Bill Johnson, a 2009 conservative Christian candidate for governor of Alabama, has spent the last year in Christchurch, New Zealand, helping relief efforts in the aftermath of the earthquake.

According to the New Zealand Herald, the 52-year-old used the internet to meet at least nine women – including lesbian couples – to offer them his services as a sperm donor.

The newspaper said that three of the women were now pregnant, while Mr Johnson had donated sperm to another three in the last month.

His wife Kathy, who is unable to have children after a hysterectomy ten years ago, was unaware of his sperm donations.

According to the newspaper, he said she did not know about any of the donations and he had not planned to tell her until after the children are born.

When asked about his activities, Mr Johnson said his urge to become a biological father was “a need that I have”.

He said he did not know that some of the women were lesbians but refused to answer when asked whether this fact mattered to him.

He said: “Every person who is a father and a mother knows why I am doing this. If life’s circumstances had dealt me a different hand I wouldn’t be doing this. It is not the hand that life has dealt my wife.

“Reproduction and having children is as basic a human need as eating.”

Mr Johnson later said he had filed a complaint with police about how the New Zealand Herald obtained the information, but the newspaper says it “did not and would not use information obtained from illegally intercepted communications”.

Fertility experts have raised concerns about the extent of Mr Johnson’s donating. It is recommended that donors help no more than four families to avoid unintentional incest in future.

Although Prime Minister John Key has said the issue is not a priority, the party’s ‘rainbow’ policy document says it will modernise the law “to ensure the widest pool of suitable adults is lawfully available to provide care to children in need”.

Although most New Zealanders can adopt, gay couples cannot.

Other promises include measures to crack down on homophobic bullying in schools and updates for relationship and relationship property laws.

This week, it was claimed that two Labour MPs had called gay National MP and Attorney General Chris Finlayson “Tinkerbell”.

Trevor Mallard and Clayton Cosgrove have been accused of homophobia.

ACT’s Wellington central candidate Stephen Whittington has accused openly gay Labour MPs Grant Robertson and Chauvel of covering up prejudice in the party.

According to GayNZ.com, Mr Chauvel said Mr Mallard had supported all pro-gay legislation and did not deserve “vilification”.

According to the AIDS Epidemiology Group at the University of Otago, 90 of the 149 new infections diagnosed last year were found in men who have sex with men.

HIV campaigners said that rates of the disease in gay and bisexual men were the worst they had ever been, surpassing even the 1980s.

The last highest rate was in 2008, when 93 gay or bisexual men were diagnosed with HIV.

Of this year’s total 149 infections, the source of 23 has not been confirmed but more than half are thought to have been transmitted through gay sex, which would make 2010 the worst year on record for gay/bisexual infection rates.

New Zealand Aids Foundation director Shaun Robinson said he had grave concerns for the safety of gay and bisexual men.

He said: “This epidemic has never been worse in New Zealand for gay and bisexual men.

“In addition to the 90 gay and bisexual men that we know about, there are another 15 men for whom the method of HIV transmission is unknown. It’s highly likely that most of them will be gay or bisexual men, which means that this will be the worst year on record.

“Not even in the early days of AIDS in the 1980s were rates of infection for gay and bisexual men this bad in New Zealand.”

He called for more HIV testing to catch the disease early.

“These men may have had HIV and been sexually active for a long time before they were diagnosed which means they missed out on treatment and were also likely to be more infectious.

“This situation could have been avoided by regular HIV testing.”

An estimated 1,800 people – most of them gay or bisexual men – are thought to be living with HIV in New Zealand.

The ChristchurchQuake.netwebsite said that the earthquake which is believed to have claimed the lives of more than 200 people was caused by vengeance from God because of the “amoral” behaviour of gays and lesbians.

As PinkNews.co.uk reported last week, the website pointed out that the earthquake struck on the day that New Zealand’s‘Gay Ski Week’ was to begin.

The website listed a number of major incidents that resulted from the natural disaster and gave homophobic explanations for them.

One page described the fire pouring out of the Pike River Mine ventilation shaft that the websited said left 29 men dead and 13 children orphaned.

The website said this was vengeance for lesbian paedophiles: “The fire on the left is pouring out of the Pike River Mine ventilation shaft. The explosion orphaned 23 children, and killed 29 men. It happened in the heartland of NZ’s Labour Party, in the West Coast Mining area of the South Island. Why? Because the wicked, wicked women, who headed NZ’s Labour Party, conspired to orphan a little refugee girl – a little girl those lesbian paedophiles wanted to molest. The punishment was measure for measure – they tried to make an orphan of a little girl, so a Divine curse made orphans of 23 children in Labour’s heartland.

