Virginia Ruby Andersen (born 1975) is a New Zealand politician and

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

in the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

for the Labour Party.

Personal life

Andersen lives in Belmont, Lower Hutt. Bill Andersen, a noted activist and

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ...

leader, was her great-uncle. Ginny Andersen worked for the New Zealand Police as a policy unit manager from 2006 to 2017. Prior to that, she worked at the Office of Treaty Settlements and was also a private secretary and senior political adviser in Parliament to several Labour MPs including

Trevor Mallard Trevor Colin Mallard (born 17 June 1954) is a New Zealand politician and member of the Labour Party. First elected to Parliament in 1984, he was Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives from 2017 until 2022. Mallard was a Cabinet m ...

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, Mark Burton, and

Margaret Wilson Margaret Anne Wilson (born 20 May 1947) is a New Zealand lawyer, academic and former Labour Party politician. She served as Attorney-General from 1999 to 2005 and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008, during the Fifth L ...

Political career

Andersen stood in the electorate of at the , and was only narrowly defeated by the long-standing incumbent,

Peter Dunne Peter Francis Dunne (born 17 March 1954) is a retired New Zealand politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ōhāriu. He held the seat and its predecessors from 1984 to 2017—representing the Labour Party in Parliament from 1984 ...

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, by a margin of 610 votes (1.91%). Andersen served as the Labour Party's Vice-President from 2015 to 2017, when she stood down to focus on her parliamentary candidacy.

Member of parliament

In October 2016, Andersen was selected as Labour's candidate for the electorate of for the against Hutt City Councillor Campbell Barry and list candidate Sarah Packer. She replaced long-serving member of parliament

as the Labour Party candidate who had, in July of that year, said he would serve as a

list A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations * List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America * SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...

-only candidate for the election with the intention of becoming Speaker of the House. In the previous election Mallard had won Hutt South by only 709 votes (1.83%) over National's candidate,

Chris Bishop Christopher Bishop (born 4 September 1983) is a New Zealand National Party politician who was first elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives in 2014 as a list MP. Bishop won the Hutt South electorate in 2017 but lost the seat in 20 ...

. Andersen was ranked 28 on Labour's party list, an increase of 9 from 2014. While Andersen lost the Hutt South election to Bishop, she entered parliament via the party list under New Zealand's MMP electoral system. Andersen was Labour's Hutt South candidate for the

2020 New Zealand general election The 2020 New Zealand general election was held on Saturday 17 October 2020 to determine the composition of the 53rd parliament. Voters elected 120 members to the House of Representatives, 72 from single-member electorates and 48 from closed ...

, and dropped 17 places to 45 on Labour's list. During the 2020 election which was held on 17 October, Andersen captured Hutt South, defeating incumbent Bishop by a final margin of 3,777 votes. In March 2021 Andersen admitted she knew about a secretive rent deal that saw $4500 in taxpayer cash funneled into the local Labour Party each year. She’d previously said she only understood the deal after she “looked at it” ahead of the 2020 election. The deal worked through a subletting arrangement whereby the local Labour Party rented office space from the building’s owner, the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union, for $1500 a year. It then sublet that office to Andersen for her MP’s duties, for $6000.

References

External links

* , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Andersen, Ginny 1975 births Living people New Zealand Labour Party MPs Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives New Zealand list MPs Women members of the New Zealand House of Representatives Unsuccessful candidates in the 2014 New Zealand general election Candidates in the 2017 New Zealand general election Candidates in the 2020 New Zealand general election