Catherine Delahunty

Candidate for East Coast Electorate

Born 1953, Wellington

Lives on the East Coast

List position 8

Catherine Delahunty is standing in the East Coast electorate for the third time. She has been ranked 10, then 9 and now 8 on the Green Party List.

Background

Catherine was born and raised in Wellington in a family involved with many social justice issues and with the arts. Catherine began her activist career aged 14 when she and her friends at Onslow College organised the first high school students union. She began leading marches, making television appearances and public speaking from that age. She left university halfway through her B.A. and moved to the Coromandel where she learned to milk goats and grow vegetables as well as throw fleeces in the only Buddhist shearing gang in Aotearoa. She resumed political activity when multinational mining companies applied to prospect the Coromandel Peninsula in 1989, co-ordinating the highly effective environmental group, Coromandel Watchdog. Her role over 15 years included media, direct action leadership, public speaking and organising. Her environmental work led to roles in the Department of Conservation and for Greenpeace as a community liaison person and toxics campaigner.

Achievements

Catherine had a book of short stories published by “Penguin” in 1993 and also began a career tutoring in resource management, Te Tiriti o Waitangi issues and creative writing from the late mid 1990s. She has also worked a mediator under the Resource Management Act on a range of community issues. She is currently employed as education co-ordinator for Kotare Trust Research and Education for Social Change. Catherine has been actively involved in campaigns around toxic chemicals, sewage issues, poverty impacts, spray drift and Te Tiriti matters for the last 15 years. She has a 29 year old daughter.

Community involvements

Catherine is Chairperson of the Tairawhiti Beneficiary Advocacy Trust and has been on a school Board of Trustees, on the Tairawhiti R.E.A.P (Rural Education Activities Programme) Board and has participated in many community coalitions from recycling groups to Treaty action, anti GE and anti APEC protest organising groups. She is a member of the WORG (Wastewater Option Review Group) in Gisborne.

Personal statement

“I believe that solutions to the problems faced by the planet and its peoples will only be addressed by a redesign of the economic structures and political processes based on justice for all. I work in both environmental and social justice campaigns because we must urgently connect the dots. We have to face the consequences of greed, pollution and unfairness at every level and create communities worthy of our children and grandchildren. Lack of new technology is not the major problem facing humanity and the earth, genuine power sharing is our greatest challenge”.

Additional

Catherine is committed to fiction writing, yoga and trying to learn more than three chords on the ukulele. She is a practicing feminist stand up comic because male superiority is a very funny idea.

Contacts

06 0861905
0274 588266
cdelahunty@clear.net.nz