Gerrard Mortland "Gerry" Eckhoff farms sheep and beef in the high country near

Roxburgh Roxburgh () is a civil parish and formerly a royal burgh, in the historic county of Roxburghshire in the Scottish Borders, Scotland. It was an important trading burgh in High Medieval to early modern Scotland. In the Middle Ages it had at lea ...

, Central Otago. He is a former New Zealand politician, having served as an

ACT New Zealand ACT New Zealand, known simply as ACT (), is a right-wing, classical-liberal political party in New Zealand. According to former party leader Rodney Hide, ACT's values are "individual freedom, personal responsibility, doing the best for our n ...

Member of Parliament.

Member of Parliament

He was first elected to

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. ...

as a

list MP A list MP is a member of parliament (MP) elected from a party list rather than from by a geographical constituency. The place in Parliament is due to the number of votes that the party won, not to votes received by the MP personally. This occurs ...

in the 1999 election, having been ranked ninth on ACT

party list An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election, usually found in proportional or mixed electoral systems, but also in some plurality electoral systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party (a party list) or can ...

. In the

2002 election The following elections occurred in the year 2002. * 2002 Bahraini parliamentary election * 2002 Comorian presidential election * 2002 East Timorese presidential election * 2002 Fijian municipal election * 2002 Hong Kong Chief Executive election * ...

, he was ranked eighth, and remained in Parliament. He was an ACT party spokesperson on agriculture, fisheries, forestry, biosecurity, rural affairs and land use issues. He remained a list MP until the 2005 election, in which he was again ranked eighth, but only two ACT MPs were returned.

Outside Parliament

Eckhoff was working for the Meat Industry Excellence Group for a while, but he resigned in April 2013 over differences in strategy.

References

ACT New Zealand MPs Living people New Zealand libertarians New Zealand list MPs Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives Unsuccessful candidates in the 2005 New Zealand general election 21st-century New Zealand politicians Year of birth missing (living people) {{NewZealand-politician-stub