I was born in the UK and grew up in Africa, relocating to New Zealand in 1984. I commenced poultry veterinary practice in 1979. Avivet was established in 2000 to provide veterinary support to free-range egg farms, re-learning how to control diseases that had disappeared from the cage environment. I am New Zealand's only registered specialist poultry veterinarian. I serve on the Egg Producers Federation Board and received the Dennis O'Meara Award in 2017 for my contributions to the egg industry. I also hold a pilot's license, enjoy gold fossicking, hill walking, and studying politics and colonial development.
I believe in individual enterprise and the discipline of markets. New Zealanders are better at allocating their resources than any bureaucracy. I support the development of a facilitatory bureaucracy administering a hand-up society, not the handout society that we are becoming. The torrent of regulation affecting society has noble aims, but only when government realises that a search for perfection is often the enemy of the merely good, will it control its expenditure, which underlies the cost-of-living increases undermining our way of life. The divisive aims of co-governance should be faced down and criminals should face consequences for their actions.