Tauranga Labour list MP Jan Tinetti has announced she's pleased that after a decade-long effort New Zealand paralympians will now receive the same amount of funding as their able-bodied counterparts.

'This is huge for our local current and future athletes like Amanda Lowy. It's huge for the 32 per cent of people in the Tauranga community who identify as living with a disability. It's about equality,” says Jan.

Amanda Lowry was paralyzed in a surfing accident at the Mount in 2013. Now she is in the Paralympic Development Squad in her chosen sport of swimming and aiming for gold at the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020.

The funding announcement was made this week at a dinner event in Auckland hosted by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The event marked Paralympics NZ's 50th anniversary and the beginning of the road to Tokyo.

"Actually Amanda was booked to speak at a women's event I am hosting to celebrate inspirational and aspirational Tauranga women and then she got the invite to the dinner with Jacinda and it fell on the same night, she said that she would miss the dinner to speak at our event, I said ‘absolutely not' and I'm so pleased Amanda could attend and hear the announcement first hand.”

Jan's women's event will now be held on Wednesday November 14 6pm at St Enoch's Church, 16th Ave. Tickets can be purchased by emailing Kaye at kaye.mckenzie@hotmail.com