Helen Clark

Helen Elizabeth Clark
Prime Minister of New Zealand
Incumbent
Assumed office  5 December 1999
Deputy	Jim Anderton Michael Cullen
Preceded by	Jenny Shipley
Leader of the Opposition
In office 1 December 1993 – 5 December 1999
Deputy	Michael Cullen
Preceded by	Mike Moore
Succeeded by	Jenny Shipley
Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand
In office 8 August 1989 – 2 November 1990
Prime Minister	Geoffrey Palmer Mike Moore
Preceded by	Geoffrey Palmer
Succeeded by	Don McKinnon
Incumbent
Assumed office 28 November 1981
Preceded by	Warren Freer
Born	February 26 1950 (1950-02-26) Hamilton, New Zealand
Political party	Labour
Spouse	Peter Davis
Occupation	Politician
Religion	Agnostic

Helen Elizabeth Clark (born February 26, 1950) is the 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand. She is New Zealand's second female Prime Minister but the first to lead her party to an electoral victory. Her predecessor, Jenny Shipley, replaced Prime Minister Jim Bolger mid-term in 1997. When she was elected to Parliament in 1981 as a Labour party member, she was the seventeenth woman to sit in the New Zealand Parliament. Entering the Cabinet in 1987, she was minister for conservation, housing, labour and health until 1993 when she was appointed Deputy Prime Minister. In opposition from 1990 until 1999, she was deputy opposition leader until 1993. Becoming Labour Party Leader in December, 1993 she also assumed the post of official leader of the opposition. When her party won the 1999 election, she became Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage. In 2007 Forbes magazine ranked her as the 38th most powerful woman in the world. She has set herself the task of making New Zealand the first ecologically sustainable country, describing this this as "central to New Zealand's unique national identity." She signed the Kyoto Protocol on December 10, 2002.

Clark has maintained New Zealand's "nuclear free" policy, introduced when she chaired the foreign affairs and defense select committee and refused to take part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq without an explicit United Nations mandate. She has supported nuclear disarmament and has pursued a policy of peace-making within the Pacific Ocean region, regarding this as New Zealand's natural zone for international involvement, although New Zealand takes part in UN peace-keeping across the globe. At home, her administration has raised the minimum wage, introduced child tax credits and reduced crime. Clark's interest in social issues could perhaps be seen as an expression of feminine qualities, although there are no few men who have a passion for social justice. What can be said is that her commitment to international peace, ecological sustainability and social welfare all demonstrate that she sees the task of government as one of improving the quality of life for all people, enhancing human dignity and respecting human rights and the rights of the planet itself. She has demonstrated that a woman can run a country as efficiently as a man.

Early life

Clark grew up as the eldest of four daughters of a Waikato farming family. Her mother, Margaret, of Irish birth, worked as a primary-school teacher. Her father, George, a farmer, supported the National Party at the 1981 election. Clark studied at Te Pahu Primary School, at Epsom Girls' Grammar School in Auckland and at the University of Auckland, where she majored in politics and graduated with an MA (Honors) in 1974. Her thesis research focused on rural political behaviour and representation. In her teens, she campaigned against the Vitenam War (New Zealand was an ally of the US during the war]] and against foreign military bases on New Zealand soil.

Helen Clark worked as a junior lecturer in political studies at the University of Auckland from 1973 to 1975, studied abroad on a University Grants Committee post-graduate scholarship in 1976, and then lectured in political studies at Auckland again while undertaking her PhD (which she never completed) from 1977 until her election to Parliament in 1981.

She married sociologist Peter Davis, her partner of five years at that time, shortly before that election (under pressure from some members of the New Zealand Labour Party to marry despite her own feelings about marriage—her biography reports that she cried throughout the ceremony, although she attributes that to a headache).

</ref> Dr Davis currently works as a professor in medical sociology and heads the Sociology Department at the University of Auckland.

As a teenager Clark became politically active, protesting against the Vietnam War and campaigning against foreign military bases in New Zealand. She has declared herself agnostic.

