An MP who really cares

Clare Curran entered Parliament having already learned through personal experience that politics is brutal and cruel. Sitting Dunedin South MP David Benson-Pope lost the confidence of Prime Minister Helen Clark and left Cabinet in 2007. He continued as a backbencher and sought re-selection in 2008.

It seems there were clear signals Ms Clark wanted Mr Benson-Pope gone, and Ms Curran was the Wellington-backed option.

She was a public relations consultant based in Dunedin from 2002 and also working in the capital. She had grown up in Dunedin and studied at the University of Otago. She had worked on communications for unions and progressive organisations in Australia, and being a woman is advantageous in Labour gender equality aims. Ms Curran was also the Otago/Southland representative on the Labour Party's ruling council.

The selection meeting was dramatic, and the powerful Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union backed a third candidate. About 200 party delegates packed into the Caversham Baptist Church in February 2008 before Labour president Mike Williams announced the decision publicly.

Ms Curran, born in 1960, had already been caught in contention. She was contracted to the Ministry for the Environment to provide communication advice on the Government's climate change strategy, an appointment investigated by the State Services Commission because of accusations of ministerial influence via the office of Climate Change Minister David Parker. She had associations with Mr Parker.

The commissioner concluded that in substance her appointment and work were appropriate. But the ministry should have done more to maintain the necessary perception of neutrality.

Dissension within the party locally followed her 2008 selection, and she would have been wary of subsequent possible challenges. She had won through the "de-selection" of a sitting MP, and that could happen again. While her majority fell in 2011, she battled on and was secure.

Ms Curran has come to be admired for her dogged advocacy through her 11 years. She sided tigerishly with the victims of the 2015 South Dunedin floods and pushed vigorously on behalf of the Hillside railway workshops.

As allies and opponents have said, she worked intently and with passion for the people of her patch. She had a big heart. Subtlety and easy charm were not strong suits, and she wore that heart on her sleeve.

Ms Curran's drive was rewarded with a Cabinet post as Minister of Broadcasting, Communication and Digital Media. It would not have done any harm that she was in the Grant Robertson (himself originally from South Dunedin) and Jacinda Ardern camp during Labour's divisions and leadership changes in the turbulent several years before the last election.

As a minister she was determined to stay on top of the issues and pursue plans. All this unravelled last year after she failed to disclose two meetings and was found to have used her personal email for government business. Resignation was inevitable. The experiences were visibly traumatic for her, and it would have been understandable if she and her family could take no more and she abandoned the bear pit.

In typical fashion, however, Ms Curran continued to battle for South Dunedin, before this week saying it was "time to move on". She has given her party plenty of time to consider a replacement. We will have to wait to see what opportunities open up for her.

The seat, meanwhile, will be in demand, and Southern Labour convener Ruth Chapman has already said in her view the electorate would not be keen on an outsider being parachuted in.

When Ms Curran said she would continue to represent the people of Dunedin South strongly through to the 2020 election, we can be assured that will be so.