Paul Goldsmith

Ranked 30th, Goldsmith was re-elected as a list MP.

Goldsmith was ranked 39th on the National Party list and was elected as a list MP sitting in the 50th Parliament.

Paul Jonathan Goldsmith (born 1971) is a New Zealand historian and politician.

The biographer of several leading right-wing political and business figures, he was first elected a list member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the National Party at the.

Goldsmith was born in 1971 in the Auckland suburb of Mount Eden to parents Lawrence, a maths teacher, and Margaret, a palliative care nurse.

He has an older brother and sister.

The Goldsmith family descends from Charles George Goldsmith, a migrant from Liverpool who settled in the East Cape area early in New Zealand's colonial history.

Charles Goldsmith had four wives—two Māori (Ngāti Porou), and two pākehā—fathering 16 children.

However, Goldsmith has clarified that he is not himself of Māori descent.

He began working as a historian for the Waitangi Tribunal in March 1995, contributing to the Tribunal's work on historic claims in Taranaki and Wairarapa.

After a year, he moved to working for John Banks, then the National Party minister of local government, as a press secretary and speech writer.

Goldsmith also began a biography of Banks during this period.

Goldsmith attended Auckland Grammar School and received an MA in history from the University of Auckland in 1996.

His thesis was on the life of missionary William Colenso and Dame Judith Binney was his master's supervisor.

Paul Goldsmith is married to Maria.

They have four children.

He is a pianist and a second-dan black belt in taekwondo.

Banks was not reappointed a minister after the 1996 election; Goldsmith moved to working for the environment minister Simon Upton and, after the 1999 election, the new Labour minister of foreign affairs Phil Goff.

In 2000, Goldsmith became a public relations adviser and worked for Tranz Rail and the University of Auckland.

Goldsmith has written the biographies of John Banks, Don Brash, William Gallagher, Alan Gibbs and Te Hemara Tauhia as well as a history of taxes, Puketutu Island and a history of the Fletcher Building construction company.

The biographies were criticised in 2021 by labour historian Ross Webb as "hagiographies" of those involved in New Zealand's economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.

His Don Brash biography, Brash: A Biography, was a source of controversy.

When it was released in 2005 he maintained it was not commissioned by the National Party, but investigative journalist Nicky Hager revealed it was indeed commissioned by the National Party and was in fact the party's first big-budget item in the campaign.

Goldsmith contested the Maungakiekie electorate in the 2005 general election for the National Party.

At this time, National was led by Don Brash, whose biography by Goldsmith was published the same year.

Goldsmith was defeated by the incumbent, Labour's Mark Gosche, and due to his low list placing (59 on the National Party list), did not enter Parliament.

Goldsmith was an Auckland City Councillor between 2007 and 2010, and a Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment and Minister for Science and Innovation in the Fifth National Government.

He is Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Minister of Justice, Minister for State Owned Enterprises and Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations in the Sixth National Government.

Goldsmith successfully stood for the Auckland City Council Hobson Ward at the 2007 local body elections as a member of Citizens & Ratepayers.

He was appointed deputy finance chairman by Mayor John Banks and chaired the community services committee.

During his term, Goldsmith was criticised by the Auckland City Mission and the Green Party for instructing council officers to investigate removing homeless people from the city centre and refusing to rule out arresting homeless people to do so.

He sought but missed out on the Citizens & Ratepayers candidacy in the Ōrākei ward of the new Auckland Council at the 2010 Auckland elections, and was instead selected to contest Albert-Eden-Roskill.

He finished third, behind Christine Fletcher and Cathy Casey, in the two-member ward.

Goldsmith stood in the Epsom electorate at the 2011 general election, but lost the electorate vote to John Banks, who earlier in 2011 had joined ACT New Zealand.

Goldsmith had been expected to lose; National leader John Key encouraged National voters to elect the ACT candidate in Epsom to keep the smaller party in Parliament.

During his first term in parliament, Goldsmith was deputy chairperson and, from 2013, chairperson of the finance and expenditure select committee.

He was also a member of the local government and environment committee.

During the, Goldsmith contested the Epsom electorate and came second to new ACT candidate David Seymour.

He was appointed a minister outside Cabinet from November 2014 until December 2016, responsible for commerce and consumer affairs.

He was also associate minister for ACC.