Rachel Boyack

Boyack was born in Timaru and grew up in Palmerston North, having moved there aged nine.^[2] She attended Ross Intermediate with future MPs Tangi Utikere and Tim Costley and went on to Palmerston North Girls' High School.^[2][3] Her father, Jonathan Boyack, was a public health administrator who worked as an area health board chief executive and later moved to Birmingham where he was a hospital trust chief executive. Her parents separated in the 1990s and she was raised by her mother, a church organist.^[4][5] Her maternal grandfather, Alan Earl, was considered for the National Party candidacy in Wairarapa but was reportedly passed over due to his opposition to the 1981 Springbok rugby union tour.^[5]

Boyack earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Auckland and was a member of the National Youth Choir.^[6] She married Scott Mayer, an accountant, and the couple moved to Nelson, where Boyack was assistant director of music at Christ Church Cathedral.^[7]

For three years, Boyack was the student union president for Saniti, the student union for Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology.^[8][9] Following that, from about 2012 onward, she was the Nelson organiser of First Union.^[8] Her activities included protesting low wages at supermarkets,^[10] clashing with the mayor of Nelson, Rachel Reese,^[11] and opposing the closure of a bank's branch in Stoke.^[12][13] In 2018 she was appointed to the board of governors of the Nelson Environment Centre and was also on the board of the Nelson Women's and Children's Refuge.^[14]

Boyack has been a member of the Labour Party since 2005.^[8] She was selected as its candidate for the Nelson electorate in January 2017,^[15] having expressed an interest in doing so in 2015.^[8] The Nelson electorate had been held by National Party MP Nick Smith since 1996. She was also placed on the Labour party list at 48th place.^[16] She finished runner-up, but lowered Smith's majority by 3000 votes.^[17]

She was selected to stand in Nelson for Labour again in 2020.^[14] In the 2020 general election, she was elected to the Nelson seat by a final margin of 4,525 votes, ousting the incumbent Smith.^[18][19]

In her first term as a Member of Parliament, Boyack served as deputy chair of the governance and administration committee and deputy chair of the petitions committee.^[20] She sang a hymn at the conclusion of her maiden statement on 10 February 2021.^[5] Her private member's bill, the Plain Language Bill, was debated a first time in October 2021.^[21] The bill proposed requiring public agencies to appoint plain language officers in a bid to make public facing government documentation more comprehensible. The bill was opposed by the opposition National Party, who attempted a filibuster,^[22] but passed into law in October 2022.^[23] Boyack also oversaw the passage of a private bill modernising the governance arrangements of the Cawthron Institute.^[24]

Official results for the 2023 New Zealand general election, as of 3 November 2023, showed Boyack retaining the Nelson seat by 29 votes over National's candidate Blair Cameron.^[25] On 8 November, the National Party sought a judicial recount in the Nelson electorate.^[26][27] On 10 November, the Electoral Commission confirmed that Boyack had won Nelson by a margin of 26 votes, three votes fewer than the final vote results.^[28]

In late November 2023, Boyack became spokesperson for the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), arts, culture and heritage, and animal welfare in the Shadow Cabinet of Chris Hipkins.^[29]