Louisa Wall
Louisa Hareruia Wall is a New Zealand former double international sportswoman, former politician, and human rights advocate. She represented New Zealand in both netball as a Silver Fern from 1989 to 1992 and in rugby union as a member of the Black Ferns from 1995 to 2001, including as a member of the 1991 World Netball Championships runner-up team and 1998 Women's Rugby World Cup winning team.
Wall had a political career with the New Zealand Labour Party between 2002 and 2022. She was a Labour list Member of Parliament and MP for Manurewa in 2008 and again from 2011 to 2022. Wall was well known for her successful attempt leading the legalisation of same-sex marriage in New Zealand in 2013. She resigned from Parliament to serve as New Zealand's ambassador for Pacific gender equality, a role she held until early 2024.
Early life and family
Louisa Wall was born in Taupō to Leslie and Josephine Wall. She has Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Hineuru and Waikato ancestry and was named after her father's cousin Louis, who died on the day she was born. She has two younger brothers and one younger sister.She attended secondary school at Taupo-nui-a-Tia College. While only 17 years old, Wall was named in the Silver Ferns 1989 team. She earned qualifications in sport and recreation from the Waikato Institute of Technology and the University of Waikato. Later, she studied at Massey University, gaining a bachelor's degree in social work and master's degree in social policy. Her master's thesis, on the contributions Māori women had made in Parliament, was supervised by public policy professor and former National MP Marilyn Waring. Wall had a career in health research, working for the Health Research Council, the Children's Commissioner, the Ministry of Women's Affairs, and the Counties Manukau district health board. In 2004, she studied health issues on a Rotary International scholarship to Louisiana and Washington, D.C.
Wall is openly lesbian and is a strong advocate for human rights. She married her civil union partner, lawyer Prue Kapura, in December 2015, after Wall successfully led an effort to legalise same-sex marriage in New Zealand. They met through the Māori Women's Welfare League. In 2008, on the cusp of entering Parliament, she described her "primary identity" as being Māori and being gay as "one of the dimensions that makes me who I am." She was not raised speaking te reo Māori; although her father was the chairman of the local marae, he did not encourage her to learn Māori.
Sporting career
From childhood, Wall was involved in many sport, including rugby union, football, karate, basketball, and netball. She played club rugby as a five-year-old but was banned at the end of the season after organiser Owen Delaney realised she was a girl.She was named in the New Zealand national netball team, the Silver Ferns, in 1989 when she was aged 17. She had aspired to be a member of the team since she was 13 or 14. She primarily played in the wing defence position and remained a member of the team through 1992, being capped 28 times. During her career, the Silver Ferns won the 1989 World Games, lost to Australia in the 1990 Commonwealth Games and were runners-up to Australia in the 1991 World Netball Championships. After leaving the Silver Ferns, Wall continued to play netball, including for the Auckland Diamonds, and was named in the 1997 Keas team of former New Zealand internationals who played annual games against the Silver Ferns. She tried to rejoin the Silver Ferns in 1999, ahead of the 1999 World Netball Championships, but was not selected.
Wall also made the New Zealand women's national rugby union team, the Black Ferns, in 1995, as a wing. This team would go on to win the first ever fully-sanctioned Women's Rugby World Cup in 1998. The team won their first game against Germany 134–6, and the final against the USA 44–12. Wall never reportedly never lost a game while playing with the Black Ferns. In 1997, Wall won the title of New Zealand Women's Rugby Player of the Year. She retired in 2002, aged 30, after suffering several knee injuries.
On 30 November 2019, Wall was inducted into the Maori Sports Hall of Fame.
Early political career
After her retirement from rugby in 2002, Wall turned to politics. While apparently considered as a possible candidate for the Bay of Plenty electorate, and herself considering the possibility of succeeding Mark Burton in Taupō, Wall was a list-only candidate for the Labour Party in the 2002 general election. Ranked 49 on the party list, she was unsuccessful in her attempt to be elected.In the, Wall stood unsuccessfully in the electorate. Occupying the 46th position on the Labour party list, she was finally elected to Parliament on 29 February 2008 as a replacement for retiring Labour list MP Ann Hartley. In her maiden statement, given on 4 March, Wall addressed New Zealand foreign policy, criticising the war in Iraq and acknowledging New Zealand's role in the Pacific. She also spoke about human rights, and said: "Politics for me is about being in a position of power to make informed and principled decisions of benefit to society that protect the rights of society’s most vulnerable members." In her first year, she sat on the justice committee and the health committee.