“The men who died were not guilty of the conspiracy to murder a child. But they could see what was going on, what had happened to the Labour Party. Anyone could see it – the squadron of butch women, with deep voices, dressing like men, walking like men, talking like men, taking lesbian lovers, who had taken over NZ’s Labour Party.”

The website went on to say: “The miners were not guilty of child murder – but the whole of New Zealand was guily of turning a blind eye to the evil, to the perversion that was governing the country. A Labour Party was meant to be about protecting hardworking families. It is not meant to be a ‘fag and hag’ club for perverts, who want to exploit the rest of the population, and to molest and prey upon their children.

“Like it or not, Pike River was God’s answer — the whole country was judged guilty, and judgement began in the heartland of the party that let itself be taken over by perverts, paedophiles and murderers.”

The website warns Kiwis that they should not “tempt fate and risk another quake.” It said: “The morning of the Christchurch earthquake was the opening of ‘Gay Ski Week’. The highlight of the week was a party featuring two of NZ’s ugliest and butchest lesbians as the main event in Queenstown. Squadrons of ‘imports’ were to have been brought in for the week — from Sydney’s now booming gay and lesbian area around Oxford St, between the CBD and Kings Cross.”

PinkNews.co.uk called on readers to complain to the website’s hosting company, BlueHost.com. It is believed that hundreds of readers did just that. The website is now listed as “disabled”, a message says “the website you were trying to reach is temporarily unavailable.”

The quake, which left scores dead, took place on the day ‘Gay Ski Week’ was to begin.

The ChristchurchQuake.net website, hosted in Utah, lists a number of the major incidents that have taken place as a result of the devastating quake and blames them on gay people.

One page describes the fire pouring out of the Pike River Mine ventilation shaft that it says has left 29 men dead and 13 children orphaned.

It says this was vengeance for lesbian paedophiles: “The fire on the left is pouring out of the Pike River Mine ventilation shaft. The explosion orphaned 23 children, and killed 29 men. It happened in the heartland of NZ’s Labour Party, in the West Coast Mining area of the South Island. Why? Because the wicked, wicked women, who headed NZ’s Labour Party, conspired to orphan a little refugee girl – a little girl those lesbian paedophiles wanted to molest. The punishment was measure for measure – they tried to make an orphan of a little girl, so a Divine curse made orphans of 23 children in Labour’s heartland.

“The men who died were not guilty of the conspiracy to murder a child. But they could see what was going on, what had happened to the Labour Party. Anyone could see it – the squadron of butch women, with deep voices, dressing like men, walking like men, talking like men, taking lesbian lovers, who had taken over NZ’s Labour Party.”

The website goes on to say: “The miners were not guilty of child murder – but the whole of New Zealand was guily of turning a blind eye to the evil, to the perversion that was governing the country. A Labour Party was meant to be about protecting hardworking families. It is not meant to be a ‘fag and hag’ club for perverts, who want to exploit the rest of the population, and to molest and prey upon their children.

“Like it or not, Pike River was God’s answer — the whole country was judged guilty, and judgement began in the heartland of the party that let itself be taken over by perverts, paedophiles and murderers.”

The website warns Kiwis that they should not “tempt fate and risk another quake.” It said: “The morning of the Christchurch earthquake was the opening of ‘Gay Ski Week’. The highlight of the week was a party featuring two of NZ’s ugliest and butchest lesbians as the main event in Queenstown. Squadrons of ‘imports’ were to have been brought in for the week — from Sydney’s now booming gay and lesbian area around Oxford St, between the CBD and Kings Cross.”

Associate Professor of History at Massey University, Peter Lineham told GayNZ: “This sort of homophobic attitude generally comes from religious people who are subscribing to a Mid-Western USA frame of thought which is fearful of the world. It has its roots in a fear of what they see as a series of evils which are destroying what seems to them to have once been a comfortable 19th century kind of world. They see gays and lesbians as a threat to family life and fear lesbians in particular, as for them all submissiveness to a male authority figure has gone.”

Jay Bennie, editor of GayNZ said: “I think it’s despicable, I think it’s appallingly insensitive, not only to gays and lesbians but to the suggestion that the people of Christchurch, by embracing gays and lesbians to certain degrees in their society, have brought this upon themselves.

