Infectious diseases expert Ayesha Verrall likely to become Labour MP

Labour to contest the election with Ardern, Davis, Robertson and Twyford holding the top spots on the party's list; Diseases expert, Ayesha Verrall, gets high position for a newcomer at 18

15th Jun 20, 12:11pm by Jenée Tibshraeny

Ayesha Verrall

The infectious diseases expert who led the Government’s COVID-19 contact tracing work is among the new Labour candidates likely to become an MP at the September 19 election.

The party on Monday announced it will contest the election with Ayesha Verrall at number 18 on its list - only one spot below Health Minister David Clark.

Other newcomers include Vanushi Walters - a human rights lawyer and senior manager at the Human Rights Commission at 23 on the list, and Camilla Belich, a barrister and solicitor at the Public Service Association, at 32.

At 40, there’s Naisi Chen - the vice president of Labour’s youth wing, at 44, Ibrahim Omer - a unionist and community advocate, at 48, Rachel Brooking - a local government and environment lawyer and Dunedin International Airport director, and at 51, Barbara Edmonds - a senior adviser to the Minister for Revenue who has expertise in insurance and tax law.

The order of the party list, decided by members, has a bearing on who gets into Parliament. From there, the leader decides caucus rankings. The rankings of the party’s top MPs mirror the caucus list.

Accordingly, Jacinda Ardern is one, Kelvin Davis two, Grant Robertson three and Phil Twyford four.

Should Labour’s popularity hold until the election, it will have more seats in Parliament than is currently the case. According to the latest political poll - a 1 News-Colmar Brunton Poll conducted in mid-May - Labour would get 79 of the 120 seats in Parliament.

Labour on Monday also announced that Greg O’Connor decided that if he doesn’t win the Ohariu seat in Wellington, he will leave politics.

Note: This story has been updated a few times.

Below is the list in full. See this page for other parties' lists going into the election.

Jacinda Ardern
Kelvin Davis
Grant Robertson
Phil Twyford
Megan Woods
Chris Hipkins
Andrew Little
Carmel Sepuloni
David Parker
Nanaia Mahuta
Trevor Mallard
Stuart Nash
Iain Lees-Galloway
Jenny Salesa
Damien O'Connor
Kris Faafoi
David Clark
Ayesha Verrall
Peeni Henare
Willie Jackson
Aupito William Sio
Poto Williams
Vanushi Walters
Michael Wood
Adrian Rurawhe
Raymond Huo
Kiri Allan
Kieran McAnulty
Louisa Wall
Meka Whaitiri
Rino Tirikatene
Camilla Belich
Priyanca Radhakrishnan
Jan Tinetti
Deborah Russell
Marja Lubeck
Angie Warren-Clark
Willow-Jean Prime
Tamati Coffey
Naisi Chen
Jo Luxton
Jamie Strange
Liz Craig
Ibrahim Omer
Duncan Webb
Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki
Ginny Andersen
Rachel Brooking
Paul Eagle
Helen White
Barbara Edmonds
Angela Roberts
Shanan Halbert
Neru Leavasa
Tracey McLellan
Lemauga Lydia Sosene
Steph Lewis
Dan Rosewarne
Rachel Boyack
Arena Williams
Ingrid Leary
Soraya Peke-Mason
Lotu Fuli
Sarah Pallett
Gaurav Sharma
Emily Henderson
Terisa Ngobi
Kurt Taogaga
Kerrin Leoni
Reuben Davidson
Zahra Hussaini
Janet Holborow
Romy Udanga
Ala' Al-Bustanji
Glen Bennett
Monina Hernandez
Claire Mahon
Jon Mitchell
Nathaniel Blomfield
Nerissa Henry
Mathew Flight
Shirin Brown
Liam Wairepo
Georgie Dansey

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38 Comments

by Lanthanide | 15th Jun 20, 12:45pm 1592181948

What dirt has Twyford got on Ardern that would result in him moving up to #4, and Little down to #7 (he was 3rd)?

