Kiri Allan

The 52nd Parliament voted on several conscience issues.

Allan generally maintained a progressive voting record, voting in support of the third readings of the End of Life Choice Bill and Abortion Legislation Bill.

She had previously voted against the End of Life Choice Bill in the second reading, due to concerns that it did not sufficiently protect vulnerable people, and supported efforts by Jenny Marcroft to ensure the bill would be voted on in a binding referendum.

Her family were cleaners and agricultural workers who experienced layoffs due to the "Rogernomics" reforms in the 1980s.

Some family members had experiences with the criminal justice system and Allan later said that criminal justice reform was a motivator for her to enter both law and politics.

Allan, who is lesbian, struggled with her church's teachings about her sexuality as a teenager and wrote in 2022 about her experiences undergoing conversion therapy.

After being outed at 16, she was "ejected from the household for a time" and ultimately left the church when she was 18.

She later joined the Rātana church.

Allan moved to Auckland at age 10; her secondary schooling was at Auckland Girls’ Grammar in Kahurangi, the reo Māori unit.

She left high school at 16 and started work at a KFC franchise in West Auckland.

She also joined the Service & Food Workers Union at that time.

At 17, she hitchhiked south and took her next job as a cherry picker in Blenheim.

Returning to Auckland, she began university study at Unitec, studying Māori language and tikanga.

The next year, she enrolled at Victoria University of Wellington where she studied law and politics, and joined the Labour Party.

She decided on law because of advice from former University of Otago law professor Mark Henaghan, whom Allan befriended while working in a bar, and joined Labour after her politics lecturer Margaret Clark told her that joining a political party would teach her how politics worked.

During her university studies she interned with Prime Minister Helen Clark and later for Māori lawyer Annette Sykes.

After finishing her law degree, Allan was a judge's clerk for a period before taking a role at law firm ChenPalmer, where she worked for two years.

Kiritapu Lyndsay Allan (born 1984), known as Kiri Allan, is a New Zealand lawyer and former politician.

She was a member of Parliament (MP) in the New Zealand House of Representatives from 2017 to 2023, representing the Labour Party in the East Coast electorate.

Allan was a junior minister in the second term of Jacinda Ardern's Sixth Labour Government and a senior minister under Ardern's successor, Chris Hipkins.

Later she joined Kāhui Legal, a specialist law firm focussed on issues related to Māori development in Whakatāne before standing as Labour candidate for the East Coast in 2017.

Allan stood for Labour in the electorate in the and was placed 21 on Labour's party list.

The former deputy prime minister, Sir Michael Cullen, and his wife, the former MP Lady Anne Collins were Allan's campaign chairs and political mentors.

She came second to Anne Tolley in the election, but entered Parliament via the party list.

In her maiden speech on 9 November 2017, Allan recalled the first time she saw the Beehive at age 17 and recited a poem she had written at the time.

In her first term in Parliament, Allan was a member of the finance and expenditure committee and the primary production committee.

She was also elected a junior whip of the Labour Party.

She joined the Epidemic Response Committee during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She was also the chair of Labour's rural caucus.

In 2018, she launched the down-to-earth political podcast Authorised By with Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick.

She got on well with Swarbrick and they both felt the average Kiwi on the street was detached from politics.

By the end of the year, Allan was labelled a strong performer among backbenchers in Parliament and a potential future minister.

She held the positions of Minister for Emergency Management and Minister of Conservation from November 2020 to June 2022 and was Minister of Justice from June 2022 until July 2023.

In June 2023, concerns about how Allan treated her staff were raised.

She took time off from her parliamentary duties after a relationship breakup and, on 24 July 2023, resigned from her ministerial roles after she was arrested for careless driving the previous night.

Court proceedings for this arrest are scheduled for May 2024.

Allan was born in Te Karaka, of Ngāti Ranginui and Ngāti Tūwharetoa descent.

She is the ninth of ten children and was named after her grandmother.

As a baby, she was whāngai – given to an aunt and uncle, Gail and David Allan, who lived in Paengaroa.

She was raised in a Pentecostal Christian community, which she said contributed to her perspective on helping others.