John Key

Member of the New Zealand Parliament
for Helensville
Incumbent
Assumed office
27 July 2002 Majority 20,547 (56.49%)[1]

Born : 9 August 1961 (age 48)
Auckland, New Zealand

Political
party : National

Spouse(s) : Bronagh Key (m. 1984)

Children : Stephie Key (b. 1993)
Max Key (b. 1995)

Residence : Parnell, Auckland

Website : www.johnkey.co.nz

John Phillip Key (born 9 August 1961) is the 38th and current Prime Minister of New Zealand and leader of the New Zealand National Party.
John Key entered the New Zealand House of Representatives in 2002 representing the north-west Auckland constituency of Helensville as a National MP, a seat that he has held since then. In 2004 he was appointed Finance Spokesman for National and eventually succeeded Don Brash as the National Party leader in 2006. Key led his party to victory in the November 2008 general election.

Personal life

Key was born in Auckland, New Zealand, to George Key and Ruth Key (née Lazar). His father was an immigrant from Great Britain, and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and World War II.[2] He died of a heart attack in 1967. Key and his two sisters were raised in a state house in Christchurch by his Austrian-Jewish immigrant mother.[3][4]
He attended Burnside High School, and earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree in accounting from the University of Canterbury in 1981.[3] He has attended management studies courses at Harvard University.[5]
Key met his wife Bronagh when they were both students at Burnside High School. They married in 1984. She also has a BCom degree, and worked as a personnel consultant before becoming a full-time mother. They have two children, Stephie and Max.[4]
In January 2009 Key slipped on some stairs at a Chinese New Year celebration, breaking his right arm in two places.[6]

Before politics

His first job was in 1982, as an auditor at McCulloch Menzies, and he then moved to be a project manager at Christchurch-based clothing manufacturer Lane Walker Rudkin for two years.[7] Key began working as a foreign exchange dealer at Elders Finance in Wellington, and rose to the position of head foreign exchange trader two years later, then moved to Auckland-based Bankers Trust in 1988.[3]
In 1995, he joined Merrill Lynch as head of Asian foreign exchange in Singapore. That same year he was promoted to Merrill’s global head of foreign exchange, based in London, where he may have earned around US$2.25 million a year including bonuses, which is about NZ$5 million at 2001 exchange rates.[3][8] Some co-workers called him “the smiling assassin” for maintaining his usual cheerfulness while sacking dozens (some say hundreds) of staff after heavy losses from the 1998 Russian financial crisis.[4][8] He was a member of the Foreign Exchange Committee of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2001.[9]
In 2001, on learning of his interest in pursuing a political career, the National Party president John Slater worked actively to recruit him. Former party leader Jenny Shipley describes him as one of the people she “deliberately sought out and put my head on the line – either privately or publicly – to get them in there”.[4]

Member of Parliament

Years Term Electorate List party
2002-2005 47th Helensville 43 National
2005-2008 48th Helensville 7 National
2008-present 49th Helensville 1 National
Auckland’s population growth, as evidenced in the 2001 census, led to the creation of a new electorate called Helensville, which covered the north-western corner of the Auckland urban area. Key beat long-serving MP Brian Neeson (whose own Waitakere seat had moved on paper to being a Labour seat by the boundary changes) for the selection. At the 2002 elections Key won the seat with a majority of 1,705, ahead of Labour’s Gary Russell, with Neeson, now standing as an independent, coming third.[10] Key was re-elected with ease at the 2005 election garnering 63% of votes cast in Helensville,[11] and increased his majority again in 2008, gaining 73% of the electorate vote.[1]
Finance spokesman
In 2004, Key was promoted to the Opposition front benches by party leader Don Brash and was made the party spokesman for finance. In late 2006 Brash resigned as leader, citing damaging speculation over his future as the reason. His resignation followed controversies over an extramarital affair, and over leaked internal National Party documents which were later published in the book The Hollow Men.[12]
Leader of the Opposition
In his maiden speech as leader on 28 November 2006, Key talked of an “underclass” that had been “allowed to develop” in New Zealand, a theme which received a large amount of media coverage.[13] Key followed this speech up in February 2007 by committing his party to a programme which would provide food in the poorest schools in New Zealand.[14]
He relented on his stance in opposition to Sue Bradford’s Child Discipline Bill, which sought to remove “reasonable force” as a defence for parents charged with prima facie assault of their children. Many parents saw this bill as an attempt to ban smacking outright.[15] Key and Prime Minister Helen Clark agreed a compromise giving police the discretion to overlook smacking they regard as “inconsequential”.[16]