Ken Shirley


Kenneth Lex Shirley, generally called Ken Shirley, is a former New Zealand politician. He was a member of the ACT New Zealand party, although was previously a member and Cabinet minister of the Labour Party.

Early life

Shirley was born on 12 August 1950. He became a resources manager at the Nelson Catchment Board. He and his wife Jenny had two children.

Member of Parliament

He joined the Labour Party in 1977 after moving to Richmond. In 1978 he became the secretary of the Tasman electorate committee. A year later he became the secretary of the Tasman campaign committee. When Tasman MP, and former Labour leader, Bill Rowling announced his retirement Shirley contested the nomination to replace him. From a field of seven he was selected as Labour's candidate.
Shirley first entered Parliament in the 1984 election, when he stood as the Labour Party candidate in the Tasman electorate. At the time, there was considerable tension in the Labour Party over the policies of the Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas — the policies were based around economic deregulation and free trade, and traditionalists saw them as a betrayal of the party's left-wing roots. Shirley aligned himself with the faction that supported Douglas. Shirley was not a member of the faction's so-called "Troika", but was nevertheless a notable supporter of the reforms Douglas promoted.

Cabinet minister

Eventually, the Prime Minister, David Lange, fired Douglas as finance minister and then himself resigned. In the re-arrangement that followed, Shirley briefly held Cabinet rank as Minister of Fisheries, Associate Minister of Agriculture, Associate Minister of Forestry, and Associate Minister of Health. He lost these positions when the Labour Party was defeated in the 1990 election. Shirley himself lost his Tasman seat to National's Nick Smith, leaving him outside Parliament.

ACT New Zealand

When Douglas and his allies created the ACT New Zealand party, Shirley was involved. In ACT's first electoral campaign, the 1996 election, Shirley was ranked in third place on the ACT party list, and re-entered Parliament as a list MP.
He has previously served as ACT's deputy leader, and in 2004, he was one of four candidates to seek the party's leadership after the retirement of Richard Prebble.
On the retirement of Jonathan Hunt, he sought election as Speaker of the House of Representatives, but placed third behind Margaret Wilson and Clem Simich.
He remained a list MP until the 2005 election, in which only two ACT MPs were returned.

After Parliament

In May 2006, Shirley was appointed Executive Director of Organics Aotearoa New Zealand, the peak industry body representing the organic sector, which is charged with implementing a strategy to boost New Zealand's organic production to $1 billion by 2013.
In July 2007 the Researched Medicines Industry Association announced that Shirley was to be their new Chief Executive Officer, an appointment he took up in September 2007.
Since July 2010, he has been the chief executive of the Road Transport Forum, representing road transport interests.