Retiring M.P. has long association with Chch

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 14

Retiring M.P. has long association with Chch

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Mrs Mary Batchelor is retiring after 15 years in Parliament representing the eastern suburbs of Christchurch. Unlike many of her colleagues in neighbouring electorates, she was born in Christchurch and has lived there all her life. She was educated at St Mary’s College, and married young, and was eager to return to the paid workforce as soon as her two children reached school age. Today, her daughter is married and lives in Australia with her family, but her son, Gary, still lives and works in Christchurch.

Mrs Batchelor worked in and managed a grocer’s shop in Shirley while her children were young, but later worked in a variety of shops and also demonstrated sewing machines. Her experience as a working mother with young children and later dealing with shop assistants aroused her interest in the trade union movement.

In 1964, she became an organiser with the Clerical Workers’ Union for the Canterbury Trades Council. It was at this point in her life that she became involved in the equal pay issue and that in turn got her politically motivated.

“The union had an 80 per cent female membership yet those women had to work for lower rates of pay than the 20 per cent of members who were men,” she recalls. “That was unjust but I found I couldn’t do anything through the trade union movement as only a few of the male trade unionists were sympathetic.” She was living in the St Albans electorate during the 1960 s and was a

branch chairman and on the L.E.C. She recalls working very hard to get Roger Drayton elected.

Then came 1972, the year that changed her life. Labour Party rules decreed that the longserving member of Parliament for Avon, John Mathison, Minister of Civil Aviation in the Nash Government of 1957-60, had to retire. Mrs Batchelor was one of 20 candidates for the Labour nomination, and won. She swept into Parliament as part of the Labour landslide under Norman Kirk, and held on to Avon when the tide swept Labour out again in 1975. She then spent nearly nine years in Opposition before Labour returned to office in 1984 under Mr Lange. Those nine years were lost years as far as Labour and Mary Batchelor were concerned. In Opposition she was able to change attitudes but was never to hold office. When Labour won in 1984, Christchurch furnished four Cabiner Ministers from its seven Labour members of Parliament, but she was not one of them.

She says the biggest change in her 15 years in Parliament is the improvement in secretarial services for members. There used to be five to every secretary, then three, but today each member of the House has a secretary. “It used to be very difficult to get any work done up here because there was no-one available to type it, and there was no help for us in the electorate either,” she says.

The average constituency problem with which she has had to deal during the 15 years has not

changed much, according to Mrs Batchelor. It is now, as it was then, about individual’s living and coping. But the expectation of people in Parliament has changed.

“There is now a much more effective lobby system, with people making demands on behalf of their group rather than as or for individuals,” she says. "That concerns me because what the lobby groups are saying and getting is often not what the average New Zealander wants or gets.” That criticism she applied to women’s groups as much as any. Women’s groups needed to be cautious or risk alienating the people they approached. But Mrs Batchelor says she has nothing to regret in her 15 years. She sees her main influence, in retrospect, in being to shape policy. “In the early years my main contributions were mostly on women’s issues and in getting my male colleagues to the point where they didn’t, feel threatened,” she says. “When I first got into Parliament there hadn’t been many women here or involved in making the decisions. There was all that raucous bra-burning going on outside and that scared the men in positions of authority whom women needed to influence. I helped convince many of those men that women were not only not raucous but also had ability equal to men which the men needed to recognise.

“I didn’t think so then, but now I know the very vocal and radical women were needed to jolt the male power structure,” Mrs Batchelor says. “The men in power needed to be babied into co-operat-ing as well as jolted.” She remembers doing her stint on many com-

mittees and says she tried to act as a member of Parliament and not just as a woman representing women. Her most influential years were in Opposition after 1975 when she was Labour’s spokeswoman on women’s affairs — an area which has since gained its own Government department.

“But I have never believed in either tokenism or positive discrimination to promote women,” Mrs Batchelor says. “That has

probably held me bacck.”

In retirement she plans to continue to live in' Christchurch, although she hopes to see more of the Australian branch bf her family. She plans to continue to live near the sea and loves walking beside it. She likes a flutter on the horses and says she has every intention of playing lotto.