Former MP Alamein Kopu dies

Former MP Alamein Kopu from Rotorua has died.

She worked extensively in the community, mainly on rehabilitation programmes for criminals and drug users.

She was the centre of a storm in 1997 after resigning from the Alliance Party, through which she'd been elected on the party list the year before, to become an independent MP.

For that move, Alamein Kopu became known as the "waka jumping" MP.

Fellow MPs complained she was never in Parliament and did little work - her response was to blame racism and say apartheid was alive and well in New Zealand.

Mrs Kopu died in Rotorua yesterday, aged 68.