Vanessa Weenink

Vanessa Weenink is the National Party Member of Parliament for Banks Peninsula, first elected in 2023. A doctor, army veteran and mother, she brings to Parliament more than two decades of frontline service — to her patients, to her country, and now to her community.

Raised in Canvastown in Marlborough and brought up by her mother, a nurse, Vanessa learned early the value of education and hard work. She studied medicine at the University of Otago, graduating MBChB in 2002, and later completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Public Health (Otago, 2021).

Vanessa served for more than 20 years as a Medical Officer in the New Zealand Army and Territorials, including two operational deployments to Afghanistan and one to East Timor. She is New Zealand’s first female veteran of overseas operations to serve as a Member of Parliament. After leaving the regular army in 2010, she worked as a GP across Christchurch, buying into Papanui Medical Centre where she practiced for 11 years and earned her Fellowship of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners. Before entering Parliament, she was also deputy chair of the New Zealand Medical Association and chair of its General Practitioners’ Council.

In 2022 Vanessa stepped away from her medical practice to stand for Parliament, winning Banks Peninsula for National in 2023 — returning the seat to National for the first time since 1996, and becoming the seventh woman to represent an electorate that, in 1933, was the first in New Zealand to be won by a woman. She describes herself as “blue-green”: socially liberal and fiscally conservative, with a particular passion for health, primary care, and standing up for rural and peninsula communities. In Parliament, Vanessa serves on the Education and Workforce Committee and is deputy chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation (EDSI) committee.

Away from Parliament, Vanessa likes to spend time with family and friends. A watercolour artist in her rare spare moments, she remains committed to being a visible, hardworking local advocate — and is seeking re-election in Banks Peninsula in 2026.