Clark has worked actively in the New Zealand Labour Party for most of her life. She served as a member of the Party's New Zealand executive from 1978 until September 1988 and again from April 1989. She chaired the University of Auckland Princes Street branch of the Labour Party during her studies, becoming active alongside future Labour Party politicians including Richard Prebble, David Caygill, Margaret Wilson, and Richard Northey. Clark held the positions of president of the Labour Youth Council, executive member of the Party's Auckland Regional Council, secretary of the Labour Women's Council and member of the Policy Council.

She represented the New Zealand Labour Party at the congresses of the Socialist International and of the Socialist International Women in 1976, 1978, 1983 and 1986, at an Asia-Pacific Socialist Organisation Conference held in Sydney in 1981, and at the Socialist International Party Leaders' Meeting in Sydney in 1991.

Member of Parliament

Helen Clark first gained election to the New Zealand House of Representatives in the 1981 general election as one of four women who entered Parliament on that occasion. In winning the Mount Albert electorate in Auckland, she became the second woman elected to represent an Auckland electorate, and the seventeenth woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. At the 2005 general election Clark won 66% of the electorate votes, or 20,918 votes with a 14,749 majority. During her first term in the House (1981 - 1984), she became a member of the Statutes Revision Committee. In her second term (1984 - 1987), she chaired the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Select Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control, both of which combined with the Defense Select Committee in 1985 to form a single committee. She was Chair when New Zealand adopted its "nuclear-free" policy. In 1985 she represented New Zealand at the World Conference to mark the end of the United Nations Decade for Women in Nairobi.

Cabinet Minister

In 1987, Clark became a Cabinet Minister in the Fourth Labour Government, led by David Lange (1984-1989), Geoffrey Palmer (1989-1990) and Mike Moore (1990), first as Minister of Housing and as Minister of Conservation, then as Minister of Health and later as Deputy Prime Minister.

Clark served as Minister of Conservation from August 1987 until January 1989 and as Minister of Housing from August 1987 until August 1989. She became Minister of Health in January 1989 and Minister of Labour and Deputy Prime Minister in August 1989. As Health minister, she banned advertising for tobacco products, sponsorship of sports by tobacco companies and smoking in the work-place. She chaired the Cabinet Social Equity Committee and became a member of the Cabinet Policy Committee, of the Cabinet Committee on Chief Executives, of the Cabinet Economic Development and Employment Committee, of the Cabinet Expenditure Review Committee, of the Cabinet State Agencies Committee, of the Cabinet Honours Appointments and Travel Committee and of the Cabinet Domestic and External Security Committee.

Leader of the Opposition

From October 1990 until December 1993 Clark held the posts of Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Opposition spokesperson for Health and Labour and member of the Social Services Select Committee and of the Labour Select Committee. After the National Party won the 1993 general election with a majority of one seat, Clark challenged Mike Moore for the leadership of the parliamentary Labour Party and became Leader of the Opposition on 1 December 1993. She led the Opposition during the National-led Governments of Jim Bolger (1990-1997) and Jenny Shipley New Zealand's first woman Prime Minister, who replaced Bolger mid -term when she successfully challenged him for the party leadership (1997-1999).

Prime Minister

Official portrait of Helen Clark (2005)

When the New Zealand Labour Party came into office as part of a coalition following the 1999 election, Clark became the second female Prime Minister of New Zealand and the first to have won office at an election. During her term in office women have held a number of prominent offices in New Zealand, such as the Queen, Governor-General, Speaker of the House of Representatives and Chief Justice.

Clark has held the positions of Prime Minister and of Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage from 1999. She also has ministerial responsibility for the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and for Ministerial Services. Her particular areas of interest include social policy and international affairs.

As Leader of the Labour Party, Clark negotiated the formation of successive minority coalition governments. The first such coalition (1999-2002) linked the Labour Party with the Alliance Party (1999). The coalition with the Alliance Party collapsed in 2002. In consequence, Clark called an early election and then went into coalition with Jim Anderton's Progressive Party|, a spin-off of the Alliance Party (2002, with parliamentary supply and confidence coming from United Future and a "good-faith" agreement with the Green Party). In 2005, following the election of that year, the Labour Party and the Progressive Party renewed their coalition, gaining supply-and-confidence support from both New Zealand First and United Future in exchange for giving the leaders of those parties ministerial positions outside Cabinet.

