Deborah Morris-Travers

Since leaving Parliament, Morris has worked in public relations and as an advocate for New Zealand children. After time living and working overseas on disarmament issues with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, she returned to New Zealand to work for non-governmental organisations. She worked at Plunket, Barnardo's, Save the Children and UNICEF New Zealand, leading the movement for children. She helped establish Every Child Counts and then the Tick4Kids networks, working to get child abuse and child poverty onto the public agenda. In 2007, she was awarded the Vodafone World of Difference grant. She lent her support for the controversial repeal of Section 59, which removed the defence of reasonable force in child discipline.

At the 2013 local authority elections Morris-Travers stood for, and was elected to, the Paraparaumu Raumati Community Board.^[7]

In 2016, Deborah Morris-Travers delivered her Ted talk to TedX Wellington.^[8]

She later became the Green Party Chief of Staff.^[9] In 2017, she left her position as Chief of Staff due to disagreements over Metiria Turei's public admission to historical benefit and electoral fraud which eventually caused a loss of support for the party and led to Turei's resignation.^[10] Later Morris ruled out a bid for the co-leadership in the election to replace Turei.^[11] She was replaced in her role by then-digital director Tory Whanau.^[12]

In 1994, Morris was a founding member of the Republican Movement of Aotearoa New Zealand, and supports a New Zealand republic.^[13] She was also part of the campaign for proportional representation, achieving MMP.