Katherine Rich

Katherine Rich
Member of the New Zealand Parliament for National list
In office 27 November 1999 – 8 November 2008
Personal details
Born	16 December 1967 Australia
Political party	National

Katherine Rich (née Allison, born 16 December 1967) served as a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the National Party from 1999 to 2008. She has been chief executive of the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council, an industry lobby group, since 2009.

Rich was born in Australia on 16 December 1967, the daughter of agricultural scientist Jock Allison, and moved to New Zealand in 1969. She was educated at St Hilda's Collegiate School in Dunedin from 1980 to 1985, and studied at the University of Otago, from where she graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in 1990 and a Bachelor of Arts in 1993. When she voted for the first time, in the 1987 election, she gave her vote to her uncle, the Labour MP Clive Matthewson.

After leaving university she held a number of management and analytical roles in both the public and private sectors. Her jobs were:

Rich entered Parliament in 1999 as a list MP for the National Party. She had contested the Dunedin North electorate, but finished second behind incumbent Labour MP Pete Hodgson. At this election, Rich was ranked twenty-third, which was high enough to return her as a list MP.

Once in Parliament, Rich rose quickly through the National Party hierarchy, and eventually was ranked fourth in the party caucus. At various times she served as her Party's spokesperson for employment, broadcasting, economic development, state-owned enterprises, and culture. In January 2005, however, she refused to give full support to the "tough-on-welfare" Orewa Speech by then-party leader Don Brash, who demoted her to tenth place and dismissed her as social-welfare spokesperson and gave the portfolio to Judith Collins. Following the resignation of Don Brash as National Party leader on 27 November 2006, the incoming Leader of the Opposition, John Key, elevated Rich to eighth place within the National caucus and shadow Cabinet. She was appointed, on 1 December 2006, the party's spokesperson on education. Some notable achievements included co-presenting to Parliament a petition for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Peter Ellis case (2003); exposing a huge rise in the number of unallocated cases of physically and sexually abused children (2005); highlighting Labour Government inaction over understaffed PlunketLine (2005); leading National’s support for a bill to allow mothers in prison to keep their babies with them until they turn two (2006); revealing irresponsible government spending, including the hip-hop tour spending debacle (2004). She was also the sole National MP prepared to cross the floor and vote to support the anti-smacking bill (2007).

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