by JimboJones | 15th Jun 20, 1:27pm 1592184444

That is a Little low isn't it! He is one of the few good ones...
Twyford is good at saying all the right stuff, words speak louder than actions?

by Fritz | 15th Jun 20, 3:16pm 1592191018

So he fits Ardern's 'style over substance' approach well!

by dictator | 15th Jun 20, 1:55pm 1592186155

He's been given some terrible jobs. When they take one or two for the team that elevates an MPs standing. That and he would have been clearly able to lay the blame on the rubbish people at the top of the Housing Commission that no longer exists.

by xingmowang | 15th Jun 20, 12:56pm 1592182611

It would be great to attach everyone's brief CV after their names.

For example, J Ardern - age 38, Highest qualification of BA Honours, spend X years in role A and Y years in role B, achieve X, Y and Z.

That will be first step toward transparency.

cheers.

by Lanthanide | 15th Jun 20, 1:20pm 1592184035

Does the CCP publish such information on their party lists for their democratically elected government?

by xingmowang | 15th Jun 20, 1:40pm 1592185252

Glad you ask this question:

Xi Jinping: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705528.htm

Li Keqiang: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705535.htm

LLi Zhanshu: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705587.htm

Wang Yang: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705533.htm

Wang Huning: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705544.htm

Zhao Leji: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705564.htm

Han Zheng: http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/2017-10/25/c_136705571.htm

by Lanthanide | 15th Jun 20, 2:27pm 1592188061

You haven't shown me the equivalent of the party list which briefly lists their accomplishments like you are saying Labour should provide. You've liked to individual biography pages.

You also seemed to have skipped over the 'democratically elected' part.

by Lapun | 15th Jun 20, 2:31pm 1592188308

President for Life Xi Jinping studied Chemistry and has a Law qualification. Just like Margaret Thatcher. One post he missed out on was being elected President of the International Union of Socialist Youth. I remember reading somewhere that he came from a distinguished political family that had lost favour which reminds me of George W. Bush.
I wouldn't vote for our National Party without some major policy changes but am I alone in preferring Bill English to all four of the politicians referred to in the first paragraph - at least he really can shear a sheep.

by streetwise | 15th Jun 20, 1:32pm 1592184743

Since when has there been a correlation between academic performance and the effective role as a politician. I believe Michael Cullen has academic qualifications and he certainly has been our best politician since WW2. Then again Muldoon had accountancy qualifications and he has been our worst politician since WW2.

by murray86 | 15th Jun 20, 1:49pm 1592185750

You forgot the #Sarc tag

by KH | 15th Jun 20, 4:58pm 1592197102

@streetwise. Have you noticed the Ardern / Muldoon similarities ? Incompetent, one man band (woman), surrounded by incompetents, thinks an economy can be made to work by making some announcements, controlling, worshiped by many.

by streetwise | 15th Jun 20, 7:48pm 1592207297

KH I've used just one overwhelmingly important criterion to measure their political capability: money saved to cope with a huge black swan event such as the huge recession/depression we are about to face. Labour began a national superannuation scheme. Muldoon closed it down for no good reason because he thought it was 'socialist'. Cullen restarted it around the year 2000.....but the damage had already been done..... better than nothing though. Absolutely no contest...it would have been better to have $500 billion in the kitty than the present $50 billion.

by sit23 | 16th Jun 20, 12:19pm 1592266753

Good call. Jian Yang. National Party MP. Chinese Communist Party member. Chinese spy lecturer. Hhhmmmm.

by SmoKey | 15th Jun 20, 12:59pm 1592182763

Todd Muller would be happy with this list, I am sure.

by GV 27 | 15th Jun 20, 1:03pm 1592183036

Does this finally convince anyone who was desperate to believe that Labour were actually sincere about reforming housing supply or public transport that it was just bait-and-switch to get them over the line?

