As Georgina te Heuheu watched the election results coming out last November a feeling came over her that many of us might find a bit strange. “I felt like I was getting my freedom back,” she said.

With the election on 26 November 2011 the Hon Georgina te Heuheu was coming to the end of fifteen years of service in the New Zealand Parliament, six of them in National governments in which she held a number of portfolios.

Georgina Manunui was born into a family of eight children and grew up at Taurewa, a tiny village on the main road just north of Chateau Tongariro. “I was number six in the line up.”

Today Taurewa’s better known for the presence of the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre, but back then the villagers livelihood came from the local timber mill and the forest where native trees were felled and then milled.

As she grew up with the majestic central north island mountains as her backdrop did she ever dream or think that one day she would be a Member of Parliament and a Minister? “No I never did, never.”

“Education was the push back then, and my parents wanted all of us children to get a good start in life.” Georgina was packed off to Turakina Girls’ College just south of Whanganui. The headmistress felt Georgina had potential and after three years suggested to her parents that she could make arrangements for their daughter to transfer to Auckland Girls’ Grammar, and things took off from there.

The next stop was Victoria University where she first gained a BA in English, then Ken Hingston, later Judge Hingston, suggested Ms Manunui should study law and that’s when a series of firsts began.

She was the first Māori woman to gain a law degree and be admitted to the bar. She sat on a Commission of Inquiry and was a member of the Waitangi Tribunal, and then one day her father-in-law, Sir Hepi te Heuheu the Paramount Chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, called Georgina, her husband Timi and his older brother Tumu together. “Dad told us that one of us needed to stand for Parliament.” The te Heuheu whānau were National supporters and the Chief had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get one of his people elected to Parliament.

Georgina got the task, MMP was upon us and in 1996 she became the first Māori woman elected as a National Party MP, on the National list.

The first woman chair of the Māori Affairs Select Committee followed, and then the first Māori woman National Cabinet Minister, she was only the second Māori woman to be a minister after the Hon Whetu Mārama Tirikatene-Sullivan, who was in a previous Labour Cabinet.

Labour won the 1999 election and after three good years in government Georgina found herself in opposition for the next nine years, and didn’t enjoy it. Along the way there was her very public spat with the then leader of the National Party Don Brash, over the speech he made to the Orewa Rotary Club.

Georgina was demoted by Brash and removed from her spokesperson role. But after National lost the next election Brash was gone, and with National back in power in 2008 Georgina was back in Cabinet again.

In her first term in government Georgina was Minister for Courts, Minister of Women’s Affairs, Associate Minister in Charge of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations and Associate Minister of Health.

When National came back into power in 2008 she returned as Minister for Courts, and gained other roles as Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control, and Associate Minister of Māori Affairs.

Now that her busy life as a politician has ended, is she looking forward to relaxing? “No, I actually find it hard to relax, and there’s plenty of work at home that needs attending to.”