Cullen back to help Labour campaign
A TERMINAL cancer diagnosis did not stop
Dunedin South’s first MP from helping a candidate hoping to become the first MP for Taieri.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Michael Cullen (75) was showing his support in Mosgiel last night at street corner meetings hosted by Labour candidate Ingrid Leary.
Sir Michael was elected as MP of the former St Kilda electorate in 1981. He remained in the role until 1996, when he was elected as the first MP for the newly created Dunedin South.
That electorate changed again this year, when boundary shifts created the new Taieri seat.
Last night, he said it was ‘‘great fun’’ to be back in the South.
‘‘Every time I come down to Dunedin I think ‘I wish my wife liked colder weather’.
‘‘We live up in the Eastern Bay of Plenty and I’d actually much rather live here.’’
He felt boundary changes had created a more ‘‘interesting’’ electorate.
‘‘Personally, I was pretty annoyed they took the peninsula out of the Dunedin South seat, and I don’t think that was really necessary. I think they could have found a better answer than that.’’
As for many people, 2020 has been a rough year for Sir Michael.
In March, he announced he had been diagnosed with stage 4 smallcell lung cancer, which had also spread to his liver.
Last night, he said he was feeling ‘‘pretty good’’.
‘‘I’ve had four rounds of chemotherapy and they’ve worked very well, better I think than my oncologist was expecting.
‘‘I’ll have another scan in a month’s time and we’ll see how things are going.
‘‘The nasties will come back. It’s not curable — that’s just the way it’s going to be.’’
Despite his health issues, he has reemerged in the political sphere as a vocal campaigner for the End of
Life Choice Act.
While he said it was not a perfect Bill, the arguments against it were ‘‘not terribly convincing’’.
His views were influenced by his mother’s final years, as well as concerns about his own future.
‘‘I’m most worried about losing control of my physical capacities . . . and that loss of dignity, which I think is what a lot of people are most worried about because we live in a society where that notion of personal dignity has become, I think, very important to us.’’