Wall was unsuccessful in being elected in a third general election in 2008. Standing in Tāmaki Makaurau, she lost to the incumbent, Māori Party co-leader Pita Sharples, and was not returned as a Labour list MP. However, she returned to Parliament as a Labour List MP in 2011 after Darren Hughes resigned and higher-ranked former MPs declined to take the position. Wall had already been selected in December 2010 to contest for Labour due to the retirement of George Hawkins. Sitting as a list MP for the five months until the 2011 general election, she sat on the law and order and regulations review committees.
Member of Parliament for Manurewa
After being selected to succeed George Hawkins as the Labour candidate in Manurewa in December 2010, Wall won the electorate at the 2011 general election with an 8,610-vote majority. She was the first Māori candidate to win a general electorate for the Labour Party.She held the electorate for Labour by similar margins in the 2014 and 2017 general elections. Politically aligned within the Labour caucus with Parekura Horomia, Lianne Dalziel, Charles Chauvel and Nanaia Mahuta, she supported David Cunliffe in the 2011 and 2013 Labour Party leadership elections. At her retirement in 2022, she stated that her historic support for Cunliffe had hampered her career progression.
In opposition from 2011 until 2017, Wall was Labour's spokesperson for sports and recreation, youth affairs, the community and voluntary sector, and courts and sat on the Māori affairs, health, and social services committees. As a backbench MP, she became known for her ability to progress member's bills, with eight member's bills or private bills introduced during her career, including the Marriage Amendment Act 2013. She was regarded by Stuff chief political reporter Henry Cooke as having achieved more than any other Labour MP between 2008 and 2017.
She was not appointed to a ministerial position in Jacinda Ardern's Sixth Labour Government and instead chaired the health committee from 2017 to 2020 and sat on the foreign affairs, defence and trade committee from 2017 to 2022. As health chair, Wall voted against an inquiry into New Zealand drug-buying agency Pharmac in 2019. She was an outspoken, independent critic of China, whom she accused of harvesting organs from the minority Uyghur and Falun Gong populations. Claire Trevett of The New Zealand Herald wrote that the reason Wall could be so outspoken "was possibly because she knew she had no chance of getting into Cabinet, so had nothing to lose."
2020 re-selection dispute
Wall was nominated by the Manurewa Local Electorate Committee for reselection as the Labour candidate for Manurewa at the 2020 general election. Arena Williams and Ian Dunwoodie challenged Wall for the party selection. Dunwoodie had previously run for selection in 2010, but lost to Wall. Williams, a new candidate who had been mentored by Grant Robertson, submitted her nomination after the advertised deadline.The selection was scheduled to be held on 21 March 2020, but was delayed due to the late nomination of Williams and challenge by Dunwoodie of local electorate committee representation on the selection panel. On 9 May 2020, the New Zealand Council of the Labour Party accepted Williams' nomination and supported Dunwoodie's request to remove the local electorate committee representation from the panel. Wall sought legal advice which she shared with the NZ Council and suggested internal resolution. However the Labour council rescheduled the selection for 30 May and following discussions with the Party over the legal issues, Wall withdrew her nomination as a candidate for Manurewa and announced she would run as a list-only candidate. The New Zealand Herald reported that Dunwoodie had secured enough support in the electorate to beat Wall for the nomination and that Williams, who was successful in gaining the nomination and winning the electorate in the general election, was brought in by the Labour council to block him.
During the 2020 general election, Wall was initially ranked 29 on the Labour Party list and elected for a third time as a list MP. She served in that capacity until 1 May 2022. In her 2022 valedictory statement, she said part of the agreement brokered ahead of the 2020 Manurewa selection was that she would resign from Parliament during the term.