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The Right Honourable Helen Elizabeth Clark MP, SSI
Prime Minister of New Zealand
Incumbent
Assumed office 05 December 1999
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Governors‑General	Michael Hardie Boys Silvia Cartwright Anand Satyanand
Deputy	Jim Anderton Michael Cullen
Preceded by	Jenny Shipley
Leader of the Opposition
In office 01 December 1993 – 05 December 1999
Deputy	Michael Cullen
Preceded by	Mike Moore
Succeeded by	Jenny Shipley
Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand
In office 08 August 1989 – 02 November 1990
Prime Minister	Geoffrey Palmer Mike Moore
Preceded by	Geoffrey Palmer
Succeeded by	Don McKinnon
Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Mount Albert
Incumbent
Assumed office 28 November 1981
Preceded by	Warren Freer
Majority	14,749
Personal details
Born	(1950-02-26) 26 February 1950 (age 74) Hamilton, New Zealand
Political party	Labour
Spouse	Peter Davis
Occupation	Politician

Helen Elizabeth Clark (born February 26, 1950) is the 37th and current Prime Minister of New Zealand. She is New Zealand's second female Prime Minister and has been in office since December 1999, entering her third successive term in 2005. In 2007 Forbes magazine ranked her as the 38th most powerful woman in the world.

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 (Honours) in 1974. Her thesis research focused on rural political behaviour and representation.

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). 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 Defence Select Committee in 1985 to form a single committee.

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. 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 (1997-1999).

Prime Minister

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. (The previous Prime Minister, Jenny Shipley took office as the result of a mid-term party-leadership challenge.) 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 until the present. 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.

I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom

— Prime Minister Helen Clark,

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, Clark's predecessor, National 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 Privy Council and the setting up of the Supreme Court of New Zealand, the abolition of titular Knighthood and Damehood honours, and the abolition of the title "Queen's Counsel" (replaced by "Senior Counsel").

On 10 January 2007, Clark passed Sir Joseph Ward to become New Zealand's seventh-longest serving Prime Minister. On 24 July 2008 she will pass Sir Robert Muldoon to become the sixth-longest-serving Prime Minister. Should a Clark government win re-election at the New Zealand general election, 2008 Clark could serve until November 2011, passing Sir Keith Holyoake to become New Zealand's third-longest serving Prime Minister. Clark would need to stay in office until 17 January 2013 (slightly over thirteen years) to become the longest-serving Prime Minister in New Zealand's history. (See List of New Zealand Prime Ministers by term.) On February 8 2008, Clark became the longest serving leader of the Labour Party in its history (although some dispute exists over when Harry Holland became leader), having served for 14 years, 69 days.

Ugly

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%. 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

Our prime minister has been rather unique in being a great lover of the out of doors and she's always off climbing something, doing something exciting and I think that New Zealanders admire that. That is sort of the way of life that they have come to accept in our little old island in the south seas. But Helen as been particularly strong in this respect. So long may she reign.

— - Sir Edmund Hillary

Even though some commentators saw stable government within the relatively new MMP electoral system as unlikely, Clark's supporters credit her with maintaining two terms of stable MMP government, as well as with forming the current government given the relatively close election-result. In 2005, Forbes ranked Clark as number 24 of "The 100 Most Powerful Women" in the world, and then higher at number 20 in 2006.

Crime-rate

New Zealand Police statistics report a drop in the rate of recorded offences 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.

Foreign policy

New Zealand has, during Clark's terms of office, pursued what she and her supporters call an "independent" foreign policy. New Zealand retains a nuclear-free zone status, a stance also taken by the opposition National Party, (possibly at the cost of a free-trade agreement with the United States of America), and refused to participate in the Iraq invasion without UN sanction.

In March 2003, referring to the U.S. led coalition's actions in the Iraq War, Clark told the newspaper Sunday Star Times that, "I don't think that September 11 under a Gore presidency would have had this consequence for Iraq." She later sent a letter to Washington apologising for any offence that her comment may have caused.

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.

