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Sir Peter Tait KBE (5 September 1915 – 31 January 1996) was a New Zealand National Party Member of Parliament, mayor of Napier, small businessman and opponent of New Zealand's Homosexual Law Reform Act.

Early life

Tait was born on 5 September 1915, in Wellington's Island Bay suburb. His family were Scottish immigrants, originally from the Shetland Islands. His father Jack and his uncles Peter and Ross belonged to the best known Shetland fishing families in Island Bay. Through his early life, Tait suffered from tuberculosis, which meant that he was unable to play an active role in New Zealand's Second World War effort, nor could he become a Baptist minister.

He recovered from tuberculosis at the Pukeora sanitorium at Waipukurau, a rural community, to the East Coast of the North Island. From there he moved to, and ultimately settled in Napier. Once established there, he opened a shoe store, which came to have branches in Waipukurau, Napier, Hastings and Dannevirke.

He married Lilian Jean Dunn in 1946 with whom he had one son and one daughter.

Political career

Member of Parliament

In August 1951 he was selected over six other nominees to be the National Party candidate for the Napier electorate. National won a landslide victory at the election and Tait won the Napier seat, somewhat surprisingly as Napier had been a relatively safe Labour seat for decades. Tait served as a Member of Parliament for one term until he was defeated by Labour's Jim Edwards. In 1953, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal.

Mayor of Napier

Two years after leaving Parliament, he was elected Mayor of Napier, defeating the incumbent mayor Ron Spriggs. He remained mayor for the next eighteen years until 1974 when he retired. He campaigned on a platform of improving council services and recreational facilities, increasing pensioner housing and tourist promotion. Major projects were completed during his mayoralty including the construction of the National Aquarium of New Zealand and Marineland. The council began cleaning up the inner Ahuriri harbour by shifting sewerage outfall to Awatoto from Perfume Point, the construction of a new Civic Centre and a massive extension of land for housing. Napier also absorbed the Taradale Borough Council after a 1968 amalgamation and Tait secured Napier Airport being designated the main airport for Hawke's Bay in preference to the Hastings Aerodrome. Some of his projects caused opposition such as the building of a boating marina in the Ahuriri inner lagoon and a proposal to demolish the iconic Sound Shell.

Tait was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1967 New Year Honours and promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 New Year Honours.

Later life and death

After leaving office Tait worked as a financial consultant and was appointed as a financial adviser and professional fundraiser for the Auckland Regional Authority in 1977. Later that year he was appointed chairman of directors of Bowring Burgess Finance.

Tait was a Baptist, who helped to organise the Coalition of Concerned Citizens in the mid-eighties, and argued against homosexual law reform. Together with Keith Hay, the former Mount Roskill, he organised a public petition to oppose the Homosexual Law Reform bill in Parliament. Ultimately, though, the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986 passed its final reading.

He sold his company Tait Associates Limited to AdvisorCorp, contributory mortgage company he chaired. The company failed in 1988, causing Tait (and his investors) much emotional and financial grief. Tait himself was suspected of corporate fraud in relation to AdvisorCorp however he escaped any prosecution, though two of the principals in the company were successfully prosecuted after AdvisorCorp collapsed. He fought for years afterwards attempting to clear his name. AdvisorCorp, found itself the target of attacks from National Party leader Jim Bolger in the 'Gang of Twenty' affair in 1989. Bolger would later publicly apologise to Tait.

He funded the Tait Fountain in Napier, which commemorates Victory in Europe Day and was dedicated on 9 May 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the end of that war.

He died in 1996, aged 80. His widow, Lilian, died in 2011.

References

1. "The Shetland Islanders". Wellington Southern Bays Historical Society Inc. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
2. ^ "Sir Peter Tait oversaw Napier's growth". The Evening Post. 22 February 1996. p. 7.
3. "National Party Candidates". The Press. Vol. LXXXVII, no. 26491. 4 August 1951. p. 6.
4. Wilson, James Oakley (1985) . New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1984 (4th ed.). Wellington: V.R. Ward, Govt. Printer. OCLC 154283103.
5. "Coronation Medal" (PDF). Supplement to the New Zealand Gazette. No. 37. 3 July 1953. pp. 1021–1035. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
6. "Mayoral Polls". The Press. Vol. XCIV, no. 28129. 19 November 1956. p. 13.
7. ^ "Tait Fountain". Napier City Council. Archived from the original on 23 February 2013. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
8. ^ Fowler, Michael (13 August 2021). "Historic HB: The life of Sir Peter Tait, longtime Napier mayor". Hawkes Bay Today. Retrieved 1 April 2024.
9. London Gazette (supplement), No. 44212, 30 December 1966. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
10. "No. 46446". The London Gazette (3rd supplement). 1 January 1975. p. 38.
11. "Financial adviser". The Press. 4 May 1977. p. 23.
12. "Business personals". The Press. 8 September 1977. p. 24.
13. Coates, Ken (10 September 1985). "Fundamentalists and their political clout". The Press. p. 13.
14. Bassett, Michael (2008). Working with David: Inside the Lange Cabinet. Auckland: Hodder Moa. p. 192. ISBN 978-1-86971-094-1.
15. "Lady Lilian Jean Tait". The New Zealand Herald. 1 February 2011. Retrieved 1 April 2024.

Further reading

• Laurie Guy: Worlds in Collision: The Gay Law Reform Debate in New Zealand: 1960-1985 Wellington: Victoria University Press: (2002) ISBN 0-86473-438-7

• 1915 births
• 1996 deaths
• New Zealand National Party MPs
• New Zealand activists
• New Zealand Baptists
• Mayors of Napier, New Zealand
• New Zealand MPs for North Island electorates
• Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives
• Unsuccessful candidates in the 1954 New Zealand general election
• New Zealand Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• 20th-century Baptists
• Politicians from Wellington City