[8][9] She resigned these roles after a controversy surrounding her claims for a residential allowance, although she was later cleared of any deliberate wrongdoing.

[10] When the Alliance began to collapse in 2002, Bunkle sided with Jim Anderton's faction, but decided not to seek re-election.

In 2020, Bunkle wrote an essay for Newsroom about her time in politics, in which she alleged that bullying, factional power-play and misuse of funding had been commonplace in the Alliance, and that this was an example of an abusive culture throughout Parliament that persists to the present.

[11] After leaving parliament at the 2002 general election, Bunkle worked overseas, including in China as a women's studies teacher and in Britain where she completed an MSc in integrated health.

[13] In 2007 she was charged with theft after allegedly shoplifting a bottle of wine and two packets of coffee from a supermarket in Paraparaumu.