Laila Harré has been involved in political and social change projects since her high school years, when she became active in the New Zealand anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements.  Laila completed degrees in Law and Political Studies in 1987. A year as the youth representative on the New Zealand Council of the governing Labour Party (1987), was followed by a year working for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at the UN Conference on Disarmament and UN General Assembly.

Returning to New Zealand in 1989 Laila worked as a mediation officer at the Human Rights Commission, an adviser to the Minister for Disarmament and a trade union lawyer. She became a leading figure in the establishment of the New Labour Party (which formed in protest at the then Labour Government's neo-liberal reform agenda) and the coalition it built with other “third” parties, The Alliance.

The Alliance was a key force in the successful campaign to introduce mixed member proportional representation (MMP) in New Zealand and in 1996 Laila was elected as a list MP to the New Zealand Parliament, becoming a cabinet minister in the 1999-2002 Labour-Alliance coalition government. Since 2002 Laila has held senior roles in the trade union movement – in the New Zealand Nurses Organisation and then as National Secretary of the private sector National Distribution Union. She has recently taken a role with the Auckland Transition Agency, established to oversee the merger of all the local authorities in Auckland into what will be the largest local authority in Australasia, the Auckland Council. She is leading the work required to reorganise the large workforce involved in the year leading up to the first elections for the new Council.

She spent her early years in Fiji and retains ties with that country also.Laila thus has a wide interest in processes around democratic participation – through electoral politics, trade unions and NGOs, and now in the area of local governance.

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