Assembly Library — to the wall opposite a painting of the Bill of Rights • and beside. a picture of the Labour Party’s first / leader, t Mr /', Harry Holland, f " A “Ever- since 1 have - been in Parliament I have .said that' when/ I got into a position of authority I would move Elizabeth McCombs from ‘Siberia’,” Mrs Hercus. said, yesterday. • A ■■ To mark, the, occasion, Labour’s three women members, with representatives of Labour’s New

Zealand and women’s councils, placed white camellias, symbolic of the 1893 Suffrage Day, round the picture. At a special breakfast at Parliament, an executive member of the New Zealand Labour Party, Ms Helen Clark, said that women were being selected to the party in the, exact same proportion that they were standing for nomination —■ that is, one to six. The Labour member of Parliament for Avon (Mrs Mary Batchelor) told the gathering that women had to stop talking and start, making decis-ions. In the House, the National member of Parliament for Waipa (Miss Marilyn Waring) made her views known.

Wearing the purple, green, and white suffrage colours, Miss Waring said tttat the House should ■ note that on the eightyseventh ; anniversary of •;;; women’s suffrage; now. asin the past, New Zealand . had. ‘.denied ■ itself -the >: intelligence, experience, sensitivity, and vision of half •> its people in decision-mak- ■ ing, negotiation, planning, and practical action, to the cost, of everyone. The shifting bf the photograph was noted in one of four notices of motion presented to. ‘Parliament yesterday on the suffrage anniversary.