Rodney David Donald (10 October 1957 – 6 November 2005) was a New Zealand politician who co-led the

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand (), commonly known as Green or the Greens, is a Green politics, green List of political parties in New Zealand, political party in New Zealand. Like many green parties around the world, it has four pillar ...

, along with

Jeanette Fitzsimons Jeanette Mary Fitzsimons (née Gaston; 17 January 1945 – 5 March 2020) was a New Zealand politician and environmentalist. She was the co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand from 1995 to 2009, and was a Member of Parliament from ...

. He lived in

Christchurch Christchurch (; ) is the largest city in the South Island and the List of cities in New Zealand, second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand. Christchurch has an urban population of , and a metropolitan population of over hal ...

with his partner Nicola Shirlaw, and their three daughters.

Early political career

Donald held Values Party membership from 1974 to 1979 and then Labour Party membership from 1982 to 1988. On becoming national spokesperson of the impartial Electoral Reform Coalition from 1989 to 1993 he had to resign his party membership. After the success of the MMP referendum at the 1993 election he joined the Green Party in February 1994. After he became co-leader of the Greens in 1995, voters first elected him to

Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

in the 1996 election as an

Alliance An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or sovereign state, states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an a ...

list MP. The Green Party left the Alliance to stand alone in the 1999 election. He entered the 1999 parliament as number two on the Greens' party list. He retained his list seat in the

2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...

and 2005 elections.

Member of Parliament

For many years Donald had a special interest in electoral reform in New Zealand. From 1989 to 1993 he served as spokesperson for the Electoral Reform Coalition during the campaign that led to the introduction of mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation. Subsequently, he played a major part in getting legislation passed to allow STV voting in local body elections in New Zealand. Co-leader

described MMP as Donald's greatest legacy. He also served as the Green Party spokesperson on Buy Kiwi Made, commerce,

electoral reform Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems that alters how public desires, usually expressed by cast votes, produce election results. Description Reforms can include changes to: * Voting systems, such as adoption of proportional represen ...

, finance and revenue, land information, regional development and

small business Small businesses are types of corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships which have a small number of employees and/or less annual revenue than a regular-sized business or corporation. Businesses are defined as "small" in terms of being ...

superannuation A pension (; ) is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be either a "Defined benefit pension pla ...

, sustainable economics, state services,

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

, tourism, trade, and

waste Waste are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor Value (economics), economic value. A wast ...

Death

Shortly after midnight on 6 November 2005, the day before his scheduled swearing-in for his fourth term in Parliament, he died suddenly at his

home after suffering for a few days from ''

Campylobacter jejuni ''Campylobacter jejuni'' is a species of pathogenic bacteria that is commonly associated with poultry, and is also often found in animal feces. This species of microbe is one of the most common causes of food poisoning in Europe and in the US, w ...

food poisoning Foodborne illness (also known as foodborne disease and food poisoning) is any illness resulting from the contamination of food by pathogenic bacteria, viruses, or parasites, as well as prions (the agents of mad cow disease), and toxins such ...

from an unknown source. An autopsy initially ruled out a heart attack, but subsequent test-results determined that death resulted from an inflammation of the heart muscle (

myocarditis Myocarditis is inflammation of the cardiac muscle. Myocarditis can progress to inflammatory cardiomyopathy when there is associated ventricular remodeling and cardiac dysfunction due to chronic inflammation. Symptoms can include shortness of bre ...

), which is a very rare consequence of ''C. jejuni'' infection. He was 48 years old. His funeral, which took place at the Cathedral of ChristChurch, was attended by over 1,000 people. His casket arrived on board an electric bus and his wake took place at the adjacent Warner's Hotel. The Parliament showed its respect for Donald by suspending a day of business, and a minute of silence was observed in the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

. He was succeeded in the Green Party leadership by

Russel Norman Russel William Norman (born 2 June 1967) is a New Zealand politician and environmentalist. He was a Member of Parliament and co-leader of the Green Party. Norman resigned as an MP in October 2015 to work as Executive Director of Greenpeace A ...

Notes

References

External links