She’s widely known as Labour’s Ms Fixit. A safe pair of hands. One to manage political hot potatoes with dexterity and aplomb. She’s also the woman running Labour’s re-election campaign.
I meet Megan Woods in her elegant Beehive office. It’s 6.30 in the evening. She’s been here since eight this morning and won’t leave the building until after 10pm.
“A lot of people don’t know that when the house is sitting we have to stay in the precinct till 10.” The house generally sits three days a week. The rest of the time you’ll find Megan in meetings in the Beehive or back home in Christchurch doing what she does best and enjoys the most – connecting with people.
She is a warm, genial woman with a razor-sharp intellect. She’s tight with the Labour government’s top echelon and counts Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Finance Minister Grant Robertson among her closest confidants.
She and Grant, she tells me, are cricket fans and have been known to go to the odd game together. “We try not to talk politics,” she smiles. “Test cricket’s my favourite.”
Megan was born in Wigram, the constituency she now serves, in the closing days of 1973. She has a sister. They’re close. Her father, Gordon, was in real estate, her mother, Maureen, worked at a number of admin jobs before taking herself off to university in her 40s to complete a sociology degree. “When I started as a first-year [at uni] we shared a class together. She was up the front, I sat down the back,” Megan grins.
This story is from the April 2020 edition of Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 2020 edition of Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
PRETTY WOMAN
Dial up the joy with a mood-boosting self-care session done in the privacy of your own home. It’s a blissful way to banish the winter blues.
Hitting a nerve
Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes could aid physical and mental wellbeing.
The unseen Rovals
Candid, behind the scenes and neverbefore-seen images of the royal family have been released for a new exhibition.
Great read
In novels and life - there's power in the words left unsaid.
Winter dinner winners
Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of budget-concious recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.
Winter baking with apples and pears
Celebrate the season of apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the cold weather blues away.
The wines and lines mums
Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.
Former ballerina'sBATTLE with BODY IMAGE
Auckland author Sacha Jones reveals how dancing led her to develop an eating disorder and why she's now on a mission to educate other women.
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START
Responsible for keeping the likes of Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis in shape, Malin Svensson is on a mission to motivate those in midlife to move more.