KEY POINTS:
Foreign Minister Winston Peters cast diplomacy aside yesterday as he questioned why there were so many "useless" men in power positions in the Pacific and not enough women.
Maori men also came in for a sideswipe when he suggested too many of them spent their time "parading around
the maraes as peacocks doing no work".
Mr Peters made his comments at the foreign affairs and defence select committee at Parliament. He rejected suggestions that it could be perceived in the Pacific as arrogance.
"I don't seek to preach or hector them or lecture them. All we seek to do is ask some pretty simple questions like how come all these useless males are running the show."
Mr Peters said the lack of representation of women was a great worry.
"It seriously worries me. It needs to be said in the most blunt way to the leaders of all those countries: 'Where are your women?' We'd like to know. But if we don't ask the questions how are we going to know.
"It is not ethnically or culturally insensitive to ask a fundamental question like that."
But independent MP Taito Phillip Field, who said New Zealand had to be careful about the perception of arrogance, thought such a message was better coming from a fellow Polynesian.
Mr Peters, the New Zealand First leader, has one woman MP, Barbara Stewart, in his own caucus of seven.
When he became Foreign Minister in 2005 he said the Pacific would be a priority for him.
Labour MP Jill Pettis raised the issue of women's representation at the committee. She said that until more women were represented in Parliament, some of the sexual health and reproductive issues would not get on to the agendas of Pacific Parliaments.
Mr Peters said both Samoa and the Cook Islands had better records than others in electing women representatives.
"The paradox here is that anyone who knows the Pacific knows, from Maori through to Rapanui and all the way north, is that women do all the work."
They also carried most of the "angst and agony" of their community.
He said he had made no bones about giving his view on the matter.
"If you want commitment and drive and ambition to work in a greater collegial or community sense, then you must place your faith in the women of this part of the world far more than the men who - present company excepted - tend to spend most of their time parading around the maraes as peacocks doing no work whatsoever."
The 38 female MPs in the New Zealand Parliament represent 31.4 per cent of all MPs.
The Green Party has the highest representation of women at 66 per cent. Act and United Future have only two MPs apiece, a male and a female, so technically half their caucuses are women.
Labour women make up 34.6 per cent of its caucus; National has 27 per cent; the Maori Party has 25 per cent; New Zealand First's is 14 per cent; and Jim Anderton, as the sole MP in the Progressive Party, has zero women.