Trevor de Cleene

He had taken the American singer P.J. Proby deer stalking and trespassed Crown land in the Tangimoana forest, for which he was fined £5; the Municipal Corporations Act 1908 required elected members committed of an offence that is punishable by imprisonment to resign.

Trevor Albert de Cleene (24 March 1933 – 22 April 2001) was a New Zealand politician and lawyer.

De Cleene was born in Palmerston North on 24 March 1933; the first Palmerston North MP who was actually born in the city.

His parents were poor and he was born during the Great Depression.

The family moved frequently until they finally obtained state housing.

He attended Palmerston North Intermediate Normal School, then Palmerston North Boys' High School and left school in 1951.

He studied law at the University of Canterbury before changing to the Faculty of Law of Victoria University.

De Cleene joined the Labour Party in 1952.

His family had a long connection with the party and his earliest memory of his mother was her pouring tea at Labour Party functions, always grateful of having obtained a State house to live in.

There, he won the Law Moot Prize in 1954 and graduated LLB in 1955, having achieved Senior Law Scholar in his final year.

He financed his degree by working several seasons at the freezing works in Feilding.

He was admitted to the bar in 1956 and started his professional career working for Innes and Oakley in Palmerston North.

His move to start his own practice was summed up by himself as follows: "I crossed the street and put up my own plate."

He became more active in the 1960s.

On 12 October 1962, he married Gwenda Doris Taylor and they had one girl (born 1964) and two boys (born 1966 and 1970, respectively).

De Cleene was first elected to Palmerston North City Council in 1962 and aged 29, he was the youngest councillor.

However, party politics had no place in Palmerston and those who tried to represent one of the parties had always failed, so his Labour affiliation was no feature while standing for council.

He was re-elected after the end of his first term in 1965, but was forced to resign a year later.

Between 1966 and 1970, he shared the practice with Bob Calkin.

For the next two years, he practised on his own again, and beginning in 1973, he was with Loughnan, de Cleene and Co for three years.

They divorced in 1976 and he remarried in 1982 to Raewyn Watt.

He played hockey for Canterbury University, then Victoria University and finally Hockey Manawatu.

He loved the outdoors and enjoyed hunting, fishing and shooting.

He made potential enemies through defending high-profile criminals and his controversial policies as a politician, and once revealed that he kept a pump-action shotgun under his bed for personal protection.

He was interested in race horses and after successfully defending a client's drink driving charge, he purchased a race horse which he called Breathalyser.

Law seemed an ideal profession for de Cleene.

He was a gifted scholar, was good with words and loved public speaking.

He was a good debater, was witty and a very quick thinker.

Due to his presentation, he quickly became the centre of attention wherever he went.

1976 saw him move to Tauranga, where he practised on his own.

In the following year, he returned to Palmerston North and continued as a partner with Loughnan, de Cleene & Co until his election to Parliament.

He specialised in criminal law, commercial law and worker compensation.

He especially enjoyed criminal law because of the high-profile that it gave him both within the profession and the public.

He was legal advisor to the export company run by Joe Walding.

He also provided legal advice pro bono for many sporting organisations.

After gaining experience as a councillor with Palmerston North City Council, he was elected to Parliament for the Labour Party in 1981.

He was a strong supporter of Rogernomics and was a minister outside cabinet.

He resigned his ministerial portfolios in 1988 when Roger Douglas was sacked by David Lange.

For his remaining parliamentary career, he was a backbencher known as one of the Three Musketeers.

Later, he was a founding member of ACT New Zealand and some years later joined the National Party to help oppose Winston Peters in Tauranga.