Justice Minister Judith Collins, who among many other things, has been accused of throwing transgender New Zealanders "under the bus" has resigned from Cabinet. However she will still run for re-election as an MP in her Papakura electorate. Collins has been under fire over numerous allegations of muck in Dirty Politics and rumours she is to make an exit had been rife in the past few days. She’s also raised ire in the glbti community. In July Labour candidate and TransAdvocates co-founder Kelly Ellis accused her of throwing transgender people under the bus by blocking a move to clearly include gender identity in the Human Rights Act. The MP who led that bid, also from Labour, Louisa Wall, said it was an insult to the community which left trans and intersex people as “an invisible group”. Collins had a change in her attitude to equality in 2012 and went on to vote for marriage equality. While she eventually made some positive noises about adoption, no action was taken to clean up the archaic laws as it was not deemed a priority. Christopher Finlayson will be Acting Justice Minister.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 30th August 2014 - 11:51am