Phillida Bunkle

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Parl.	Electorate	List Pos.	Party
45th	List	?	Alliance
46th	List	?	Alliance

Phillida Bunkle (born 1944) is a former New Zealand politician. She was born in Sussex, England.

She was an MP from 1996 to 2002, representing the Alliance.

Bunkle joined the Green Party (a member of the Alliance) in 1992, and unsuccessfully stood as an Alliance candidate in the 1993 elections. In the 1996 elections, she was elected to Parliament as a list MP. When the Green Party left the Alliance, Bunkle opted not to follow them. After the 1999 elections, in which Bunkle was re-elected, she became a Minister outside Cabinet in the new Labour-Alliance coalition government, serving Minister of Customs and Minister of Consumer Affairs. She resigned these roles after a controversy surrounding her claims for a residential allowance, although she was later cleared of any deliberate wrongdoing. When the Alliance began to collapse in 2002, Bunkle sided with Jim Anderton's faction, but decided not to seek re-election. On 30 November 2007 she pleaded guilty to shoplifting a bottle of wine and two packets of coffee from a supermarket in Paraparaumu, and was given diversion.^[1]