NZ First puts teacher high on list

Teacher Susan Baragwanath was quite impressed with New Zealand First when it was the only party to respond to letters she sent to MPs in 1996 about the schooling of teenage mothers.

It is now so impressed with her that she has been given a winnable position on the party list.

She is at No 8, ahead of six sitting MPs.

She will also stand in Auckland Central, where she lives with her husband, High Court Judge David Baragwanath.

MP Brian Donnelly was the new Associate Education Minister in 1996 in the National-New Zealand First coalition.

He rang Susan Baragwanath about Correspondence School courses.

"By the next day it was fixed," she said yesterday when New Zealand First released its list.

There are now 32 schools around New Zealand giving teenage mothers a chance to finish their education and reducing the likelihood of them depending on social welfare.

After 37 years' teaching, Susan Baragwanath, 57, will have a career change if New Zealand First maintains its polling of about 6 per cent or better.

And her place on the list has doubled the representation of women in the party's first 15. The only other woman is MP Barbara Stewart.

Susan Baragwanath said that being married to a judge was not an issue. "It is not a problem for him because he is politically neutral. He doesn't vote."

Many couples chose different career paths "and it is something we are willing to accept. I do think if you can make a difference for young people, it is worth doing."

She said some of her liberal friends had tried to dissuade her from standing for NZ First.

"People are anxious to give you their views and I respect those views."

Becoming an MP was "like wearing a red dress every day of the week".

But young people had been her concern all her working life and she wondered what would happen if nobody put up their hand.

NZ First leader Winston Peters said Susan Baragwanath's work had been a tremendous success story and his party had employed two of her former pupils in NZ First's parliamentary office.

He said he had warned his MPs since 2002 that they would have to make way for more women candidates in this election.

Susan Baragwanath does not believe that lending support to schools for teenage mothers means tacit support for teenage pregnancy.

"No society could tacitly approve it, I don't believe. But it's a fact and if you don't do anything about it, if you don't identify a problem, then you don't have to find a solution."

She left New Zealand as a 21-year-old and returned as a 41-year-old after working in Britain, the United States, France and Switzerland.

She became deputy principal of Porirua College in the late 1980s.

She has two sons, one living in Australia and one in Switzerland.