Emergency Management Minister Kiri Allan has stage-three cervical cancer, the Labour MP revealed on Tuesday.
Getting to know Kiritapu: This article is republished following the Government minister’s announcement of her battle with cancer, and the revelation of her personal health struggle on the day of the tsunami.
Kiritapu Allan (Ngāti Ranginui & Ngāti Tūwharetoa) replaced Jacinda Ardern as New Zealand’s youngest Cabinet minister at the election, and shot into the headlines as the threat of a damaging tsunami menaced the country.
Luke Malpass sat down with her to discuss the journey from small-town big-family life on the East Coast to the Beehive.
Arthur Taylor and Hazel Heal in Dunedin.
It was a few days into the new year and while most of the country had fled to the beach, Hazel Heal was in her Dunedin study, crafting a lengthy submission to the Parole Board. Shortly before Christmas career criminal and jailhouse lawyer Arthur Taylor had been plucked from her rural property near Dunedin s student-town – where he resides in a cabin – and recalled to prison amid allegations he’d supplied methamphetamine. (Taylor strongly denies the charges.) Heal was disturbed. She took over his communications on his Facebook page, handled his affairs, corresponded with Taylor s supporters, and busied herself writing. (“My letter writing is my superpower,” she says. “I ve set a lot of matters to rights with one good letter.”)