by Jarlaith | 16th Jun 20, 7:13am 1592248425

Labour has no vision. As long as parties are committed to the neoliberal model, decline and stagnation is the only guaranteed thing, oh and the concentration of wealth, which does not bode will for representative democracy.

by WestieAJ | 15th Jun 20, 1:31pm 1592184716

When Dr Verrall put herself into the public domain very early on as a critic of the Ministry of Health's contract tracing abilities. Was that a political move to ultimately seize control the message at the behest of her party before anyone less friendly and more critical got the medias ear? Or was it a genuine concern for the health of the nation? Maybe we have our answer now. Because contact tracing is still not fixed. Right now we don't need it. But who knows what could happen once the border restrictions start to be loosened.

by Lanthanide | 15th Jun 20, 1:33pm 1592184793

What is your basis for saying "contact tracing is still not fixed"?

by WestieAJ | 15th Jun 20, 1:44pm 1592185476

Google. Contact Tracing New Zealand. News Articles filtered for just the past week.

by Lanthanide | 15th Jun 20, 2:30pm 1592188246

Ok, so you can't provide any evidence to support your statement. None of the first page of google results show that our contact tracing system is "not fixed" as you claimed.

by GV 27 | 15th Jun 20, 3:11pm 1592190688

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121130191/coronavir…

"An independent report into contact tracing efforts has revealed the system was overloaded by fewer than 100 daily coronavirus cases.

The critical report into the public health measure, written by infectious disease physician Dr Ayesha Verrall"

I'd love to know whether she was a Labour Party member at the time of this independent report. Not that the report itself was remotely flattering, but it seems like more of an NZ First way of doing things tbh.

by Lanthanide | 15th Jun 20, 3:23pm 1592191418

So if she's an infectious disease specialist - probably not many of those in the country I'd assume - she shouldn't do any work for the Labour government because she's a Labour party member?

I get the potential 'jobs for the girls' angle here, but at the same time, why would you ever want to be a member of a party if it stopped you getting work as a result?

Also I'm sure National are far worse in general.

by GV 27 | 15th Jun 20, 3:28pm 1592191716

"she shouldn't do any work for the Labour government because she's a Labour party member?"
No one is saying she shouldn't be able to do the work, the PM just can't justifiably say it is 'independent'.

Also, after policing others for facts and scolding for baseless assertions: "Also I'm sure National are far worse in general."
Really? Weak.

by WestieAJ | 15th Jun 20, 4:50pm 1592196600

A selection of Headlines. Page 1 of google news search as above.
Coronavirus: PM clears up contact tracing confusion for ...
Stuff.co.nz-7/06/2020
Otago Uni expert: Contact tracing systems 'unacceptable'
The Spinoff-8/06/2020
The chink in our Level 1 armour
WHO urges NZ to do more work on its contact tracing systems
RNZ-10/06/2020
The World Health Organisation is urging New Zealand to further develop its contact tracing systems, in case there's another outbreak. A QR app has been issued ...
Manual contact tracing systems are 'completely unacceptable ...
RNZ-8/06/2020
New Zealand's contact tracing system is far from state of the art and still needs a lot of improvement, says an epidemiologist. Qr code payment , online shopping ...

by Lanthanide | 16th Jun 20, 10:34am 1592260470

None of those are saying it is 'broken', which is what being "fixed" requires as a precondition.

The first one is the PM talking about what businesses need to do for contact tracing vis-a-vis sign-in sheets or QR codes. That's not part of the contract tracing system that Ayesha reviewed.

The second article from the Otago Uni Expert, I actually listened to the interview on RNZ. He was saying that Taiwan and South Korea were more sophisticated with contact tracing because they were using cell phone proximity information provided by cell towers and that we should do the same here. Privacy regulations in NZ prevent us from taking that approach. Taiwan and South Korea are NOT using bluetooth proximity apps, which is what a lot of people misunderstood this Otago Uni Expert as saying. So he's advocating for an approach to be used here that is not legal. The bluetooth proximity app approach has a multitude of shortcomings, which is why we aren't using it here.

