Laura Trask

Laura Barbara McClure (born 3 August 1985), previously known as Laura Trask, is a New Zealand politician. She was elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives in the 2023 New Zealand general election, representing ACT New Zealand.

Early life and family McClure was born in Christchurch on 3 August 1985, and raised there as the eldest of three children. Her father Bill McClure, who moved from England to New Zealand in the 1970s, was a former general manager at Kraft Heinz who later founded a fire evacuation business.

Career McClure worked as a pharmacy technician in Christchurch and Wellington. After having their first child, McClure and her husband took over the Auckland branch of her father's fire safety business. While living in Auckland, McClure advocated for 24-hour medical support for south Auckland, as she found herself driving more than for after-hours medical care for her children.

In 2020, she started volunteering for the ACT Party in Christchurch and worked for Toni Severin, a Member of Parliament elected on the ACT list. In a 2023 interview, McClure described her entry into politics as spontaneous, saying she would "have absolutely laughed" if someone told her ten years prior that she would become a politician. Speaking to The Press about her list position, McClure said did not expect to be given a winnable position and “it was not an ideal situation that I wanted to be in, but at the same time, I’m very honoured.” On election night, McClure came fourth, with 2,073 votes based on final results, but entered parliament due to her position on the party list.

McClure's primary political concerns are oriented around regulation and the perception of "specific extra rights" for members of particular demographic groups. McClure criticises New Zealand's education system as "incredibly woke", which she defines as policies that detract from educating children in favour of ideological pursuits. She supports cutting government spending, which she considers the primary factor in inflation.

During her first term, McClure authored a member's bill called the "Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill," which seeks to amend the definition of intimate visual recordings to include "deepfake" images. The bill was drawn from Parliament's "biscuit tin" on 23 October 2025. The proposed bill also seeks to expand the remit of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 to include deepfakes.

McClure has also sponsored the Broadcasting (Disestablishment of Broadcasting Standards Authority) Amendment Bill, which proposes abolishing the broadcasting regulating, the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA). She argued that regulator operated based on the definition of a broadcaster established in 1991. After the BSA ruled on 31 March 2026 that it had jurisdiction over the online radio station The Platform, McClure criticised the regulator, calling it "a bureaucratic empire that has taken a law written for rabbit-ear TV, and stretched it over the internet."

In May 2026, Webb was part of a cross-party delegation of four New Zealand MPs including Maureen Pugh, David Wilson and Duncan Webb who visited Taiwan, meeting with Taiwanese legislators and foreign ministry officials. In response, the Chinese government in early June 2026 banned the four from visiting China, Hong Kong and Macau for a year on the grounds that their actions violated the One China policy. The Chinese Embassy in New Zealand stated that their travel ban could be waived or rescinded if they apologised for their actions. In response, McClure said that the "demand for an apology was frankly insulting," and refused to apologise for visiting Taiwan.