Georgina Beyer, a trailblazing New Zealand politician who in 1999 became the world’s first openly transgender member of parliament, has died at the age of 65.
Friends of Ms Beyer said she died peacefully in hospice care.
They did not immediately give a cause of death, although Ms Beyer had previously suffered from kidney failure and underwent a kidney transplant in 2017.
Today, we acknowledge the passing of Georgina Beyer – the worlds first openly transgender MP. Georgina has left lasting impression on Parliament, and we extend our condolences to her loved ones.
Watch Georgina’s Rainbow Voices interview from 2019: https://t.co/sWBLubpvfm pic.twitter.com/7Ov8uaCYY4
— NZ Parliament (@NZParliament) March 6, 2023
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said he did not know Ms Beyer well personally, but knew she had a large following within New Zealand and had made a lasting impression on the nation’s parliament.
“I certainly think that Georgina has blazed a trail that has made it much easier for others to follow,” Mr Hipkins said.
Friend Malcolm Vaughan and his husband Scott Kennedy said: “Georgie was surrounded by her nearest and dearest 24/7 over the past week, she accepted what was happening, was cracking jokes and had a twinkle in her eye, right until the final moment.”
“Farewell Georgie, your love, compassion and all that you have done for the rainbow and many other communities will live on for ever,” they wrote.
Ms Beyer, who was Maori, worked as a sex worker and nightclub performer before turning to politics. In 1995 she was elected mayor of the small North Island town of Carterton.
Four years later, she won national office for the liberal Labour Party and remained a legislator until 2007.
She helped pass the landmark 2003 Prostitution Reform Act, which decriminalised sex work.
So sad to learn this. Georgina was a brave & gracious trailblazer. I’ll always remember her generosity to me at Pride events where she made space for me as a voice for National. We came from different political sides but she had the power to breach the divide. Rest well e hoa. https://t.co/QB5UgXtWLK
— Nicola Willis (@NicolaWillisMP) March 6, 2023
In a speech to legislators at the time, she said the protections the new law offered might have spared her being dragged into the sex industry at the age of 16, and from sex workers being threatened and raped without being able to seek help from police.
She said at the time: “I think of all the people I have known in that area who have suffered because of the hypocrisy of our society, which, on the one hand, can accept prostitution, while, on the other hand, wants to push it under the carpet and keep it in the twilight world that it exists in.”
In 2004, she helped pass a law allowing same-sex civil unions. Nine years later, New Zealand passed a law allowing same-sex marriage.
Politicians from both sides of the aisle mourned her death on Monday. Nicola Willis, the deputy leader of the conservative National Party, recalled Ms Beyer as brave and gracious.
“We came from different political sides but she had the power to breach the divide,” Ms Willis wrote on Twitter.
