Ruth Dyson

Ruth Suzanne Dyson (born 11 August 1957) is a former New Zealand politician.

Dyson was born in Lower Hutt in 1957.

Her father served in the New Zealand Army, and so Dyson's family frequently moved around the country.

Dyson joined the Labour Party in Westport in 1979, and worked as a campaign organiser for West Coast Labour MP Kerry Burke in the 1981 and 1984 election campaigns.

In 1984 she was elected the women's representative on Labour's New Zealand Council before becoming a member of the party executive in 1986.

In 1985, she moved to Wellington, where she worked with Labour MP Fran Wilde on the Homosexual Law Reform Bill before taking up a position as an advisor to Burke in the office of the Minister of Employment in 1986.

She worked as an organiser for Wilde's re-election campaign in Wellington Central for the 1987 election.

Dyson was then employed as an executive officer at Wellington Regional Employment and ACCESS Control.

She held several senior positions in the Labour Party hierarchy.

She was the elected vice president of the party at the 1987 Labour conference.

At the 1988 conference in Dunedin Dyson won a highly contested campaign to win the party president from former president and maverick MP Jim Anderton by 99 votes (575 to 473).

After the defeat of the controversial Fourth Labour Government Dyson was self-employed as a training and employment consultant from 1990 to 1993.

In the lead up to the Dyson stood for the Labour nomination in the Christchurch seat of Lyttelton.

She beat 5 other local aspirants for the nomination and pledged to move from Wellington into the electorate before the election.

Dyson first entered Parliament in the, winning the electorate against National's David Carter.

She was a Labour Party Member of Parliament from 1993 to 2020.

In the, the Lyttelton electorate was abolished, and Dyson stood in , losing to Carter, who had in the meantime become an MP through winning the 1994 Selwyn by-election.

She became a list MP owing to her position on the Labour Party's list.

After the 1996 election Dyson was appointed Labour's spokesperson for ACC and Disability Services by leader Helen Clark.

In the she in turn defeated Carter to win Banks Peninsula.

Dyson was a senior member of the Labour Party during the Helen Clark-led Fifth Labour Government, serving in a range of health and employment-related portfolios including Minister for Disability Issues (1999–2000; 2001–2008), Minister for ACC (2002–2007), Minister of Labour (2005–2007) and Minister for Social Development and Employment (2007–2008).

When the Labour Party won power in the 1999 general election, Dyson was appointed to a number of minor ministerial roles, including Disability Issues and Associate Health and Associate Social Development.

However, she resigned them on 31 October 2000 after being caught drink driving.

She regained most of her ministerial responsibilities on 4 June 2001.

She acknowledged after her resignation that she had been convicted and fined for possession of cannabis when she was a teenager stating "I find it sickening that some 25 years later someone has anonymously passed this information to journalists."

As Minister for Disability Issues, she led the development of what would become the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006, which gave New Zealand Sign Language the status of an official language of New Zealand.

In a reshuffle on 31 October 2007, Dyson was promoted to Minister for Social Development, which she held until the Clark government lost power at the 2008 general election.

Despite the swing against Labour at that election, Dyson won the new Port Hills electorate with an increased margin.

The National Party won the 2008 election, putting Labour in Opposition where it would remain for the next nine years.

During this time Dyson held a range of portfolios, including health (2008–2011), internal affairs (2011–2013), conservation and disability issues (2013–2015), Canterbury Earthquake Recovery (2013–2014) and senior citizens (2013–2017).

She was also deputy chair of the Health select committee (2008–2011) and chair of the Government Administration select committee (2011–2017).

In December 2009 Dyson's Resource Management (Requiring Authorities) Amendment Bill, which would amend the Resource Management Act 1991 to reintroduce a public interest test for projects seeking requiring authority, was drawn from the member's ballot.

The bill was defeated at its first reading.

Dyson was criticised in December 2015 for describing National's Speaker David Carter as "incompetent, biased... lazy [and] sexist" on Twitter.

Dyson had been positioned to be Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives (to Trevor Mallard) if Labour won the 2017 general election.

While Labour was able to form a Government (in coalition with New Zealand First), the National Party's Anne Tolley was appointed as Deputy Speaker instead.

She represented the electorate from the election to 2020.

She also held a number of senior offices in the Labour Party, including president.

She has remained the MP for the area (later renamed Port Hills) since that time, holding the seat until her retirement in 2020.

In her valedictory statement in 2020, Dyson reflected on the Act: "I regret that it wasn't more prescriptive in its implementation, because its roll-out has been slower than it could have been. That should be fixed."