Pregnant MP up for co-leader race
Julie Anne Genter says having first child due in August no reason to set aside Greens leadership ambitions
Julie Anne Genter, Green Party minister and a candidate as co-leader is expecting her first child in early August. She announced the news from her home in Auckland yesterday. It follows a series of miscarriages, which she has spoken of previously.
Genter said there was no reason for her to withdraw from the Green Party co-leadership contest.
She said she and partner Peter Nunns found out about the pregnancy in December: “Clearly there is something in the water at Bellamy’s.”
She said she had told Jacinda Ardern the same day the Prime Minister shared her baby news with the world. She told co-leader James Shaw at the same time, but did not tell other Green MPs until last weekend.
Genter said she would probably work until the 37th week of her pregnancy, and would stay in Auckland for two months after the birth before returning to Parliament.
She said she would have the baby in the Parnell Birthing Centre because it was close to Auckland City Hospital “in case anything goes wrong”.
Nunns said it was good men could see from his example, and that of Ardern’s partner Clarke Gayford, that fathers staying at home to look after a baby was an option.
HWatch the video from the announcement at nzherald.co.nz He said he did not know Gayford but “I think I’ll get to know him”. Last year, Genter told the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly she had suffered a series of miscarriages. “I’m quite a rational person and thought I could tell myself it simply wasn’t meant to be, but I was sur- prised at how intensely powerful my emotions were around the pregnancies and miscarriages,” she said.
“It affected me profoundly. It was upsetting and very sad for both of us.”
Speaking in March, she said then she was considering adoption, but had her mind set on the upcoming election. People needed to discuss miscarriages more openly, she added.
“Maybe we don’t mention it because we don’t want other people to feel the sadness, but how else will women know how common it is and how will other people know what you’re going through?”
Genter is Minister for Women, Associate Minister of Health and Transport — and a candidate for the Greens co-leadership.
She has been a Green Party MP since 2011. She was born in and grew up in the United States and is a dual citizen of the US and New Zealand.
Nunns, also educated in the US, is an economist who has worked since 2014 for Australian-based transport consultancy MRCagney.
He was seconded to Auckland Council’s Research, Investigations and Monitoring Unit from May 2014 to March 2015.
Genter lost to Ardern in the Mt Albert byelection last year but said she attended her rival’s victory party.
In her Woman’s Day interview, she said: “I wanted to congratulate her in person because we’re friends.
“She was really sweet and wanted to know how I felt. Our friendship is still very much intact — if anything, this has strengthened it.”
At the time, Genter, Ardern and National’s Nikki Kaye were the only women in Parliament aged under 40 — a fact the pair had bonded over.
Genter had hosted Ardern and Gayford for a dinner party at her home in 2016.
Genter’s rival in the Greens coleadership contest is Marama Davidson, a mother of six who became an MP in 2015 after Russel Norman resigned from Parliament.
The women’s leadership post was vacated by Metiria Turei before the September election in the wake of fallout from an admission she had made a false claims to Work and Income in the 1990s when she was on the domestic purposes benefit.