Melissa Lee - Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

In November 2008, Lee became a list MP in the New Zealand parliament. Her maiden speech included sections in English, Māori, and Korean. In English, she mentioned crime, education, and anti-Asian racism issues in New Zealand. In the Māori section, she mentioned the history of Māori first coming to New Zealand by canoe from Hawaiki and compared it to her own migration to New Zealand by aeroplane. Near the end of her speech, she thanked, in Korean, all the people that had given her support "simply by virtue of shared heritage."

Lee is the second Korean, and first Korean woman, to be elected to a non-Korean national legislature. The first Korean to be elected to a foreign national-level office is Jay Kim, who was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1992.

She was ranked as the world's 51st most beautiful female politician in a poll conducted between 10 December 2008 and 19 April 2009 by the Spanish newspaper, 20 minutos (20 minutes).

Allegations were made in May 2009 that her production company Asia Vision had spent New Zealand on Air money making a promotional video for the National Party ahead of the 2008 election. Lee called the allegations "ridiculous", saying that all work on the video was done by volunteers. The Green Party referred the video to the Electoral Commission, saying that it should have been declared as an election expense. She was later cleared of misuse of funding by an investigation conducted by New Zealand on Air.

Lee used NZ$100,000 of contingency funding to increase the markup for Asia Downunder in violation of her contract with New Zealand on Air, which she described as "an innocent error".

In April 2011, Lee courted controversy when, after she had made a speech supporting the controversially rushed through copyright law 92A, it was later discovered that hours earlier she had tweeted "Ok. Shower... Reading ... And then bed! listening to a compilation a friend did for me of K Pop. Fab. Thanks Jay." which appears to be in direct contradiction of her stance on law 92A.