Michael Hirschfeld

Michael Avigdor Hirschfeld (27 October 1944 – 5 January 1999) was a New Zealand businessman, and was President of the New Zealand Labour Party from 1995 to 1999.

Biography Early life and career He was born in Wellington; his parents had arrived from Palestine in 1940. His father Sigi Hirschfeld started the firm of Mico Wakefield, a plumbing, stainless steel and aluminium supply business. His grandparents were Austrian, and he was a 'secular Jew' and agnostic. He was initially educated in England before returning and attending Wellington College and Victoria University of Wellington, where he was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. In his youth he had hopes of becoming a full-time actor. He then gained a master's degree at Victoria University. At university he was active in student politics and rose to become vice-president of the New Zealand University Students' Association, spearheading campaigns against New Zealand's involvement in the Vietnam conflict.

He married Vivien Flack (whom he met while acting in a university production) in 1967, with whom he had two daughters and one son. Together with Vivien, he travelled briefly to Israel after the outbreak of the Six-Day War, before returning home to work for his family firm Mico Wakefield. From the 1980s to early 1990s he built the company up to a 450-staff organisation with a turnover of $160 million, before negotiating its sale to an Australian company in 1994. In the 1998 National Business Review rich list his personal worth at $20 million, a figure he did not dispute in a subsequent North & South article.

While carving out an impressive business record, Hirschfeld spent much of his spare time working for other causes, he joined his parents Gisi and Sigi in backing the left-wing Unity Theatre and was a tireless supporter of professional theatre in Wellington. Hirschfeld was a member of the Victoria University Council. He had many company directorships and was a chairman of Amnesty International's Freedom Foundation, chairman of the Theatre Artists' Co-operative Trust, the Wellington Museum Trust, New Zealand Jews For Peace In The Middle East, the Associates Of City Art Gallery, the Shipping Corporation of New Zealand; deputy chairman of the Pacific Forum Line, New Zealand member of the Pacific Basin Economic Council; member of the building project committee of Te Papa, and founder of the New Zealand-Israel Trade Association. His ill health was no secret and on his election as Labour president in November 1995, he announced if the opportunity for a kidney transplant were to arise, he would take it, no matter how inconvenient. He died in Waikanae Beach on 5 January 1999 after he had been admitted to hospital in late 1998.