Labour and Greens supporters who won’t have their own candidate to vote for in the Port Waikato by-election should consider voting for Jill Ovens.
Women’s Rights Party Co-leader Jill Ovens is standing in the Port Waikato by-election on Saturday, 25 November.
Labour, the Greens and ACT consider the seat to be “unwinnable”, and as they are not standing a candidate, they are handing the seat to National, Ms Ovens says.
The sitting MP, Andrew Bayly, is high on National’s Party List so he is already in Parliament.
“I know there are concerns among many voters about the undermining of women’s rights, so why not have a Women’s Rights Party MP in that additional seat?”
Ms Ovens stood in the electorate for the local board last year on a Labour ticket, and picked up on local environmental issues such as the health of the Manukau Harbour during that campaign.
She also met with the union delegates at the Glenbrook Steel Mill where there are 1400 workers, many of whom live in the electorate.
She says current MP Andrew Bayly voted for self sex-ID thus opening the door for policies allowing men unfettered access to single-sex spaces.
He also voted for the Conversion Practices Act which prevents parents and others from sensitively exploring factors underlying a young person’s discomfort with their body.
Ms Ovens says there are some Bills before Parliament currently in limbo until the new Government is formed that should be given greater scrutiny.
These include former Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere’s Bill to add “gender identity and expression” to the Human Rights Act, and former Labour MP Tamati Coffey’s Bill to make a baby’s intending parents in the case of surrogacy the legal parents at the moment of birth.
Currently, the surrogate mother is the baby’s legal parent and the intending parents must wait until after the birth before legally beginning the process of adopting the child.