As has been known in some Wellington circles for some months, Marian Hobbs is standing down as MP for Wellington Central at the 2008 General Election to pursue a career teaching in the UK. This is hardly news but is now circulating on the blogs, so I thought I'd post a few thoughts.
Marian has been MP for Wellington Central since 1999, and was a Labour List MP for the term before that. She beat Richard Prebble in 1999, Hekia Parata in 2002, and Mark Blumsky in 2005, with a larger majority each election (6180 at the most recent outing).
Marian contributed to the Labour caucus in a range of ways. I have only been working with her since 2002, but her long and varied ministerial career from 1999 to 2005 is well known. As a passionate and forceful Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control, her voice was heard and respected around the world upholding New Zealand's nuclear free position. Good work in Environment was another of her passions, as was the work she did around the National Library and Archives, modernising their legislative framework and massively expanding the resources they had to have to cope with the demands of the 21st century. There is much more.
Aside from Cabinet work, Marian has held (and does hold) positions on various party bodies (including our governing NZ Council, and the party's Policy Council) and overall made a solid contribution to Labour in government.
Wellington Central, of course, was the focus of her local work. I had the chance to work for Marian for a few months in 2002 when I was finding my feet in the city. She has a highly capable style in dealing with personal advocacy issues, and was active and visible in a huge range of communities around the electorate from selection in 1998 through to today - and I know she will continue that work right up to the next election. Her character and personality are well known and well liked in the city, and her departure will leave large shoes to fill for the next Labour candidate.
Her decision to stand down from Cabinet was her own, as is her decision to not seek re-selection by the Labour Party in Wellington Central. Marian is not an ordinary politician in any sense of the word. She decided that she had made a solid contribution at Cabinet level, but that it was time to give some new players a chance to cut their teeth.
Now, after twelve years service to Wellington, to the Labour Party and to New Zealand's Parliament, she has made the call to move on and pursue some of her other interests. No doubt interviews with her in the next few months will have further detail on what those plans are. It is a considerable privilege to have dealt with a politician who is capable of considering the interests of the whole party, and making decisions on that basis.
As I said before, I have worked with Marian since 2002 - as a staffer, as an electorate chair, as an assistant and full Campaign Manager. She is unlike any other politician I have come across in the Labour Party. She has always put the party's interests first. Her combination of a pragmatic ability to deal with process and the nasty side of politics, and a strongly idealistic and visionary attachment to social democratic and liberal values is a useful base for a politician to have.
Combine that with her passion, her energy, political insight, ready laugh, even temper and simple enjoyment of meeting new people and learning new things, it is hard to imagine a better candidate and MP to work with, in my jobs as a voluntary party organiser in Wellington Central. Of all the MPs I have worked with over the years, working with Marian has been the most positive - informative - and hilarous experience.
Like many, I will be sad to see her go.
Thank you, Marian, for all you've done: for Wellington and for Labour. I wish you the best of luck for the rest of this term, and to working with you during that time. I hope that post-Parliamentary life is as stimulating and useful for you as the past few years have been.
Note - I have disabled comments on this post for obvious reasons (if not obvious, please feel free to refer to the contents of almost any other comments thread on this blog!).
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