New Year Honours List
Two southern King Country residents were honoured in the New Year Honours’ List. *
Long-serving health professional Paul Malpass of Taumarunui is now a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and Retaruke farmer and conservationist Richard Steele received a King’s Service Medal.
Others with King Country connections – Sally Davies, Rangimahora Reddy and Paula Baker – were also on the list.
Malpass was a specialist general surgeon and Public Health physician before his retirement as clinical director at Taupō Hospital in 2017.
For more than 45 years he served on district health boards, government agencies and health accreditation bodies. His career began as a general surgeon with the Royal Air Force in 1972 and was then surgeon superintendent at Taumarunui Hospital from 1976 until 1992 attracting national attention in the late 1980s for its innovative “get a hip, come to Taumarunui” campaign.
At the time there were long waiting lists for hip replacements, so he and fellow surgeon David Hay plugged the gap from Taumarunui.
His passion for rural health saw him serve on various Waikato District Health Board committees and the Consumer Council.
Malpass now has an active interest in painting and while he considers himself an amateur, he has sold several acrylic paintings, mainly local landscapes, as well as numbered prints and cards.
*After the King Country News went to press, the Malpass family announced Di Malpass – wife of Paul, mother of William, Emma, Tom and Hannah; daughter and son in law to Pauline, Kylie and Steve; grandmother to Ella, Zoe, Jack, Katie, Evie, Isabella, Ben, Alex and Nikau; great grandmother to Sophie, Georgia, Sam, Layla and Cooper – died on Sunday in Waikato Hospital aged 82. Our condolences go to the family.
Steele has supported his rural community of Ruapehu and Whanganui for more than 40 years.
He established and was the inaugural Ruapehu Federated Farmers president in 1990 becoming an advocate for farmers during the bovine TB outbreaks to have compensation for loss of cattle.
In 2008 he helped form the Rural Support Trust to provide mental wellbeing support during a drought and provide support and advice around several issues, including managing finances.
He is a life member of the Friends of the Whanganui River Group and drawing from his farming experiences in the Kaitieke Vally, he has written four novels including the best-seller ‘Ghosts in the Valley.’
He and wife Rachel are still on the family farm, but they lease it to son Dan who runs Blue Duck Station, a tourism and family business with help from his father who looks after the jetboat part of the business.
“I still do cases for the rural support trust, but am otherwise off the radar, as one should be, you may have noticed a few too many older people in politics these days,” he tells The News.
“We have had a good innings though, and every day continues to be a pleasure and an adventure.”
Scottish born Sally Davies, who grew up in Mapiu and attended Te Kūiti High School but now lives in Te Awamutu, has a KSM for her services to health and hockey.
Davies has volunteered at Te Awamutu Sports Hockey Club since 1990 as a coach and served as the inaugural president until 2007.
Her citation says she was instrumental in establishing hockey under the Te Awamutu Sports banner upon the club’s establishment and is still coaching a reserve grade side.
She is a life member of Te Awamutu Sports and Waikato Hockey and has received the New Zealand Hockey Service Award.
As a practice nurse at Te Awamutu Medical Centre, she became one of the first nurses in New Zealand to specialise in diabetes management and retired last month after 47 years with the practice vowing to play more golf, join a Mahjong group, spend more time in the garden and continue coaching hockey.
Rangimahora Reddy (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato, Ngāti Rangiwewehi me Rangitāne) has dedicated more than 20 years to Māori health and wellbeing and also got a KSM.
Reddy, originally from Himatangi, has been chief executive of Rauawaawa Kaumātua Charitable Trust (Rauawaawa) since 2010. It is a culturally focused charity providing health and wellbeing, housing, welfare, education and recreational services for kaumātua.
During her leadership, Rauawaawa pioneered kaumātua-centred programmes, including national and regional wellbeing events, commenced the revitalisation of Rauawaawa’s Te Puna o Te Ora facility into New Zealand’s first dementia and age-friendly, kaumātua-led and digitally enabled, community hub.
Paula Baker of Tamahere gets an MNZM for her services to health governance and the community. She recently took up a new role at Waihikurangi Trust, the charitable arm of Ngāti Maniapoto’s post-settlement governance entity Te Nehenehenui.
“I just felt that I could bring some different networks and contacts through the table with all the different organisations I know in health and knowing the great need in health, I felt that I could make a big contribution to a Māori organisation like Waihikurangi,” says Baker on why she applied to become a trustee.
The citation singled out her involvement with Braemar Charitable Trust where she became a trustee in 2014 and general manager in 2016.
