EMA: “New Zealand can be minor-free by 2050”

by Nicolas Fouquet, New Zealand Gerald’s chief political commentator. Additional distorting by Augustus Finknottle.

The embattled Employers and Manufacturers Association looks set to cause further controversy this week after the leaking of an EMA government briefing document entitled Make Money, not Babies.

The 134-page report outlines radical plans to encourage young New Zealand women to undergo “productivity-realignment surgery” upon leaving school, so as to “maximise their workplace performance” and “outsource the cost-inefficient process of bearing and rearing children”.

The proposals call for an unprecedented raft of industry and government subsidies for women who sign up to the scheme, which is to be called “Babysaver”. These include free tertiary tuition, guaranteed employment and/or deployment on UN peacekeeping missions, and generous grants towards a first home.

According to the document, “The inefficiency of menstruating women in the workforce, the tremendous resources wasted on educating minors, and the cumulative effects of brain drain” mean that the “overall benefit-cost ratio for each child born in New Zealand is 0.4 at best”.

To turn this situation around, the government should invest those resources in attracting “the best talent from around the globe” by recruiting young people “raised and educated in other countries”. Female new arrivals to New Zealand would be given free productivity-realignment surgery as part of a revamped “Welcome Package” which would also feature fast-tracked citizenship and lifetime EMA membership.

The resulting savings on “obstetric and paediatric healthcare, child and youth services, kindergartens and schools” would be used to fund attractive salary packages for migrants, yielding a “substantially superior overall return on taxpayer investment”.

If the government adopts all the recommendations contained in Make Money, not Babies, the EMA is confident that New Zealand will be “minor-free by 2050” and one of the world’s best-performing economies.

The leaked document is likely to provoke further anger against the EMA in a week that has seen demonstrators hurl (unused) tampons at its Auckland office in protest against the inflammatory remarks made by the association’s CEO, Alasdair Thompson, last Thursday. Thompson, who is also the country’s most famous after-dinner speaker, told a talkback radio host that women were less productive in the workforce because of their periods and child-bearing tendencies.

While Green Party co-leader and Australian Russel Norman criticized the EMA’s proposals as being “shithouse”, the Prime Minister’s office described the document as “not without merit”.

Meanwhile, Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly confirmed Sunday that she had been confronted by Thompson in 2009 about her relationship with John Key, in Washington, DC.

At a dinner at McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant – about which Thompson reportedly quipped: “The name alone is a mouthful” – Thompson approached Kelly and allegedly made lewd comments about the relationship she had with Key, who married his wife Bronagh when he and the First Lady were both teenagers.

When asked to comment on the allegations the Prime Minister’s office described them as “not not without merit”.

According to the New Zealand Herald’s source, who was present at the dinner, “[Thompson] asked [Kelly] what the relationship was between her and John Key. There was sexual innuendo. Then he said he asked John Key, the last time he saw him, [if] he [Key] fancied Helen.”

The source said Kelly was visibly upset by the comments and told Thompson: “That’s disgusting.”

As Kelly walked away, Thompson allegedly shouted: “It’s a joke. You’re beautiful, you know.” According to the Herald, Kelly has confirmed the account. She would not comment further on the incident.

The EMA did comment on Thompson’s latest gaffe, dismissing it as a bit of harmless fun. In an unprecedented move, Thompson will today be asked to explain himself to the board without the aid of sexist jokes and is no longer allowed to speak to female members of the media.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for Thompson: he is now more in demand than ever as an after-dinner speaker and is about to embark on a 6-month nationwide tour of working men’s clubs.