Georgina Beyer Newly-announced MP hopeful Georgina Beyer is expected to begin campaigning for the Mana Party in Christchurch this weekend and says she feels she is well enough to handle the pre-election workload. Beyer, the world's first openly trans MP when she entered Parliament on the Labour benches in 1999, says her kidney disease is stable, though she remains on dialysis awaiting a transplant. "I'm in a nice stable situation and given that Mana is a party of modest means I won't be barnstorming all around Te Tai Tonga," she says, referring to her chosen electorate. It includes the entire South island plus the Wellington region. "But we have a Mana roadshow and I'm likely to be in Christchurch with that at the weekend." She says Mana's campaigning in Te Tai Tonga will of necessity focus primarily on the main population centres of Christchurch and Wellington. She says the pre-election build-up will "help me to be resilient." Asked why she is campaigning for Mana, Beyer replies matter of factly: "Because they asked me." Also, she says, she has time on her hands, is looking for something to focus on other then her illness and, in a slightly bitter tone of voice, says she wants the chance to make amends to Maori for being required by Labour to vote for the controversial foreshore and seabed legislation when she was last an MP. She says Mana politics are not too different from Labour positions. "Labour is centre-left so I guess I've just moved a little more to the left... we have similar policies to Labour and the Greens... and we are targeting Maori a little more." Beyer acknowledges that anecdotally a large proportion of visible transwomen are Maori, like herself, or Pacific islanders, "but I'm not going so much for trans issues at the moment." She says glbti people have "done well" in the last decade or so and that "the Mana movement is very supportive of implementing the Human Rights Commission's 2008 report on transgender issues To Be Who I Am." She would also like to see progress on a thorough overhaul of the Adoption Act which, despite Marriage Equality, means adoption by unmarried same-sex couples is not possible. The disestablishment of the Rainbow Desk at the Ministry of Social development is another glbti issue she is concerned about. "It was a great point of contact for public service and other people... it should be reinstated."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 31st July 2014 - 8:50am