Prime Minister Jim Bolger Name Simon Upton Preceded by Helen Clark Role New Zealand Politician | Preceded by Geoffrey Palmer Succeeded by Bill Birch | |
Prime Minister Jim Bolger, Jenny Shipley Preceded by Marilyn Waring (in 1978) Party New Zealand National Party Books Your Health & the Public Health: A Statement of Government Health Policy Education Wolfson College, Oxford, University of Auckland, University of Oxford | ||
Preceded by Lance Adams-Schneider | ||
Simon upton on risks facing nz economy
Simon David Upton (born 7 February 1958) is a former New Zealand politician and member of Parliament from 1981 to 2001, representing the National Party.
Contents
- Simon upton on risks facing nz economy
- Early life
- Member of Parliament
- Cabinet minister
- Life after politics
- Personal life
- References
Early life
Upton was educated at Southwell School, St Paul's Collegiate School and the University of Auckland, where he gained degrees in English literature, music and law, and Wolfson College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar.
Member of Parliament
Having joined the National Party in 1976, he served as Chairman of the New Zealand Young Nationals among other positions and became the then-youngest MP for Waikato in the 1981 elections. In the 1984 elections, he was elected MP for Raglan, which he held until the 1996 elections, when he chose to become a list MP.
Cabinet minister
Upton became one of New Zealand's youngest ever Ministers in the Cabinet in 1990, when he became Minister of Health, Minister for the Environment, and Minister of Research, Science and Technology. In the environment post, Upton enacted the Resource Management Act 1991. He was responsible for establishing the Crown Research Institutes. He has an interest in sustainable development, and chaired the OECD's Round Table on Sustainable Development. He is a founding member of the Board of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.
He was sworn to the Privy Council in 1999.
Life after politics
He resigned from Parliament in 2001, and moved to France. He took up a full-time post at the OECD as the chair of the Round Table on Sustainable Development which he held until 2005. He was also a part-time consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers for several years. In April 2010 he was appointed as the head of the OECD Environment Directorate, in Paris, France.
In April 2017, he was appointed by Parliament to be the next Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. He will replace the current commissioner, Jan Wright, when her five-year term ends in October 2017.
Personal life
He has two adult children.