The Dutch-born, former flight attendant turned union rep turned MP — whose hidden talent is balancing a spoon on her nose — likes to "say it the way it is". It's a Tuesday afternoon and we're heading to the Backbencher opposite Parliament. The dining area is festooned with large caricature puppets of politicians along its walls and she decides to sit close to the likeness of Jacinda Ardern. The lunch menu is full of options such as salads, steaks and sandwiches named after Ministers but Lubeck instead opts to look at the deserts list, named after Opposition MPs.
In terms of how she found her way into politics, she was correct. After finishing school in Holland, she was a "burnout" for a few years and worked as a secretary. At 25, she was looking for a change and moved to New Zealand in with her then partner of seven years. I looked at the map and I thought 'New Zealand is as far as you can go'. But it was not to be for the young couple. They split soon after they arrived. Her partner thought New Zealand was "too laid back" so he went back home.
Lubeck wanted to be single a while. She lasted six months before she met her now husband. After a few years of odd jobs, she started work as a flight attendant for Air New Zealand — a job she kept for 21 years until becoming an MP in Fluent in Dutch, English, and German, she worked international flights. In the late s, the union had a major clash with Air NZ over a planned restructuring.
Although as a member of an affiliated union she was already part of Labour, having first joined the party in When she was first approached to be an MP, she said her initial thought was "oh hell no, looks boring — it does not look like the kind of thing I want to do". This was at the end of when Andrew Little was the leader of Labour and the party was polling in the mids.
She was told that, at 32 on the list, she might scrape in in but to become an MP after the election was very unlikely. That all changed in August when Jacinda Ardern took over as leader and the polls started to shift dramatically.
