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Hi, my name's Chris Carter. I was honored to be the first out gay MP in the New Zealand Parliament. I came out in 1994 when I was a new mp, uh, elected for the constituency of atu, a very working class district in West Oakland. Over the, uh, 18 years that I served at Parliament, I, uh, saw a huge transition from being the first, which generated a lot of. both praise and, and hostility to, and [00:00:30] a lot of media interest to out gay MPs at the New Zealand Parliament now being, uh, no big deal, just part of recognized as part of the, the normal diversity of New Zealand society. I was really pleased, uh, to be joined later in the Parliament by my very good friend, Georgina Beyer, New Zealand's first and the world's first transsexual MP, uh, and also my colleague, Tim Barnett, the MP for Christchurch Central. The three of us were a formidable rainbow team [00:01:00] here at Parliament and we still had a number of very reactionary and conservative MPs, uh, primarily in the opposition, but also a few of them in our own party as well. But over time that changed. You know, John Banks was my greatest critic when I was elected. He was police minister, and I was an opposition MP. Later, I became the minister of local government, and he was the mayor of Auckland. When he left that mayoralty, he said to me, Chris, getting to know you changed my opinion about gays, and it made [00:01:30] me a much more accepting person. And I guess the message for all of us in those comments from John Banks, that by engaging in the community, by not being in the closet, by being out, We shine light on the fact that, that the, that the queer community is everywhere in our country and, uh, and is part of our country. And I think that by engaging with people, You, uh, create, uh, feelings of understanding, uh, feelings of, of brotherhood, sisterhood. And, [00:02:00] uh, I'm really, um, proud, uh, that I was the first out gay MP in our parliament. And I'm really glad there are many more that followed me. You know, there were many incidents in, in my career as an MP, and I'm sure my colleagues Georgina Byer and Tim Barnett and others can also attest to the fact that being out And in being in a prominent position as an MP, it gives you the chance to give the voice to people who felt they had no voice. When I was a government minister, I was the Minister of Housing at the time, I was in [00:02:30] Australia and a young, I met a young New Zealand woman in a bar there and she said to me, You saved my life. And I said, how could that be? I've never met you before. And she said, you were my local MP. You came to my school during prize giving. And I was struggling with my sexuality. I had very religious parents. And I had been considering suicide. And she said, I watched you on the stage all night. And you were the big man. You were being honored by everybody. You were our local MP and you were a government minister. And I thought afterwards, if it's okay for Chris Carter, it's [00:03:00] okay for me. Now that was just one story. But it had a huge impact on me. I thought if all of the hostility that I endured as the first out gay MP, all of that was worth it just for that story alone, where that young woman said that I prevented her from committing suicide. And that affected me a lot and made me very proud.
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