Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan

Whetu Marama Tirikatene was born on 9 January 1932, the daughter of Eruera Tirikatene and Ruti Tirikatene (née Solomon). She was raised at Rātana Pā by her grandmother, dress designer and tailor Amiria Henrici Solomon.[1] Educated at Rangiora High School[2] and Wellington East Girls' College, she excelled in dancing, winning the New Zealand amateur Latin American ballroom dancing championship with her Australian partner Kevin Mansfield, and was also accomplished in fencing, becoming one of the top four female fencers in the country.[3][4] She studied for a PhD in political science at the Australian National University, with the topic "Contemporary Maori Political Involvement".[4] While there, she met and married Denis Sullivan, a PhD physics student who later became an associate professor in physics and astrophysics at Victoria University of Wellington.[4][5]

Tirikatene stood unsuccessfully for the Labour Party in the 1966 election for Rangiora.

Tirikatene-Sullivan was first elected to Parliament in the Southern Maori by-election of 1967, which was prompted by the death of the long-serving incumbent—her father Sir Eruera Tirikatene.[4][6] Between 1972 and 1975 she was the Minister of Tourism.[7] She was Minister for the Environment from 1974 to 1975.[8] She was re-elected by substantial majorities until the 1996 election, when the Southern Maori electorate was abolished in the transition to MMP. Tirikatene-Sullivan then contested the new Te Tai Tonga electorate, which covered much of the same territory as the old Southern Maori electorate, but she was narrowly defeated by Tu Wyllie of New Zealand First. She subsequently retired from politics.

In 1970 Tirikatene-Sullivan was the first woman to give birth whilst a sitting MP. She later became the first (both in New Zealand and the Commonwealth) cabinet minister to give birth to a child.[9]

In 1993, Tirikatene-Sullivan was made a member of the Order of New Zealand, the highest award given by the New Zealand government. The same year, she was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.[10] She died in Wellington on 20 July 2011.[11]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan.

• Women in Parliamentary Life 1970-1990: Hocken Lecture 1993 by Marilyn Waring, page 36-37 (Hocken Library, University of Otago, 1994) ISBN 0-902041-61-4
• Wilson, James Oakley (1985) [First published in 1913]. New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1984 (4th ed.). Wellington: V.R. Ward, Govt. Printer. OCLC 154283103.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)