Member of Parliament
| Parliament of New Zealand | ||||
| Years | Term | Electorate | List | Party |
| 1999–2002 | 46th | List | 4 | Green |
| 2002–2005 | 47th | List | 3 | Green |
| 2005–2008 | 48th | List | 3 | Green |
| 2008–2009 | 49th | List | 3 | Green |
As a member of the Green Party, Bradford first won election to the Parliament as a list MP in the 1999 elections. She had joined the Green Party in 1990, and had contested the 1998 Auckland mayoral election as the Green candidate. Before joining the Greens, she worked actively in the NewLabour Party, and served as its president from 1989 to 1990.
As of 2005 Bradford was the Green Party spokesperson on ACC, Agriculture, Buy Kiwi-Made, Community and Voluntary Sector, Community Economic Development, Gambling, Housing, Industrial Relations, Internal Affairs, Mental Health, National Library and Archives, Racing, Regional Development, Rural Affairs, Small Business and Social Development.
The New Zealand Herald selected Bradford as Backbencher of the Year for 2000.
Bradford has successfully pushed through three member's bills: removing the defence of "reasonable force" when corporally punishing or smacking children; letting mothers in jail to keep their babies for longer; and making the adult minimum wage apply to 16 and 17 year olds. It is considered an achievement for a backbench MP to pass a single member's bill, let alone three.
In 2009 Sue Bradford ran unsuccessfully against Metiria Turei to replace Jeanette Fitzsimons for the co-leadership of the Green Party. On 25 September 2009, Bradford announced her intention to resign as a Member of Parliament in late October, citing her disappointment at the loss and wish to take new directions. Bradford regretted not becoming a Cabinet Minister, especially a Minister of Housing and Social Development.
Read more about this topic: Sue Bradford
Famous quotes containing the words member of, member and/or parliament:
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”
—Bible: New Testament, Philippians 3:4-6.
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)