The infectious diseases expert who led the Government’s COVID-19 contact tracing work is among the new Labour candidates likely to become an MP at the September 19 election.
The party on Monday announced it will contest the election with Ayesha Verrall at number 18 on its list - only one spot below Health Minister David Clark.
Other newcomers include Vanushi Walters - a human rights lawyer and senior manager at the Human Rights Commission at 23 on the list, and Camilla Belich, a barrister and solicitor at the Public Service Association, at 32.
At 40, there’s Naisi Chen - the vice president of Labour’s youth wing, at 44, Ibrahim Omer - a unionist and community advocate, at 48, Rachel Brooking - a local government and environment lawyer and Dunedin International Airport director, and at 51, Barbara Edmonds - a senior adviser to the Minister for Revenue who has expertise in insurance and tax law.
The order of the party list, decided by members, has a bearing on who gets into Parliament. From there, the leader decides caucus rankings. The rankings of the party’s top MPs mirror the caucus list.
Accordingly, Jacinda Ardern is one, Kelvin Davis two, Grant Robertson three and Phil Twyford four.
Should Labour’s popularity hold until the election, it will have more seats in Parliament than is currently the case. According to the latest political poll - a 1 News-Colmar Brunton Poll conducted in mid-May - Labour would get 79 of the 120 seats in Parliament.
Labour on Monday also announced that Greg O’Connor decided that if he doesn’t win the Ohariu seat in Wellington, he will leave politics.
Note: This story has been updated a few times.
Below is the list in full. See this page for other parties' lists going into the election.
- Jacinda Ardern
- Kelvin Davis
- Grant Robertson
- Phil Twyford
- Megan Woods
- Chris Hipkins
- Andrew Little
- Carmel Sepuloni
- David Parker
- Nanaia Mahuta
- Trevor Mallard
- Stuart Nash
- Iain Lees-Galloway
- Jenny Salesa
- Damien O'Connor
- Kris Faafoi
- David Clark
- Ayesha Verrall
- Peeni Henare
- Willie Jackson
- Aupito William Sio
- Poto Williams
- Vanushi Walters
- Michael Wood
- Adrian Rurawhe
- Raymond Huo
- Kiri Allan
- Kieran McAnulty
- Louisa Wall
- Meka Whaitiri
- Rino Tirikatene
- Camilla Belich
- Priyanca Radhakrishnan
- Jan Tinetti
- Deborah Russell
- Marja Lubeck
- Angie Warren-Clark
- Willow-Jean Prime
- Tamati Coffey
- Naisi Chen
- Jo Luxton
- Jamie Strange
- Liz Craig
- Ibrahim Omer
- Duncan Webb
- Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki
- Ginny Andersen
- Rachel Brooking
- Paul Eagle
- Helen White
- Barbara Edmonds
- Angela Roberts
- Shanan Halbert
- Neru Leavasa
- Tracey McLellan
- Lemauga Lydia Sosene
- Steph Lewis
- Dan Rosewarne
- Rachel Boyack
- Arena Williams
- Ingrid Leary
- Soraya Peke-Mason
- Lotu Fuli
- Sarah Pallett
- Gaurav Sharma
- Emily Henderson
- Terisa Ngobi
- Kurt Taogaga
- Kerrin Leoni
- Reuben Davidson
- Zahra Hussaini
- Janet Holborow
- Romy Udanga
- Ala' Al-Bustanji
- Glen Bennett
- Monina Hernandez
- Claire Mahon
- Jon Mitchell
- Nathaniel Blomfield
- Nerissa Henry
- Mathew Flight
- Shirin Brown
- Liam Wairepo
- Georgie Dansey
38 Comments
Glad you ask this question:
Xi Jinping: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705528.htm
Li Keqiang: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705535.htm
LLi Zhanshu: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705587.htm
Wang Yang: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705533.htm
Wang Huning: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705544.htm
Zhao Leji: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705564.htm
Han Zheng: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705571.htm
President for Life Xi Jinping studied Chemistry and has a Law qualification. Just like Margaret Thatcher. One post he missed out on was being elected President of the International Union of Socialist Youth. I remember reading somewhere that he came from a distinguished political family that had lost favour which reminds me of George W. Bush.
I wouldn't vote for our National Party without some major policy changes but am I alone in preferring Bill English to all four of the politicians referred to in the first paragraph - at least he really can shear a sheep.
Since when has there been a correlation between academic performance and the effective role as a politician. I believe Michael Cullen has academic qualifications and he certainly has been our best politician since WW2. Then again Muldoon had accountancy qualifications and he has been our worst politician since WW2.
KH I've used just one overwhelmingly important criterion to measure their political capability: money saved to cope with a huge black swan event such as the huge recession/depression we are about to face. Labour began a national superannuation scheme. Muldoon closed it down for no good reason because he thought it was 'socialist'. Cullen restarted it around the year 2000.....but the damage had already been done..... better than nothing though. Absolutely no contest...it would have been better to have $500 billion in the kitty than the present $50 billion.