“It’s cruel and vindictive in the city’s hour of need. We are pretty disgusted about it and find it hard to understand how humane people could do this sort of thing,” he said.

“I would ask them to consider the lives of people in Christchurch and not use tragedy as a further opportunity to stir up hatred against gay and lesbian people.”

The website is hosted by Utah-based company Bluehost.com, who can be contacted at abuse@bluehost.com.

In 2007, the Right Rev Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle, blamed the floods that devastated large parts of the UK on gay equality measures such as civil partnerships.

The fast food giant was criticised by gay website GayNZ.com for blocking non-sexually explicit gay websites on its customer wifi network.

The company said yesterday it would begin lifting the blocks on the Rainbow Youth and Agender websites, as well as the website for New Zealand Family Planning.

But it says it will continue to block GayNZ.com because of some “sexually explicit” third party advertising. The company has offered to meet the site’s editor to discuss how the ban could be lifted.

The gay website had pointed out that other sites which were deemed to be “family friendly” had far more explicit and sexual content on user discussion areas, yet were not blocked.

McDonald’s began installing wifi in its restaurants in December and says it is now New Zealand’s largest free internet provider.

An email from the company to New Zealand media said the chain would continue to “actively discriminate against access to all sexually explicit and pornographic material in restaurants”.

It added: “We would also like to stress that it was never our intention to discriminate against the gay community.

“Our review process is of course on-going and we’re absolutely happy to check out websites on a case-by-case basis, if our customers believe some have been unjustifiably blocked.”

Air New Zealand’s humorous inflight safety video features a flight full of rugby fans and some members of the All-Blacks national team.

In the deleted scene, All Black centre Richard Kahui poses for a photo with a female flight attendant but politely declines to give gay staff member Will Coxhead a kiss on the cheek.

However, Air New Zealand said the lighthearted video had to be changed after complaints.

“The move comes after complaints from members of the gay and lesbian community in the past week,” the airline said.

The company said it had been told by a university professor, who it did not name, that the video could lead to suicides in the gay community.

Earlier this week, Air New Zealand manager David Morgan told the New Zealand Herald that the video had been shown to some gay people, who approved it.

Mr Coxhead, the Air New Zealand flight attendant who turned actor for the scene, said he was “gutted” by the response of “some people in the gay community”.

“I’m proud to be gay, proud to be an Air New Zealander and extremely proud of my role in the safety video … It was a bit of fun and was only meant as such,” he said.

“Obviously there are some people in the gay community that can be a little precious and need to lighten up.”

Exodus, who claim to be an organisation serving the needs of LGBT people as much as any other gay group, and offering services “valuable to gay people going through difficult times”, lost their bid because the New Zealand government does not believe homosexuality to be a disease requiring treatment.

The Commission gave various reasons for denying the application, stating that “the Applicant’s purposes were not exclusively charitable and the Commission was unable to determine whether the Applicant provided a public benefit.”

They also added that Exodus was not offering relief to the poor, nor care to the unwell.

The Commission also quoted the American Medical Association’s position on “curing” LGBT people: “Psycho-therapeutic modalities to convert or ‘repair’ homosexuality are based on developmental theories whose scientific validity is questionable.”

Exodus say their ethos is to: “counsel and assist homosexuals and others with sexual problems in order that they may find healing and release into wholeness as desired by God and revealed in the Bible”.

They also claim to “make information available to homosexuals . . . that they can be released from homosexuality and to teach and present the view that a homosexual can change and that he or she is not born homosexual”.

A lawyer communicating with the Charitable Commission on behalf of Exodus claim that the group “offer non-judgmental support and advice to anyone wishing to leave the homosexual lifestyle, or trying to decide whether to do so.” The letter also stated that “the activities (and purposes) of Exodus are exclusively charitable, as we understand that no one receives and pecuniary benefit of any kind from its activities which are religious, educational and beneficial to the community.”

The group, which reportedly rented their own building with a million dollar mortgage in 2008, has according to a recent article on the Ex-Gay Watch website, been suffering financially of late. They cite on their Facebook page an “unexpectedly low giving season” coupled with utilities bills as some of the reasons.

They added: “Your prayers are appreciated. For those who are also having to endure this unfriendly economy, our prayers are with you!”

The couple, who live at Royal Albatross Colony on South Island, are not unique, but it is particularly unusual for lesbian albatrosses to successfully incubate an egg.

