Mark Everett Peck (born 16 July 1953) is a New Zealand politician and a member of the Labour Party. From 2013 to 2016, he was a Wellington City Councillor, and was MP for Invercargill from 1993 to 2005.
He worked several jobs prior to entering politics including as a part-time tutor, retailer, factory worker and supermarket department manager. In 1977 he became a union official with the Hospital and Hotel Workers' Union (later amalgamated into the Service Workers' Union. In 1985 he was appointed a member of the Southland Polytechnic Council. He was vice president (1991) and president (1992–93) of the Southland Council of Trade Unions.[2][3]
Peck won the National Party dominated electorate of Invercargill in the 1993 election. Soon after entering parliament he supported Helen Clark in her successful leadership challenge to Mike Moore.[6] From 1996 to 1999 he was Shadow Minister of Revenue under Clark.[7]
In 2002, he missed out getting promoted to cabinet and after that, he became more distant to his party colleagues and started feeling lonely.[8] He represented the electorate until retiring from the House of Representatives twelve years later in September 2005; he claims that he made the decision to retire at his birthday in 2004.[8]
During his hiatus from politics, he has been a director of the anti-smoking organisation Smokefree Coalition.[9] In 2009 he opened a café "Little Peckish" in central Wellington with his wife Margaret.[10] He retired and sold the café in 2021.
In early 2005, after crashing his car while drink driving, Peck spoke publicly about his addiction to alcohol since he was a young man, and how he had checked himself into an addiction rehabilitation centre.[8] He and his wife have three children.[2]
Notes
^Temple, Philip (1994). Temple's Guide to the 44th New Zealand Parliament. Dunedin: McIndoe Publishers. p. 78. ISBN0-86868-159-8.
