David Benson-Pope will no longer be Labour's candidate for Dunedin South. Photo / Michael Thomas
Former Environment minister David Benson-Pope has been dumped from the Dunedin South electorate he has represented since 1999.
After hours of deliberations, the seven-member electorate committee selected communications specialist and Labour party activist Clare Curran to contest this year's election.
Curran was chosen ahead of Benson-Pope, Engineering, Printing
and Manufacturing Union president Don Pryde and Public Service Association organiser Keith McFadyen.
Electorate chairman Richard Good declined to comment on the decision.
But Curran said she believed the committee had accepted it was "time for a change".
"It was a hard decision to challenge a sitting MP, especially one who has been a Cabinet minister. He has been a very good MP locally and a very good member of caucus and Cabinet.
"I argued that the Labour Party needs to show it can do renewal."
Benson-Pope's deselection is the latest blow in a tough few years.
In May 2005, he stood down from Cabinet after denying allegations he had physically abused students while working as a teacher in the 1980s. He lost his portfolios temporarily but later regained them all except education.
In 2006, further allegations surfaced from his teaching days, including that he had forced students to stand outside in their nightwear for misbehaving during a camp. Benson-Pope apologised in Parliament to his former students, while maintaining he had done nothing inappropriate.
He was forced to resign from the Cabinet in July after making misleading statements about the removal of Madeleine Setchell from her job as Environment Ministry communications manager. Setchell's partner was the chief press secretary for National Party leader John Key.
Curran, who shook hands with Benson-Pope after the announcement, is no stranger to controversy. She weathered claims that Climate Change Minister David Parker influenced the public service by recommending her for a communications contract at the Environment Ministry.
State Services Commissioner Mark Prebble later found there was no inappropriate direction from the minister in hiring Curran.
The 47-year-old mother of twin boys said yesterday those experiences last year had "saddened" her.
