Member of Parliament
| Parliament of New Zealand | ||||
| Years | Term | Electorate | List | Party |
| 1984–1987 | 41st | Tasman | Labour | |
| 1987–1990 | 42nd | Tasman | Labour | |
| 1996–1999 | 45th | List | 3 | ACT |
| 1999–2002 | 46th | List | 2 | ACT |
| 2002–2005 | 47th | List | 7 | ACT |
Shirley first entered Parliament in the 1984 elections, 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" (consisting of Douglas, Richard Prebble, and David Caygill), but was nevertheless a notable supporter of the reforms Douglas promoted.
Read more about this topic: Ken Shirley
Famous quotes containing the words member of, member and/or parliament:
“There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to “dress up like daddy.””
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”
—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)
“What is the historical function of Parliament in this country? It is to prevent the Government from governing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)