Former prime minister Dame Jenny Shipley out of New Zealand China Council

Former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley has been embroiled in a legal case over the collapse of building company Mainzeal Construction this year. Photo / Dean Purcell

Former prime minister Dame Jenny Shipley has been shuffled out of the New Zealand China Council in a restructure of its board.

The organisation has been working on a plan to downsize since a review and a reported meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters in late 2018, and questions have this year been raised about Shipley's future on the board.

New Zealand China council chair Don McKinnon has announced Shipley will be departing, along with members Tony Browne, Grant Guilford, Arthur Loo and Cathy Quinn as part of a long-awaited shrinking of the group.

NZCC earlier this year said the restructure was designed to make the council more efficient and had nothing to do with Shipley.

Former National Party leader Shipley and the other directors of building company Mainzeal Construction were in February ruled in the High Court liable for a total $36 million to unsecured creditors after the business's collapse.

Mainzeal was one of the country's largest construction companies when it went under in 2013, owing unsecured creditors $110 million and Justice Francis Cooke said its directors had been reckless and traded while insolvent.

After the court decision, Shipley stepped down from the board of China Construction Bank New Zealand.

The directors have since lost a bid to reduce the financial penalties but said they were taking the original ruling to the Court of Appeal.

The Government does not appoint the members of the New Zealand China Council but the organisation receives two thirds of its funding through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Peters has been openly critical of Shipley, this year questioning her credentials as chair of the China Construction Bank and attacking her after an article appeared under her name in Chinese Government mouthpiece the "People's Daily" praising the Belt and Road Initiative.

Shipley said she had not written the piece and that she was interviewed by the newspaper in December for an article only to later find a separate piece had been published under her name in February.

Shipley and Peters have bad blood between them since she sacked him as Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer in 1998 after becoming Prime Minister in a coalition government.