Clark, like some other MPs and many New Zealanders (including some Labour Party members), supports New Zealand becoming a republic. Some critics of Clark's government have derided her support for a republic, arguing that the Prime Minister has no mandate for such a change. However, the former Prime Minister Jim Bolger also publicly indicated his support for a republic in 1994, during his tenure as Prime Minister. Clark's term in office has seen a number of alleged moves towards a republic, under her government's policy of building national identity. Examples include the abolition of appeals to the United Kingdom's Privy Council and the setting up of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, the abolition of titular Knighthood and Damehood honors, and the abolition of the title "Queen's Counsel" (replaced by "Senior Counsel").

On 24 July 2008 Clark passed Sir Robert Muldoon to become New Zealand's sixth-longest-serving Prime Minister.

Welcoming Helen Clark onto Hoani Waititi Marae, Waitangi Day 2006

Social policy

Clark's government has brought in significant changes to the New Zealand welfare system, such as introducing child tax credits in the Working for Families package. Her government has also changed industrial-relations law and raised the minimum wage six times in as many years. Changes have also occurred in tertiary-education financing, with the abolition of interest on student-loans—firstly for those currently studying, then extended to all borrowers living in New Zealand. Other changes introduced during Clark's term in office include legal provision for civil unions, the introduction of 14 weeks' paid parental leave, and the Property (Relationships) Act, which treats property division after the breakup of de facto relationships the same as after the breakup of legal marriages. Some of these measures, though initiated by other members of parliament or political parties, nevertheless gained the government support.

The Employment Contracts

Economic growth

Some commentators have praised Helen Clark (along with the Minister of Finance Michael Cullen) for overseeing a period of sustained and stable economic growth, with an increase in employment that has seen a gradual lowering of the unemployment rate to 3.6 percent. Although her critics acknowledge these factors, many such critics maintain that the growth has come about as the result of wider economic factors, and that increases in the sickness benefit have caused (at least in part) the decrease in unemployment. On the other hand, total beneficiary numbers (a measurement that includes both unemployment- and sickness- beneficiaries) have shrunk during Helen Clark's time in office. Other economic concerns for Clark's government include a persistently high current-account deficit]] and an unofficial poverty-rate of about twenty percent.

Stable government

Even though some commentators stable government within the relatively new "mixed member proportional electoral system" as unlikely, Clark's supportersvcredit her with maintaining two terms of stable MMP government, as well as with forming the current government given the relatively close election-result.

Crime-rate

New Zealand Police statistics report a drop in the rate of recorded offenses by population over the period of Clark's premiership, which continued the trend shown in years prior to her becoming Prime Minister. This corresponds with a survey of victims of crime, which reported very little change in the number of victims of crime between 1995 and 2000, despite a slight increase in population. New Zealand crime-figures for 2005/2006 showed an increase in a recorded crime over the previous financial year, but rates remained lower than in 1999.

In a report in the People's Daily, Chinese President Jiang Zemin referred to Clark as an "old friend." He hoped to "establish bilateral long-term and stable overall cooperative relations with a healthy development geared to the 21st century," and "broad prospects for bilateral economic cooperation." Clark had strongly supported China's entry into the WTO. She has also involved herself in the Middle East peace process. She has been outspoken in calling for world disarmament. New Zealand ranks second the Norway on the Global Peace Index, which rates "levels of peace for over 120 nations across 24 indicators, ranging from a nation’s level of military expenditure to its relations with neighboring countries, and its level of respect for human rights." With Sweden, New Zealand introduced a resolution at the UN in 2007 to "de-alert" nuclear weapons, the first such initiative, which said Clark "first time that this objective will be put forward as a resolution of the General Assembly, and demonstrates again New Zealand’s willingness to stand up and be counted on key disarmament issues."

Controversies

In 2000, Labour MP Chris Carter investigated the background of one of Clark's Cabinet colleagues, Māori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels. During the investigation, Clark referred to John Yelash as a murderer. However, the court system had convicted Yelash of manslaughter. Yelash sued Clark for defamation, resulting in an out-of-court settlement.

