Obituary: Ian Shaw

Ian Shaw

* Ian Shaw, politician. Died aged 79.

Ian Shaw, QSM, JP, Auckland local body politician, retired from the Auckland City Council in 1998, reasoning that 36 years in local body politics was enough for one lifetime.

He died after a battle with cancer.

Mr Shaw's career as a community representative began in 1962, with his election to the Mt Wellington Borough Council. At that time areas of the city were run by their own local councils, with each defending its borders fiercely against all perceived incursions on their authority.

By the early 1970s local body government laws were relaxed, allowing a borough council member to be elected to the then Auckland Regional Authority. Ian Shaw threw his cap into the ring, and in 1974 was elected to the ARA as a Labour Party member, first representing Mt Wellington, then a combined Ellerslie-Mt Wellington ward, and finally Panmure.

Mr Shaw never wavered in his political commitment, and was a staunch supporter of the staff of the council and the authority. In an interview with the Herald on his retirement from the ARA in 1988, he said:

"Many times I have said the politicians have felt they are the only important people in local government. I have never tired of reminding them that politicians come and go but the staff remain."

For 20 of his 26 years on both council and authority, Mr Shaw worked part-time at night as a security man, leaving him free to attend meetings during the day. He was never in any danger in his security work, but as his daughter Ruth says, "If he was confronted, he would have talked his way out of it."

Mr Shaw believed that the electoral system should be overhauled and that local body and parliamentary electoral rolls should be combined. His fear was that the ARA would become swamped by businessmen and removed from the people it represented.

He pushed for rail access to the Pikes Pt rubbish transfer station so that some day Auckland rubbish might be moved cheaply to worked-out opencast mines in Waikato.

Another project to receive his enthusiastic support was the Portage Canal, linking the Manukau and Waitemata Harbours. The big difference in tide levels between the harbours has prevented this.

In 1986 Ian Shaw found himself in his fifth term on the ARA, the lone Labour Party member.

"I have decided to kick it off in fine style by calling myself the Lone Ranger Party," he said in a Herald interview at the time.

"I cannot see anybody cabling me from Wellington to take a stand on anything. There's no point."

At his retirement from the ARA, he said he had never entered local body politics with a chip on his shoulder, but with the intention to do the best he could for the community he represented.

"So 26 years later, apart from a bit of arthritis, I still haven't got a chip on my shoulder."

But old habits die hard, and after a term on the Tamaki Community Board, Ian Shaw was elected to the Auckland City Council, representing Tamaki ward. He retired finally in 1998.

Ian Shaw was born in Freemans Bay in 1925, and educated there and at Wesley College. He married Noelene in 1946, and the couple farmed in Northland and the Hauraki Plains before moving to Auckland to raise a growing family.

Mr Shaw took up shift work at the Westfield freezing works, where his motto was, "Eat when you feel like it, sleep when you can and work because you have to."

On Friday evenings he would meet up with friends for a beer in the Otahuhu Workingmen's Club. One of these was Auckland City councillor Bill Christian.

"Ninety per cent of what I know about local government, I got from Ian Shaw," remembers Mr Christian.

Mr Shaw is survived by his wife, Noelene, daughters Heather and Ruth, sons Bruce and Noel, and families.