There is a little old lady in Auckland with whom Helen Clark would not be very pleased. If she knew who she was, that is.

Back in the 1970s, when the little old lady was much younger, she used to go to feminist meetings. Not because she was a feminist, but because she and her husband were concerned at the sorts of things being discussed.

"So I would go off to all these meetings around the country to monitor what was going on," she says. "I remember there was an outcry at one conference because a woman had brought along her baby son. He wasn’t wanted in the room because he was a male."

She also remembers many of the women who attended or addressed these events, among them Helen Clark, Sylvia Cartwright, Marilyn Waring, Cath Tizard, Ros Noonan and Margaret Wilson.

For decades she has watched as the young feminists of the 70s became some of the most powerful leaders in New Zealand. And for decades she held on to a couple of documents which outlined, all those years ago, a long-term feminist agenda to change New Zealand society by attacking the traditional family unit.

Lately, however, concerned at just how much of the agenda was being accomplished, she passed the papers to a friend, who in turn sent them to me and to journalist Ian Wishart, as covered in this month’s Investigate magazine, which you can be sure is not on the coffee table at the PM’s house.

The documents in question were written by another regular at the 1970s women’s meetings, Kay Goodger, who is now a senior adviser in the Ministry of Social Development.

Goodger called on the radical feminists of the day - Clark and co - to do everything they could in their spheres of influence to replace or sideline the traditional family.

"The family distorts all human relationships by imposing on them the framework of economic compulsion, social dependence and sexual repression," she wrote. "Our goal must be to create economic and social institutions that are superior to the present family."

She then outlined the steps which needed to be taken to overhaul society. They included making abortion free and on demand, integrating sex education into all levels of the school system and ensuring birth control was freely available.

Coercive family laws should be abolished, she wrote, adding that "the rearing, social welfare and education of children should become the responsibility of society rather than individual parents."

De facto relationships should have the same status legally and socially as marriage; all laws "victimising" prostitutes should be abolished; and 24-hour childcare should be introduced to free women from "domestic slavery".