Talk:Donna Pokere-Phillips

Untitled
Hi, I'm new to Wikipedia editing so let me know if I'm using this wrong, but I was wondering if there is a plan to clean up old draft pages like this one?

The problem is this comes up as the first result in Google for Donna Pokere-Phillips, and Google assumes it's not a draft so pops out this piece of incorrect information: "Donna Pokere-Phillips is a New Zealand politician who was elected to the New Zealand parliament at the 2020 general election as the MP for Hauraki-Waikato for the Māori Party."

This means anyone searching for her will be falsely led to believe she's an elected MP.

122.62.129.74 (talk) 22:44, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I’ve just seen that, too. Those drafts should be non-indexed so that search engines skip them. I’ll look into it.  Schwede 66  01:41, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Lawyer?
We have some back-and-forth editing going on, concerning whether Donna Pokere-Phillips is/was ever a lawyer. There's a bit of discussion on the anonymous editor's Talk page, User_talk:2406:E006:4426:6001:8023:865:25BF:C817. They claim to know her personally, but we need something better than that. I'm starting this topic to keep the discussion on the page.

There's no doubt that Pokere-Phillips has law degrees (LLM, LLB) but whether she has been a lawyer is a different question. She's not listing on the Law Society's current registry, and her LinkedIn profile doesn't include any roles like barrister or solicitor. The closest is being a "Legal provider" to the Waitangi Tribunal and a "Legal and policy advisor" to the Waikato Regional Council. I've read a number of her candidate statements from previous elections and I can't find anywhere that she has described herself as a lawyer. She's a "legal adviser" in this article about Brian Te Huia.

The only reference I can find for the other side is this RNZ article that refers to "Māori Party candidate for Hauraki-Waikato and lawyer, Donna Pokere-Phillips".

Can anyone else find something more definitive, either way?

- Elguaponz (talk) 23:58, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Not a lawyer
It's been a week since my message above, during which User:Schwede66 protected the article for a while to calm down the edit/re-edit cycle. The lack of replies here suggests to me that there's no reason to describe Pokere-Phillips as a "lawyer". The single mention in RNZ looks like a journalistic error - if it was true, there would surely be something else out there to back it up.

- Elguaponz (talk) 21:21, 21 August 2022 (UTC)


 * , could you please have a look whether you have a 2004 LLM from Waikato in your database?  Schwede 66  21:29, 21 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm sure that the LLM exists - see Waikato's October 2004 Graduation Programme, p17 (if you go by the PDF reader) or p16 (if you go by page numbers). But it's not just quals that matter here. "The Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 (LCA) defines a lawyer as someone who holds a current practising certificate as a barrister or as a barrister and solicitor" (Law Society), and there's no proof (beyond that one RNZ mention) that she's ever met that definition. Elguaponz (talk) 21:42, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
 * No sorry (I don't know if LLMs necessarily create a thesis? But in any case Waikato only gave me around 3k items and that isn't one). DrThneed (talk) 22:16, 21 August 2022 (UTC)