KEY POINTS:
One of Parliament's newest MPs doesn't mind admitting she's a bolter to Maori voters in the South Island.
Rahui Katene of the Maori Party took Te Tai Tonga off Labour's Mahara Okeroa by 635 votes.
Yesterday, the 54-year-old Treaty lawyer had a tour of Parliament, her workplace for
the next three years.
"There's a few of us newbies wandering around at the moment all trying not too look too new - all wide eyes," Mrs Katene said.
For a relative unknown in the electorate that covers all of the South Island and Wellington, she still can't quite believe she's been elected.
"For many of the people in Te Waipounamu [South Island] I have come out of nowhere, they don't know me. In Te Tau Ihu [at the top of the South Island] they know me well, in Wellington they know me reasonably well, but the rest of the electorate hadn't known me up until a few weeks ago, but still they put their trust in me. That's very humbling."
The former nurse and mother of five replaced the first pick candidate Monte Ohia after he died in June.
For the past 15 years she's been a lawyer, with stints at Crown Forestry Rental Trust and Donna Hall's Woodward Law. As a junior she worked on the case challenging the 1994 Maori Electoral Option where claimants said the option was underfunded.
Her father, activist John Hippolite, was an original signatory to WAI 262, the 17-year-old mammoth flora and fauna claim which the Waitangi Tribunal is still to complete its report on.
As an adult student, juggling motherhood and study, it took her nine years to finish her degree. Originally she was attracted to law after getting involved in Women's Refuge.
"That was totally eye-opening for me. It was a world I had never had much to do with and I got so angry about what was going on. I decided it was law where I could help the best."
However, as she studied more she became a self-confessed "Treaty-nut". and decided to specialise in that field.
But she said bread and butter politics is what is important now - she wanted to advocate for raising the minimum wage and making sure all families are eligible for in-work tax credits.
For a newcomer she doesn't want to set the bar too high.
"I have very low goals - end world hunger, wars, just the basics."
