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Beehive battlers: Jacqui Dean and Jan Logie

Discover how two women MPs found themselves in parliament.
Jacqui Dean

Discover how two women MPs, Jan Logie and Jacqui Dean, found themselves in parliament.

Jacqui Dean

As a teenager in Palmerston North, Jacqui Dean never dreamed she’d end up as an MP. With aspirations of becoming a famous actress, parliament and politics were the last things on her mind.

She dabbled in radio, film and theatre, before eventually appearing on our screens on the much-loved children’s show Play School in the late ’80s.

“There are probably quite a few surprised people in Palmerston North,” says the National MP for Waitaki of her political career.

“I wasn’t exactly the most diligent student. The only awards I ever won were for debating and performing!”

While Jacqui (57) admits being in parliament, with its constant bickering and insults, sometimes makes her feel like she’s back in the performance world, the mum of three and grandmother of two says her drastic career change actually happened quite gradually, and it was her children who inspired it.

“When the children were really small, I started doing community fundraisers for the school, and things like that,” she says.

“That led to the local district council, and then to deputy mayor. Even then, I never thought I’d end up as an MP!

“But eventually, I realised you have to believe in things and stand up for what’s important.”

Her acting background has come in surprisingly handy, she says, especially when she has to face up to criticism. “Even going back to the Play School days, we once got a telling off from a mother for using sticky tape, glue and paint on the show because her kids had seen it and wanted to use them at home,” Jacqui laughs.

“She said that we’d made a mess, and now her children were messing up her house! So you go, ‘Okay, fine.’ You’re not going to please everyone, and you realise you have to do what you think is best. And that’s what I try to do as an MP.”

Green Party list MP Jan Logie.

Jan Logie

A lefty, feminist lesbian” was how Green Party list MP Jan Logie chose to introduce herself to parliament in her maiden speech in 2011.

It was a bold way to kick off what has been a colourful political career, and three years into her stint as an MP, Jan (44) says she still has a lot left to accomplish.

A former Women’s Refuge co-ordinator, Jan says it was a crippling feeling of powerlessness that led to her becoming an MP – the same feelings that drove her to develop an eating disorder as a young woman.

“I was really depressed, mainly because I thought I couldn’t do anything about these bad things,” she says.

“But getting that job at Refuge changed my life. It really did. It was the most amazing work, but I was really affected by it. I had nightmares and my family told me I wasn’t much fun to be around!”

It was while she was working at Women’s Refuge – “an empowering environment” – that Jan realised she was gay.

“I know it sounds like a cliché,” she says, smiling. “I grew up in Invercargill, and I just didn’t realise I was a lesbian. I just didn’t fit.”

She now lives in Porirua – “a lovely town where kids play in the street, neighbours swap baking and there’s awesome chop suey at the fish and chip shop”.

She says although the subject matter she has to deal with – especially when it comes to vulnerable women – can be hard to hear, it’s also what puts a smile on her face.

“I just love making a difference,” she says. “If I couldn’t do that, I don’t know what I’d do.”

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