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. A staff member bought the painting back and destroyed it.

In 2000, the then Police Commissioner, Peter Doone, resigned after the Sunday Star-Times alleged he had prevented the breath testing of his partner Robyn, who had driven the car they occupied, by telling the officer "that won't be necessary". Both Doone and the officer involved denied this happened. Doone sued the Sunday Star-Times for defamation in 2005 but the paper revealed they had checked the story with Clark. She confirmed this, but denied that she had made attempts to get Doone to resign and defended being the source as "by definition I cannot leak". Helen Clark also responded by saying that National's friends had funded Mr Doone's defamation-suit. Opinion on the significance of this incident varied.

In 2005, a motorcade involving police, Diplomatic Protection Squad, and Ministerial Services staff reached speeds of up to 172 km/h when taking Clark and Cabinet Minister Jim Sutton from Waimate to Christchurch Airport so she could attend a rugby union match in Wellington. The courts subsequently convicted the drivers involved for driving offences, but appeals resulted in the quashing of these convictions in December 2005 and August 2006. 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 realise the speed of her vehicle.

Some observers criticised 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 Progressives, 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. See 2005 New Zealand election funding controversy.

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) 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 Programme 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.

Biography

• Brian Edwards: Helen: Portrait of A Prime Minister: Auckland: Exisle Publishing: 2001: ISBN 0-908988-20-6

References

1. ^ "Elections NZ 2005: Official Count Results — Mt Albert".
2. ^ New Zealand Herald (16 March 2004). "Insults get personal between Clark and Brash". Retrieved 2007-07-08. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
3. ^ Forbes. "The 100 Most Powerful Women". Retrieved 2007-09-01.
4. "New Zealand Executive - Helen Clark". Retrieved 2006-06-30.
5. Edwards, Brian (2001). "Campaign '81". Helen, Portrait of a Prime Minister. pp. 144–150. ISBN 0-908988-20-6.
6. Vernon Small (2002-02-23), Republic "inevitable" says Clark, The Evening Post
7. Monarchist League of New Zealand (18 March 2006). "Queen's Counsel consigned to scrapheap". Retrieved 2007-07-08.
8. "Colin James: Clark heading for fifth place but is that her limit?". Retrieved 2007-01-10.
9. Audrey Young (12 February 2008). "Clark beats record of longest-serving Labour leader - probably". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 2008-02-12.
10. http://www.stuff.co.nz/3935328a11.html
11. "Helen Clark, The Most Powerful Women". Retrieved 2006-05-11.
12. "Crime Statistics for calendar year ending [[31 December]] 2005". Retrieved 2006-11-25. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
13. "New Zealand National Survey of Crime Victims 2001 - Summary". Retrieved 2006-11-25.
14. "Crime Statistics for fiscal year ending 30 June 2006". Retrieved 2006-10-02.
15. "Questions for Oral Answer, Wednesday, 9 April 2003". Retrieved 2006-05-11.
16. "President Jiang Meets New Zealand PM". Retrieved 2006-05-11.
17. "Research Note no.9 2002-03". Retrieved 2006-05-11.
18. "PM confirmed story, says editor". Retrieved 2006-05-11.
19. "The PM'S slow leak". Retrieved 2006-05-11.
20. "Motorcade police officers' convictions quashed". Retrieved 2006-08-31.
21. "PM 'enjoyed' convoy ride". Retrieved 2006-05-11.
23. New Zealand Herald (12 November 2007). "Democracy Under Attack". Retrieved 2007-11-16.
24. Website of the NZ government: PM awarded the Star of the Solomon Islands. Retrieved on 2006-09-24
25. Medals of the World - Solomon Islands: Star of the Solomon Islands. Retrieved on 2006-09-24
26. "Prime Minister honoured by UN environment award". New Zealand Government. 2008-01-28. Retrieved 2008-01-29. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
27. "Honorary Members". The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

See also

• Politics of New Zealand
• New Zealand
• List of Nuclear-Free Future Award recipients

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• New Zealand Labour Party
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