Ruth Suzanne Dyson (born 11 August 1957) is a former New Zealand politician. She was a Labour Party Member of Parliament from 1993 to 2020. She represented the electorate from the election to 2020. She also held a number of senior offices in the Labour Party, including president. Early life and career Dyson was born in Lower Hutt in 1957. Her father served in the New Zealand Army, and so Dyson's family frequently moved around the country. Dyson joined the Labour Party in Westport in 1979, and worked as a campaign organiser for West Coast Labour MP Kerry Burke in the 1981 and 1984 election campaigns. In 1985, she moved to Wellington, where she worked with Labour MP Fran Wilde on the Homosexual Law Reform Bill before taking up a position as an advisor to Burke in the office of the Minister of Employment in 1986. She worked as an organiser for Wilde's re-election campaign in Wellington Central for the 1987 election. Dyson was then employed as an executive officer at Wellington Regional Employment and ACCESS Control. She held several senior positions in the Labour Party hierarchy. In 1984 she was elected the women's representative on Labour's New Zealand Council before becoming a member of the party executive in 1986. She was the elected vice president of the party at the 1987 Labour conference. At the 1988 conference in Dunedin Dyson won a highly contested campaign to win the party president from former president and maverick MP Jim Anderton by 99 votes (575 to 473). After the defeat of the controversial Fourth Labour Government Dyson was self-employed as a training and employment consultant from 1990 to 1993. In the lead up to the Dyson stood for the Labour nomination in the Christchurch seat of Lyttelton. She beat 5 other local aspirants for the nomination and pledged to move from Wellington into the electorate before the election. Member of Parliament Dyson first entered Parliament in the , winning the electorate against National's David Carter. In the , the Lyttelton electorate was abolished, and Dyson stood in , losing to Carter, who had in the meantime become an MP through winning the 1994 Selwyn by-election. She became a list MP owing to her position on the Labour Party's list. After the 1996 election Dyson was appointed Labour's spokesperson for ACC and Disability Services by leader Helen Clark. In the she in turn