partner of thirty-three years, Peter Kaiser, on 10 February 2007, in the first civil union for a cabinet minister or member of parliament since civil unions in New Zealand were introduced after legislation was passed in December 2004. Tim Barnett was the first MP to be elected as an openly gay man, in the 1996 election. In 1997, Barnett and Carter started Rainbow Labour as a branch of the Labour Party to represent LGBT people. Maryan Street was New Zealand's first openly lesbian MP, elected in the 2005 election. She served until 2014, and served as Minister for ACC and Minister for Housing between 2007 and 2008. She was also the President of the Labour Party between 1993 and 1995. However, the National Party's Marilyn Waring had preceded Street, and while she was outed at one point, Waring's strong pro-choice identification and vocal feminism overshadowed her lesbianism, which was then considered a private matter. Since she left Parliament in 1984, Waring has more openly acknowledged her sexual orientation. Chris Finlayson became the first openly gay National Party MP elected to Parliament on his party's MMP party list in the 2005 election. Finlayson was an MP between 2005 and 2019, and a former Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations between 2008 and 2017, and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage between 2008 and 2014, and served as Attorney-General from 2008 to 2017. Current openly gay MPs include Grant Robertson, former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party between 2011 and 2013 and Minister of Finance and Minister for Sport and Recreation since 2017 and Minister Responsible for the Earthquake Commission since 2019, Labour MP Tāmati Coffey, Labour MP Louisa Wall, Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick, and Green Party MP and Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Justice Jan Logie. Charles Chauvel joined Grant Robertson as a gay Labour MP from 2006 to 2013. Darren Hughes resigned from the Labour Party caucus in 2011, and National MP Claudette Hauiti served in Parliament between 2013 and 2014. National MP Paul Foster-Bell, who served in Parliament from 2013 to 2017, came out as gay in 2016. Kevin Hague of the Green Party served as an MP between 2008 and 2016. Georgina Beyer became the first transgender mayor in the world when she became the Mayor of Carterton in 1995. In the 1999 election, she became the world's first transgender MP. She retired from parliamentary politics on 14 February