New MPs: Darien Fenton

Darien Fenton

Darien Fenton, one of Labour's four new MPs, could lay claim to the most varied CV of any newcomer to Parliament.

The Service and Food Workers Union (SWFU) national secretary scraped in last on Labour's list on the election-night result.

In a varied working life, she has done everything from acting to hotel work.

Raised in a state house in Palmerston North, she had an early political eduction as her grandfather, Fred Frost, was Labour MP for New Plymouth from 1938 to 1943 in the Savage and Fraser Governments.

Ms Fenton went briefly to Victoria University, but did the "70s thing" and dropped out before travelling overseas.

At one point she worked as an extra in India in Bollywood movies - none of which she ever saw.

She also worked at Marsden Pt as one of the first female trades assistants in 1983-84 during strike-prone times.

In London she was an administrative research assistant to the Tower of London's master of armouries.

If that were not enough, she has also been a piano teacher, caregiver, waitress and hotel worker, and in 1989 became a union organiser in the Hotel Workers Union.

She will resign her role in the SFWU once the final election result is known. Ms Fenton was also a vice-president of the Council of Trade Unions in 2004.

She is the third head of the SFWU now in Labour's caucus, following Mark Gosche and Rick Barker.

The mother of one hopes Labour can lead a stable Government and that its programme, including initiatives such as Working for Families, can be consolidated over the next three years.

"There's stuff that's coming in that I want to see embedded for the long term."

She said Labour's industrial relations policy did not anticipate any more workplace legislation.

But she was looking forward to getting into new areas, such as health.

"It would be good to be in something completely different actually, not that I want to abandon where I come from."