Clark signed a painting for a charity-auction that someone else had painted. A political controversy arose about it, and after it emerged that she had not painted it, Opposition politicians referred the matter to the New Zealand Police. The Police found evidence for a prima facie case of forgery, but determined that it was not in the public interest to prosecute. Clark said that she was busy working in the back seat and had no influence or role in the decision to speed and did not realize the speed of her vehicle.

Some observers criticized Clark for some of Labour's election-campaign spending during the 2005 election campaign. Investigations found that the Labour Party, like all parties represented in Parliament except for Jim Anderton's Progressive Party, had illegally spent parliamentary funds on its election campaign. Labour had spent $768,000 illegally, and this meant Labour also exceeded the legal limits for campaign-spending, the only party to have done so. Despite disagreeing with the Auditor-General's conclusion, Clark announced Labour would refund the public purse and it did so in 2007.

In 2007, Clark's Government introduced the Electoral Finance Act, which placed restrictions on the spending of lobby-groups, who must now register with a government agency if they are spending over a certain amount. So far, the Act has been highly controversial and has attracted severe criticism from organizations such as the New Zealand Herald for its alleged attack on freedom of speech.

Honours

The government of the Solomon Islands awarded Clark (together with John Howard of Australia) the Star of the Solomon Islands in 2005 in recognition of New Zealand's role in restoring law and order in the Solomon Islands. This award allows her to use the post-nominal letters "SSI".

In January 2008 Clark won the United Nations Environment Program Champions of the Earth award in recognition of the government’s promotion of sustainability initiatives.

Helen Clark is an Honorary Member of The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

In 1986, the Danish Peace Foundation awarded her its annual peace prize for her championship of international peace and disarmament.

Personal Life

Helen Clark regularly visits the gym. Her hobbies include hiking and cross-country skiing. In January 1999, she climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, [[Africa]'s highest peak.

Her husband, Dr Peter Davis is Professor of Sociology and head of the Sociology Department at Auckland University.

Legacy

Helen Clark's legacy will include her election as the second woman head of her country's government as the first to lead her party to victory at the polls. Her commitment to promoting the role of women has seen more women assume significant positions over during her period in office, one of the longest in New Zealand's history. Her commitment to developing a sustainable energy and ecological policy is rooted in her conviction that this is not only in her nation's best interest, but integral to national identity. New Zealand's indigenous people, the Maoris have long reverenced the land and the sea as possessing them rather than as possessed by them. Clark's parliamentary majority "depends on two Maori MPs."

In her Statement to Parliament February 13, 2007, she expressed her ethical approach to her view of national identity:

We pride ourselves on being a nation with a sense of fair play, on being clean and green, and on being nuclear free.

We stand for decent values at home and abroad.

We take pride in all those who’ve put our nation on the map, like Sir Edmund Hillary whose exploits were celebrated in Antarctica last month, and like Professor Alan McDiarmid, one of three New Zealanders to win the Nobel Prize who passed away last week.

Clark's interest in social issues could perhaps be seen as an expression of feminine qualities, although there are no few men who have a passion for social justice. What can be said is that her commitment to international peace, ecological sustainability and social welfare all demonstrate that she sees the task of government as one of improving the quality of life for all people, enhancing human dignity and respecting human rights and the rights of the planet itself.

She has demonstrated that a woman can run a country as efficiently as a man.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Edwards, Brian. 2001. Helen: Portrait of A Prime Minister. Auckland, NZ: Exisle Publishing. ISBN = 0-908988-20-6}}
• Kerr, Allan R. 2006. Helen Clark: Prime Minister of New Zealand. Masterton, NZ: Capital Letters Pub. ISBN 1-877-17757-1

(This is book is intended for children.

• Miller, Raymond, Miller, Michael and Mintrom, Michael. 2006. Political leadership in New Zealand. Auckland, NZ: Auckland University Press. ISBN 1-869-40358-4}}

A paper by John Henderson and Seishi Gomibuchi is entitled: "The leadership styles of Helen Clark and Don Brash."

• Williams, Tony. 2006. 101 ingenious Kiwis: how New Zealanders changed the world. Auckland, NZ: Reed. ISBN 9780790011103

(Helen Clark is profiled in a chapter entitled: " Helen Clark: first elected woman prime minister."

External links

• Prime Minister of New Zealand
• New Zealand Labour Party page for Helen Clark

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