Co-leader was fired up for Buy NZ role

Rod Donald would have been sworn in for his fourth term in Parliament today.

The energetic Green Party co-leader was looking forward to his role developing the Buy NZ-Made campaign he helped negotiate with the new Labour-led Government.

He had a passion for environmental activism from an early age - setting up an ecological action group at school in Christchurch at the age of 15 and joining the Values Party a year later.

The 48-year-old held various positions in community organisations in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s including Trade Aid, Volunteer Service Abroad and the Youth Hostels Association.

He came to political prominence through the Electoral Reform Coalition campaign for proportional representation, which was eventually introduced for the 1996 election.

He joined the Greens in 1994 and a year later became co-leader before entering Parliament in 1996 under the Alliance banner. Three years later the Greens scraped in on their own ticket as a separate party.

The Christchurch father-of-three was seen as an acceptable face of the Greens with the wider public, and his loss is grievous not only for his family but to the party and wider green movement.

He was not only a campaigner for fair trade and a cleaner urban environment, but also social justice. He told the Press Association recently he had a major falling out with his parents over the 1981 Springbok Tour, which he opposed.

"Mum and Dad went to South Africa in '76 with the All Blacks and they were sitting in Dad's season ticket seats at Lancaster Park when I was outside trying to stop the game in '81."

They had offered to pay for a mouthguard so if he was punched in the face, his teeth would not be damaged.

He and co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons have jointly led the party for 10 years working to eventually deliver some green policy gains from, or as part of, a government.

But the party was disappointed after post-election talks last month left it effectively blocked from the ministerial posts it so badly wanted, because of the objections of Labour's eventual support parties - NZ First and United Future - which regarded the Greens as extremists.

So the party had to make do with a modest agreement giving Ms Fitzsimons a Government spokesperson role on energy efficiency and a promise of Budget funding, while Mr Donald would front a Government Buy NZ-Made campaign.

It was a role he was relishing and he waded in early, calling on the Government to intervene over Air New Zealand's move to outsource large aircraft maintenance overseas with the loss of 600 local jobs.

It was the very thing Mr Donald wanted to avoid have happen in New Zealand.

The issue gave him a chance to make a real difference - at least in the area of buying local and keeping jobs here.

His last press release of probably thousands backed the Wanganui District Council against fast-food outlets whose wrappers littered the town. In August, Rod Donald told the Press Association that mid-way through each parliamentary term he would reassess whether he should stay on as a party co-leader. He would talk to partner Nicola Shirlaw, whom he described as "tolerant" of his career, and the answer was always yes.

"But I always said that I would do a maximum of 15 years. My gameplan is to leave no later than 2011 because there will be a life after politics."

Mr Donald is survived by his partner Nicola and their three daughters, Holly, Emma and Zoe.