Royal albatrosses are an endangered species and the new chick is one of just 17 new additions to the colony this year. The colony has had three lesbian couples in the last 70 years.

It is not known who the father of the chick is.

A spokesman from the Department of Conservation, Robin Thomas, told AAP: “One of them obviously mated so their egg was fertile. Only one egg was laid and that’s now hatched.”

He added that all three were doing well, after the chick initially struggled.

The female birds reportedly take turns to look after it, after sharing incubation duties.

When the pregnancy was announced last month, the local tourism board encouraged members of the public to send in name suggestions for the new baby.

Club Physical chief executive Paul Richards included a link to an article on the conservative World Net Daily website. He said he was “intrigued” by it and wanted to hear other opinions.

The article, by Jim Rutz, claimed that soy was full of estrogen and this was turning boys gay.

Rutz claimed: “Soy is feminising, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality.”

He added that homosexuality is “always deviant”.

Reader John Kingi said in an email sent to the media that he was “disgusted” to read the article and was planning to cancel his Club Physical membership.

Kingi said: “The mere idea that eating something ‘makes you gay’ is complete nonsense. Even worse, the article they are promoting in their newsletter goes on to describe homosexuality as ‘deviant’. The article makes numerous claims about evidence but contains no references.”

He added: “It’s totally disgusting for a business like Club Physical to be peddling homophobic rubbish like this. Club Physical claims to be ‘the place where you belong’. Evidently that belonging does not extend to gay people. ”

Today, Richards told GayNZ.com he had hoped to drum up some rare feedback from the newsletter. He said he usually included a link to a health food article.

He said: “I have written this newsletter every week for over five years and there is hardly ever any feedback.

“I was on a tight deadline and in the back of my mind I realised it might provoke comment. I’m afraid I didn’t put enough thought into it.”

He added that despite his conservative Christian background, as highlighted on the Club Physical website, he had not heard of Jim Rutz before.

The singer was due to play the Big Day Out festival, which is held in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and in the New Zealand city of Auckland.

Gay rights groups had petitioned festival organisers to drop him from the line-up, saying his songs incited violence.

Beenie Man, real name Anthony Moses Davis, has a number of songs which advocate the murder of lesbians and gays.

Lyrics include “I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays”, while another song suggests lesbians should be hanged.

A statement from Big Day Out confirmed his appearances had been cancelled because they would “mar” the event for many.

It said: “Although aware of the controversial nature of Beenie Man and his previous lyrics that have caused offence with the gay and lesbian and wider community, the producers understood that the artist had renounced these sentiments and no longer expresses those views.

“Notwithstanding claims of a commitment to the Reggae Compassionate Act which he signed in 2007 and a promise of adherence to peaceful and humanistic values for the dates here by Beenie Man, the depth of feeling and hurt amongst these groups has convinced us that for us to proceed with his Big Day Out appearances was, and would continue to be, divisive amongst our audience members and would mar the enjoyment of the event for many.

“For this reason we have decided not to proceed.”

According to gay UK group OutRage!, Beenie Man later denied signing the act and denounced it.

Peter Tatchell, who had written to festival organisers to urge them to drop him, said: “These concert cancellations will hit Beenie Man hard in the pocket. He has lost tens of thousands of dollars.

“The success of this campaign sends a warning message to all murder music artists: inciting homophobic violence will cost you money. You will lose out big time.”

Beenie Man, real name Anthony Moses Davis, has a number of songs which advocate the murder of lesbians and gays.

Lyrics include “I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays”, while another song suggests lesbians should be hanged.

Organisers of the festival say they are trying to confirm that Beenie Man will not perform any anti-gay songs.

They added that the artist had signed up to the Reggae Compassionate Act, although UK-based gay group OutRage! say he denied signing it and denounced it.

Gay groups in New Zealand are calling for the invitation to be revoked, while gay Labour MP Charles Chauvel has asked the immigration minister Kate Wilkinson to deny the artist a visa.

Big Day Out’s New Zealand promoter, Campbell Smith told Stuff.co.nz: “The Big Day Out’s core values include those of tolerance and understanding

“We are responding to concerns that Beenie Man’s presence at the event may compromise those values and are directly investigating fears that he will perform material conflicting with our philosophy and his own undertakings pursuant to the RCA.”

In 2006, Beenie Man told The Independent that the true meaning of his lyrics have been misinterpreted due to cultural differences.

He claimed that in Jamaica the word ‘gay’ is synonymous with rape, and that unlike the consensual gay relationships found in England, the only ‘gay’ relationships that exist in Jamaica are young men who are forced into gay sex by poverty.