The third article is saying we should have made QR codes mandatory for businesses. Bloomfield was specifically posed a scenario where the lack of QR codes makes it harder to do contact tracing, to which he replied that he had confidence in the current systems and didn't have a concern about that particular scenario.

The fourth article is really the person from the WHO saying that people need to be consistent and maintain contact tracing and not get relaxed about the local elimination of the virus. We need to be vigilant. There were no specific suggestions in the article.

None of those articles are saying that our contact tracing system as set up by the MOH "is broken". They're all suggesting we should enhance what we already have by doing more.

by WestieAJ | 16th Jun 20, 11:08am 1592262499

I get it. You have a job to do. Hopefully, you get some sort of stipend for it.

by Lanthanide | 16th Jun 20, 1:15pm 1592270151

Yes, it's a pity I bothered to actually read the articles you mentioned (didn't even link to them), as you clearly didn't, to understand that none of them are saying our contact tracing system is broken, as you claimed they did.

by Lapun | 15th Jun 20, 2:39pm 1592188787

With BLM in the headlines I noticed ""Priyanca Radhakrishnan and Raymond Huo are down from 12 and 13, to 33 and 26. "" There is room for a talented MP with an Indian immigrant background. Raymond Huo worries me - he has made no serious criticism of the National's Jian Yang MP who is clearly a Chinese spy unwilling to say anything critical about the Chinese Communist Party. Both these MPs seem to be in their respective parties on the basis of their fund raising. With Asian immigrants comprising much the same fraction of NZ population as Maori it would make sense to have many more in our parliament. Preferably ones able to comment about Tibet, Uighurs, Falun Gong, organ harvesting, Taiwan and arbitration in the S.China sea.

by J.C. | 15th Jun 20, 4:02pm 1592193723

Raymond Huo worries me - he has made no serious criticism of the National's Jian Yang

Maybe there's a good reason for that. The safety of his familiy and his own personal safety.

by Lapun | 15th Jun 20, 5:12pm 1592197946

A Labour MP who cannot criticise a National MP - that is the default so something is seriously wrong.

by Richardfromauckland | 16th Jun 20, 8:27am 1592252834

But why an Indian immigrant background? Indians and Chinese have been in NZ for a very long time. Yes, we've seen an upswing in immigration in the past decade or two, but I don't quite get why you're tagging an 'immigrany background'

by sharetrader | 15th Jun 20, 11:03pm 1592219027

it would be good to get someone that has worked in the system ( public health) in charge of public health
we always end up with a money person who has an aim of making cuts if national or if labour of splashing the cash.
what we need is someone that knows who the system from the inside and how the DHB;s are not linked, run different systems ,
we are a small country and why we have (competing) so many DHB's is strange, if you compare to a private company this would not be allowed to happen

by Ludwig | 15th Jun 20, 8:57pm 1592211440

Getting it all prepped for Lockdown II, the sequel. The population has proven compliant...just need a new mandate to tax and spend away what little capital we have left, while the growing ranks of unemployed smoke weed legally to dull their sense of reality...

by kpnuts | 16th Jun 20, 6:55am 1592247341

i dont care if she was a member -- if this lot get in -- adding one competent person to the 3 others that are there will be a bonus -- and given most 4yr olds would be an improvement on the current health minister ...

interesting how many of the top 10 were not allowed in front of the media / camera for teh whole of covid 19 though - ! Kelvin keep him hidden Davis at number 2 ha ha ha ha

by Tim Depositor | 16th Jun 20, 8:51am 1592254301

Smart move to have an infectious disease expert in the Labour team. Public will be the winner.
These outbreaks are the new normal.

by Te Kooti | 16th Jun 20, 12:02pm 1592265727

It's a bear market for white men!

by terry t | 16th Jun 20, 12:48pm 1592268512

How can she put Twyford on the list. Everything he touches fails.....