Vanushi Walters becomes first Sri Lanka-born MP in New Zealand

Vanushi Walters becomes first Sri Lanka-born MP in New Zealand

Sri Lankan born Vanushi Walters of New Zealand’s Labour Party has won the race to be Upper Harbour MP in northwest Auckland, taking over from retiring National MP Paula Bennett.

She claimed a narrow victory over National candidate Jake Bezzant, a former tech company chief executive and cricketer for Hamilton, receiving 14,142 votes to Bezzant’s 12,727.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won a landslide victory in New Zealand’s general election Saturday, leveraging success battling Covid-19 to gain an unprecedented outright majority and the chance to implement her reform agenda.

The new Labour Party caucus is far more representative of contemporary New Zealand than National, says a Massey University sociologist, with more than half of Labour’s 64 MPs being women, while having 15 Maori MPs, one in six MPs a Pasifika and a good mix of other ethnicities.

During the campaign, Walters, a board member of Amnesty International, said she was passionate about the electorate because of its “diverse” and “warm” communities.

Photo Courtesy – Labour.org.NZ