Hoping to be a doctor in the House: GP Vanessa Weenink eyes Banks Peninsula seat for National

If I don’t get selected as a candidate, I will still help out and volunteer with the party

National Party member Vanessa Weenink reckons having been a Labour Party member won’t harm her hopes of becoming the MP for Banks Peninsula in Canterbury.

Asked whether changing parties has harmed her selection chances, Dr Weenink says, “In some ways, the feedback I’ve had is that it’s improved it.

“Because I’m one of the people that’s changed my mind, I can help others to see how they should change their mind as well.”

A specialist GP in Christchurch and currently locuming, Dr Weenink was a volunteer canvasser, knocking on voters’ doors in the successful 2017 campaign of Labour candidate Duncan Webb for the Christchurch Central electorate.

She quit Labour in 2019 so she could get involved in medical advocacy – at the now-defunct NZMA – without party membership as a potential conflict of interest.

Then this June, soon after the NZMA had begun winding up, she joined National, seeking selection in the Christchurch electorate of Ilam, traditionally a safe seat for National. Ilam is held by Labour after the 2020 COVID-19 election landslide ejected Gerry Brownlee (now a list MP).

Dr Weenink lost the selection to medical researcher Hamish Campbell but remains upbeat, saying it would have been a miracle had she won.

She expects there will be other opportunities around Canterbury: “I will probably go for one more, probably Banks Peninsula. If I don’t get selected as a candidate, I will still help out and volunteer with the party.”

It was also in June this year that the frank-talking Dr Weenink challenged Labour health minister Andrew Little at the GP CME conference in Rotorua. She pointed out to Mr Little how government representatives arrived at primary care funding “negotiations” with a fixed offer.

After leaving Labour, Dr Weenink considered which party’s policies aligned most closely to her values.

“Particularly that was around freedom and choice and empowerment of communities, which I see as being more of a driver for National than Labour, who seem to be centralising everything,” she says.

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Her interest in policy lines up well with her personal skills, she says. “I’m actually quite a good listener from being a GP and I think that’s helpful for an MP to be able to listen to the concerns and figure out what the real problems are.”

The mother of five older teenagers in a blended family, Dr Weenink lives in Cashmere in the Banks Peninsula electorate, and is married to medical oncologist Matthew Strother.

A former army medical officer and major who has practised medicine for 20 years, she says she reflected on her career and life while recovering from a hip replacement done in March.

“My son tells me it’s a mid-life crisis, which is probably not inaccurate,” the 44-year-old says. She has taken locum bookings up to February and, if not selected as a National candidate, will be available for more.

After 11 years at Papanui Medical Centre, she sold her practice and finished working there in September. She says leaving was more emotional than she had anticipated.