ACT Party MP and minister Brooke van Velden has announced she won’t be seeking re-election in November.<\/p>\n
She currently holds the seat of Tamaki, which she won off National in 2023.<\/p>\n
Ms van Velden, the party’s deputy leader and\u00a0 Workplace Relations Ministersaid in a statement today she had spent nine years in the public sector and it was time for a change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never wanted to be a career politician, and while I believe there are so many more years I could serve my community, I wish to explore the private sector too. At some point in the future, I would like to return to public service.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been an absolute privilege to serve our country in government and represent the people of T\u0101maki and the ACT Party, but I feel now is the right time for change.”<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old said the\u00a0easy thing would have been to stay in politics.<\/p>\n
Van Velden will have been in Parliament for nine years by the November 7 general election – three years working with leader David Seymour on his successful End of Life Choice bill, and six years as deputy leader.<\/p>\n
“I simply want to do more with life, I’d like to try my hand at the private sector, and potentially at some point in the future coming back to public service.”<\/p>\n
Van Velden said she told Seymour and the party general secretary before Christmas that she was considering leaving, and confirmed her decision with them earlier this year.<\/p>\n
She will remain a minister for now, and the party will confirm a new deputy leader at its general meeting in June.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been serving the people of Tamaki 100 percent until this point and that is what I’ll continue to do until the election,” van Velden said.<\/p>\n
Seymour paid tribute to his colleague.<\/p>\n
“I’m losing a colleague, but hopefully not a lifelong friend. I think she’s had a political career as near to perfect as humanly possible.”<\/p>\n
Now she’s going on her own terms, Seymour said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ACT Party MP and minister Brooke van Velden has announced she won’t be seeking re-election in November. She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-344665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}