He claimed that 95 per cent of the young men attending his ‘Beenie Man Foundation for Troubled Youth’ had been sexually molested by older men.

He went on to assert that as a Rastafarian and believer in the Bible, he hates no one, but admitted that the thought of two men together disgusted him.

The research, carried out by the University of Auckland, also found that around a third of respondents had thought seriously about attempting suicide.

The full report will be released tomorrow, but according to GayNZ.com, it will show that gay and bisexual teens have higher rates of alcohol and drug use, STIs and mental ill-health than their heterosexual counterparts.

However, there was good news in better reported friendships and a decrease in smoking rates since a similar survey from 2000.

Nathan Brown, a spokesman for youth at the NZ AIDS Foundation, said: “The improvements are wonderful, however it’s very clear that the rates of bullying and isolation that same-sex attracted youth reported have real and serious consequences for these young people.

“By addressing the issues affecting same-sex attracted young people schools will improve learning outcomes for all students by teaching how to succeed in a diverse society.”

The research was carried out by UMR, which conducted telephone interviews with 750 people.

Women and young people were found to more likely to say homosexuality was morally acceptable.

Sixty-nine per cent of women said it was, compared to 53 per cent of men.

It was also found that 71 per cent of those under 44 years of age had liberal views on homosexuality but only 41 per cent of those over 60 felt the same.

Other findings of the survey showed that 52 per cent of people thought wearing fur was morally unacceptable.

Cloning humans was found to be the most contentious issue, with only seven per cent of respondents saying it was acceptable.

The Crimes Provocation Repeal Amendment Bill was unanimously passed on Tuesday night.

If it passes into law, the bill will remove the ability for people charged with murder to claim they were provoked.

In the gay panic defence, a person charged with murder can claim that they were driven into a state of violent temporary insanity by a sexual advance from the victim.

It is also used in domestic violence cases.

Recent cases include Ferdinand Ambach, who killed Auckland gay man Ronald Brown by showing the neck of a banjo down his throat. Ambach said he thought Brown was about to rape him.

Another was Clayton Weatherston, who stabbed his girlfriend Sophie Elliott 216 times but argued he should be charged with manslaughter rather than murder because he was provoked.

Justice minister Simon Power said allowing people to use the defence of provocation sent out the wrong message.

He said: “The defence assumes that ordinary reasonable people when confronted with severe provocation will react with a homicidal loss of self-control, when, in fact, ordinary people do not.”

“When the government is attempting to send the strong message that people must find ways other than violence to manage their anger it is inappropriate and undesirable that anger be singled out as an overriding mitigating factor that could be seen to justify conviction for manslaughter rather than murder.”

Green Party MP Kevin Hague, who is openly gay, said: “The ongoing existence of this defence is a signal that violently taking the life of a gay man is of less consequence than of taking the life of another. That is obnoxious in the extreme. It increases the actual physical danger faced by gay men, and it signals in the most graphic way possible both to gay men and to everyone else that our lives do not have the same value as the lives of others.”

The gay panic defence is most frequently used in the United States, particularly in areas where homophobia is widespread.

In the UK, it is also referred to as the ‘Portsmouth defence’ or ‘guardsman’s defence’ and if accepted it reduces the defendant’s liability to a charge of murder. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence but the sentence for manslaughter is at the judge’s discretion.

The Crown Prosecution Service states:

“The fact that the victim made a sexual advance on the defendant does not, of itself automatically provide the defendant with a defence of self-defence for the actions that take place.

“Often, the sexual advance made by the victim will not involve any physical act of touching, and the reaction of the defendant is borne out of anger rather than any real belief that they were acting to protect themselves from an assault.”

The man on trial, Ferdinand Ambach, is accused of beating Ronald James Brown around the head with a 2.7kg banjo, before shoving the neck repeatedly down his throat.

Brown died in hospital three days later after the attack in December 2007 when his life support machine was turned off.

Ambach has denied the charges and claims to be able to only remember parts of what happened that night.

The prosecutor for the case, Nick Williams, told the jury that a “misunderstanding” had erupted between the two men, when they went back to Brown’s house after meeting in a bar in the Onehunga district of Auckland. The misunderstanding appeared to be Brown’s incorrect assumption that Ambach was gay.

