Maire Leadbeater is a peace and human rights activist, writer and a former social worker.
She was the media spokesperson for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament during the 1980s and early 1990s until CND went into recess in 1994.
Leadbeater was active in the Auckland East Timor Independence Committee until 2000, and she now represents the Indonesia Human Rights Committee as spokesperson.
She has written many articles about West Papua and New Zealand government foreign policy. She has also contributed book chapters, including "Expediency, Hypocrisy, Policy" in Henderson, J. and Watson, G. (Eds), (2005), Securing a Peaceful Pacific (Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, pp. 492-499), and New Zealand as a potential West Papuan peace broker: Learning from Bougainville" in Comprehending West Papua, edited by Peter King, Jim Elmslie and Camellia Webb-Gannon (University of Sydney, 2011). 2011:’New Zealand as a potential West Papuan peace broker.
She is also author of Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand’s complicity in the invasion and occupation of Timor-Leste. (Nelson: Craig Potton, 2006).
Currently researching:
- the history of the New Zealand peace movement in the last quarter of the 20th century.
- New Zealand’s military and police training ties to Indonesia