"I made a submission opposing the Civil Union legislation. Marriage is a civil and political right, and civil and political rights are not negotiable. You can't have half a right."

"Those who can move from understanding the concerns of lower-paid urban omen workers in desperate need of child care to understanding isolated rural women at the end of metal roads who want extensions to bus routes; from noticing the absence of Maori explorers and pioneers from our history syllabus to observing that the same history is a record of only 49 per cent of the New Zealand population - these people are exceptional humans and rare souls in politics. Wherever they are found, they are more likely to be women."

"Women instinctively have the potential for a broader consciousness of politics than men. Our lives are more varied and less circumscribed. We do more things at any one time, in spite of the common myths, and generally have more responsibility."

"I want women to be politically aware all the time, in every conscious moment, in everything they do; and at the same time I know how exhausting it is to be so aware. I know how frustrating it is to feel so powerless. I know how it is to feel defeated before you start. But I want women to progress to a point where they recognise all the politics in their lives, to a point where the awareness is instinctive and need not be excessive, and to a point where they learn to choose political priorities, and to know that often there is not enough energy left for more than a patient observing."

"I am still afraid of getting too tired, of giving up. I am still afraid of staying in the job, and afraid of leaving it."

"Running in all weathers. Running to the place of work. Running to despair. Running through the bottom door of the old building directly to the bathroom to be sick. Every day the same, and no way to control it. Every day my body saying, 'I can't stomach this anymore.'"

"And I start to dream - about the activities of women for temperance and the suffrage in this country, and about the activism of women for peace and disarmament; and I wonder if our great-grandmothers would have believed suffrage would be almost universal, and if we dare to dream of a world without nuclear weapons, without weapons, with peace."

"The problems do not lie with female sport and leisure, but with the ways in which the male world and male sport creates and defines the ideological and material conditions that prescribe the female world. As in so much of life, it is time to stand back and object to incremental integration into the male world. Sport, recreation and leisure have a different meaning for women; we should act on the basis of our interpretation."

"I don't believe we shall ever be finished."

"If you got this far, I want you to go on. Kia kaha tuahine - sister, be strong."

"It can also be rich and fulfilling."

"We can't look back nostalgically as some are wont to do, to failed remedies of the past. We must keep up, keep going, keep progressing."

"This is an extraordinary set of circumstances that currently prevail. I think we must wait and see what occurs."

"I don't think that we should try and beat history."

"The way to solve it is not necessarily becoming more liberal but rather trying to find ways that both educate, treat people who are clearly ill and deny access where that's possible."

"Let this year be one where parties say what they stand for, not against. Let's get rid of the whingeing and weak criticism which occurs for the sake of it."

"We have a record. We intend to deliver."

"The Government knows that New Zealanders need a sense of certainty and security about their publicly funded health services. We all need to know that publicly funded services will be there when we need them."

"Government programmes are making a positive difference, not a negative one. We must ask the right questions and expect answers."

"Most New Zealanders are colourful and determined people, ambitious, forward looking, energetic and productive, caring and compassionate."

"Let us prove ourselves as good as any man, and better than some."

"Upon her reception to the Wellington women's branch of the Labour Party: "The women of New Zealand have at last arrived,""

"I am a very ordinary type of woman, but I can get on with all women, irrespective of their political outlook."

"Regarding her father, Edwin John Howard, a member of the Canterbury General Labourers' Union and Labour MP for Christchurch South:"I am what I am because of the training my father gave me,""

"I am going to work really hard to improve health conditions in New Zealand, because I think it is work which can best be handled by a woman."

"...in a better sanitary condition than any in the North Island."

"I think women are quite as well able to legislate as men..."

"I am most anxious to make a change in the way business is carried on. There is in both borough councils and in Parliament too, a great deal too much talk...Men often get up and talk at these meetings just to waste time..."

"No woman, however degraded, but should have women to look after them."

"Most emphatically I am not a prohibitionist."

"I would like to warn honourable members, however, that women are never satisfied unless they have their own way. It happens in this case that the woman’s way is the right way."

"There is no reason why a woman should not receive the same pay for the same work as a man. To argue otherwise is to argue against justice."

"Poverty is not the fault of the poor. It is the fault of a system that allows idleness at the top and starvation at the bottom."

"Forget I am a member of the Labour Party and remember that I am a woman"

"I do hope that the women of New Zealand will realise...I will be their representative first."

"Hastings is a great place to do business and we are proactively attracting new business to the District and supporting existing businesses. We are managing growth well, through an efficient, effective maintained infrastructure programme. We have land available for development, a secure water supply and fertile growing soils. We are investing"

"This year will see significant projects for safeguarding our drinking water including the construction of Waiaroha (the water storage and education centre), the Frimley water storage and treatment facility and the completion of seven of our small community’s water infrastructure installations"

"Major growth infrastructure projects will continue for our roads, cycleways, footpaths and significant housing milestones are approaching such as the start of our Hastings Medium Term Housing Strategy with our partners, government and iwi and Hastings’ first spatial plan."

"Not one more acre."

"She was the person that galvanised all the array of different issues, opinions, claims, angsts that different communities had had around alienation of land, loss of authority and she really encapsulated that into the march and the term not one more acre."

"Dame Whina was very strong willed and believed in fighting for things that benefited Maori. She didn't care who was in power, but believed that not one more acre of land should be alienated from Māori without Māori consent."

"Trans people are tired of being oppressed and discriminated."

"What we've seen though, with more people naturalising te reo Māori and te reo Māori faces and our public broadcasting spaces and our public spaces, is that it is confronting some people's status quo and people need to understand that shifting your status quo and what you thought it meant to be a New Zealander, is not going to be as fearful as you're making it out to be. That embracing our country, our past, is the only way that we can have a more connected and cohesive united future together."

"I am a violence prevention minister, and I know what causes violence in this world and it’s white cis men."

"Now it's become more political about whether what she said was appropriate or whether what she experienced was right ... where we sit is we acknowledge the pain of our whānau who have had to survive violence."

"Let us all remember that the Treaty was signed so that we could all live as one nation in Aotearoa."

"To the best of my ability I tried to do some good, tried to make people's lives better in whatever way I could? Without sounding sanctimonious about it. Perhaps just that I tried not to do any harm."

"Dame Cath was a true trailblazer for women in public life."

"I hope we’ll have as much pride as the Americans had, but I don’t think it’ll be done in quite the same way. It’s not our style to let everything hang out."

"I would hope that we’re not going to be, on the one hand, encouraging young people into a healthy lifestyle, and at the same time promoting a way of life that is demonstrably unhealthy."