When Dr Verrall put herself into the public domain very early on as a critic of the Ministry of Health's contract tracing abilities. Was that a political move to ultimately seize control the message at the behest of her party before anyone less friendly and more critical got the medias ear? Or was it a genuine concern for the health of the nation? Maybe we have our answer now. Because contact tracing is still not fixed. Right now we don't need it. But who knows what could happen once the border restrictions start to be loosened.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121130191/coronavir…
"An independent report into contact tracing efforts has revealed the system was overloaded by fewer than 100 daily coronavirus cases.
The critical report into the public health measure, written by infectious disease physician Dr Ayesha Verrall"
I'd love to know whether she was a Labour Party member at the time of this independent report. Not that the report itself was remotely flattering, but it seems like more of an NZ First way of doing things tbh.
So if she's an infectious disease specialist - probably not many of those in the country I'd assume - she shouldn't do any work for the Labour government because she's a Labour party member?
I get the potential 'jobs for the girls' angle here, but at the same time, why would you ever want to be a member of a party if it stopped you getting work as a result?
Also I'm sure National are far worse in general.
"she shouldn't do any work for the Labour government because she's a Labour party member?"
No one is saying she shouldn't be able to do the work, the PM just can't justifiably say it is 'independent'.
Also, after policing others for facts and scolding for baseless assertions: "Also I'm sure National are far worse in general."
Really? Weak.
A selection of Headlines. Page 1 of google news search as above.
Coronavirus: PM clears up contact tracing confusion for ...
Stuff.co.nz-7/06/2020
Otago Uni expert: Contact tracing systems 'unacceptable'
The Spinoff-8/06/2020
The chink in our Level 1 armour
WHO urges NZ to do more work on its contact tracing systems
RNZ-10/06/2020
The World Health Organisation is urging New Zealand to further develop its contact tracing systems, in case there's another outbreak. A QR app has been issued ...
Manual contact tracing systems are 'completely unacceptable ...
RNZ-8/06/2020
New Zealand's contact tracing system is far from state of the art and still needs a lot of improvement, says an epidemiologist. Qr code payment , online shopping ...
None of those are saying it is 'broken', which is what being "fixed" requires as a precondition.
The first one is the PM talking about what businesses need to do for contact tracing vis-a-vis sign-in sheets or QR codes. That's not part of the contract tracing system that Ayesha reviewed.
The second article from the Otago Uni Expert, I actually listened to the interview on RNZ. He was saying that Taiwan and South Korea were more sophisticated with contact tracing because they were using cell phone proximity information provided by cell towers and that we should do the same here. Privacy regulations in NZ prevent us from taking that approach. Taiwan and South Korea are NOT using bluetooth proximity apps, which is what a lot of people misunderstood this Otago Uni Expert as saying. So he's advocating for an approach to be used here that is not legal. The bluetooth proximity app approach has a multitude of shortcomings, which is why we aren't using it here.
The third article is saying we should have made QR codes mandatory for businesses. Bloomfield was specifically posed a scenario where the lack of QR codes makes it harder to do contact tracing, to which he replied that he had confidence in the current systems and didn't have a concern about that particular scenario.
The fourth article is really the person from the WHO saying that people need to be consistent and maintain contact tracing and not get relaxed about the local elimination of the virus. We need to be vigilant. There were no specific suggestions in the article.
None of those articles are saying that our contact tracing system as set up by the MOH "is broken". They're all suggesting we should enhance what we already have by doing more.
With BLM in the headlines I noticed ""Priyanca Radhakrishnan and Raymond Huo are down from 12 and 13, to 33 and 26. "" There is room for a talented MP with an Indian immigrant background. Raymond Huo worries me - he has made no serious criticism of the National's Jian Yang MP who is clearly a Chinese spy unwilling to say anything critical about the Chinese Communist Party. Both these MPs seem to be in their respective parties on the basis of their fund raising. With Asian immigrants comprising much the same fraction of NZ population as Maori it would make sense to have many more in our parliament. Preferably ones able to comment about Tibet, Uighurs, Falun Gong, organ harvesting, Taiwan and arbitration in the S.China sea.
it would be good to get someone that has worked in the system ( public health) in charge of public health
we always end up with a money person who has an aim of making cuts if national or if labour of splashing the cash.
what we need is someone that knows who the system from the inside and how the DHB;s are not linked, run different systems ,
we are a small country and why we have (competing) so many DHB's is strange, if you compare to a private company this would not be allowed to happen
i dont care if she was a member -- if this lot get in -- adding one competent person to the 3 others that are there will be a bonus -- and given most 4yr olds would be an improvement on the current health minister ...
interesting how many of the top 10 were not allowed in front of the media / camera for teh whole of covid 19 though - ! Kelvin keep him hidden Davis at number 2 ha ha ha ha
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