According to Williams, neighbours called the police after hearing violent disturbances in Brown’s flat. When the police arrived they found Brown severely injured and bleeding profusely, while Ambach, who was swearing loudly in Hungarian, threw furniture, including a double bed, through an upstairs window.

Ambach’s defence lawyer, Peter Kaye, said that the jury must consider the possibility that the Hungarian man suffered a “sudden and temporary loss of self control”, which would make the case one of manslaughter, rather than murder.

The trial is due to sit for three weeks.

Glenn Richard Albert Mills, a 40-year-old train driver from Auckland, New Zealand, was identified by the Auckland District Court today following pressure from police and media.

Mills was diagnosed HIV positive in May 2007, but allegedly led an “active sex life” since diagnosis and has been accused of infecting five victims, and attempting to infect others.

Mills, who dated in Wellington and Auckland, faces fourteen charges in total. In New Zealand, deliberately infecting someone with HIV carries a prison sentence of 14 years.

Bruce Kilmister, chief executive at Body Positive, New Zealand’s HIV positive support organisation, told ONE News:”Everybody who has had an association with him in the past should come forward for a test.”

During the period since diagnosis, Mills used internet and telephone dating services to meet his victims, some of whom could be as young as 16. Most were male, although one of the victims bringing charges against Mills is a woman, which increases the chances that HIV will have been spread into the heterosexual community.

The court heard that as well as testing HIV positive, Mills also has hepatitis B and chlamydia.

In response to public concern over the charges, Kilmister said: “It’s also a timely reminder that everybody has a responsibility to keep themselves safe and follow safe sex practice.”

Mills is currently being remanded in custody and will appear in court on July 1st for a pre-depositions hearing.

Anyone who wants to get tested should call 0800 HIV LINE (from NZ only).

The research, conducted by the University of Auckland on behalf of the Youth 07 Wellbeing Survey, also found that gay students report higher levels of bullying and discrimination and are less likely to have safe sex.

Dr Simon Denny, principal investigator for the survey, said: “The Youth ’07 findings show significant gaps between the health and wellbeing of same-sex and opposite-sex-attracted youth.

“Less than half of same-sex attracted males reported using condoms in their last sexual encounter, and this is reflected in the fact that same-sex attracted youth are more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection, he added.

“Three times as many same-sex attracted youths reported bullying and intimidation than their opposite-sex attracted counterparts. The figures are very concerning.”

It was found that although suicide rates among teenagers had remained the same since the last youth survey in 2001, numbers decreased among straight teenagers.

Te Radar, who is best known for his satire, told Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon show that he had overheard a man at Auckland Airport criticising Ms Clark.

He quoted the man as saying: “Yeah, we got rid of the old PM, she was left of Mao, a bloody communist and a lesbian. She’s gone. Best thing that ever happened to the country.”

Mr Radar, who had just arrived back in New Zealand, said: “And I thought ‘Whoa, welcome back, it is so great to be back’.”

A viewer complained he had breached standards relating to good taste and decency, accuracy and discrimination and denigration.

However, the country’s Broadcasting Standards Authority ruled that Mr Radar had not been supporting the man’s comments and that his reputation for satire and irony meant there was no breach. 

There will be six gay and lesbian MPs in the new Parliament, the same number as were elected in 2005.

Two are newcomers – former AIDS Foundation chief Kevin Hague was elected as a Green MP on the party’s list.

Grant Robertson was elected for Wellington Central for Labour.

The 121-member NZ Parliament is elected as follows: 70 from geographical constituencies and the remainder from party lists.

The National Party won 59 seats, a gain of 11.

Labour won 43, down 7, and the Greens won 8. Two minor parties won five seats each and the Progressives took one.

The other gay and lesbian people elected were Chris Carter, Maryan Street and Charles Chauvel for Labour and Christopher Finlayson for the National Party.

During Labour’s nine years in office there has been progress on LGBT rights in New Zealand.

The Civil Unions Act passed into law in 2004 and the abolition of discriminatory measures against same sex couples became law in 2005.

On Saturday National Party leader John Key, who will be New Zealand’s 38th Prime Minister, said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, today New Zealand has spoken. In their hundreds of thousands across the country, they have voted for change

“I can tell you there will be a new National-led government in New Zealand.

“So let me start by thanking every New Zealander who has cast their vote for National today.

“Thank you for your support and thank you for your trust. Some of you have stuck with National through nine long years and tonight your patience has been rewarded.

“For others, you have heard National’s message that New Zealand can do better and you have come to share our beliefs.

“So to all of you, I simply say thank you.”