So very pleased to see this. An excellent speech.
One point of information - women's suffrage in NZ wasn't a principled decision, it was a mistake that was left to fix itself. Which it didn't. Political posturing if you like.
This is is taken from "Joseph on Administration and Constitutional Law" by Philip Joseph, page 190.
"New Zealand has experienced three periods of profound social and economic transition. Reformist state programmes were introduced from the beginning of the 1890s, from the mid 1930s and from the mid 1980s. Yet neither were these programmes the triumph of any state philosophy or doctrine. The first great reform period (1890-1900s) distinguished New Zealand as the "chosen land of the most daring experiments". The colony pioneered state regulation of labour disputes through conciliation and arbitration, and introduced a workers' compensation scheme and comprehensive factory and welfare legislation. But again, political opportunism rather than national planning was the driver. The celebrated electoral reform that enfranchised women in 1893 was, for the Liberal Government, unintentionally passed into law. Agitation by women's groups convinced Ballance to commit his Government to universal suffrage, although most ministers privately opposed the idea. After Ballance's death in 1893, an Electoral Bill was introduced and Sir John Hall moved an amendment to enfranchise women. Seddon, who had succeeded Ballance, let the Bill pass, confident the upper house would reject it and reap the consequent opprobrium. To the Government's surprise, the Bill was passed - women had the vote. "The Act was due ... not at all to a vote of principle", commented the French political observer, Andre Siegfried. Siegfried visited New Zealand in 1904 and was driven to dwell on its political tradition. He observed in its public figures a "contempt for theories" and an obsession for "immediate and practical results".
"What the New Zealanders most need", he wrote, "[were] principles, convictions, reasoned beliefs".
An interesting little nugget.