Simon Upton

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Simon David Upton (7 February 1958 - ) is a former New Zealand politician.

Educated at Southwell School, St Paul's Collegiate School and Auckland University, where he gained degrees in English literature, Music and Law, and Wolfson College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar.

Simon Upton was an MP from 1981 to 2001, representing the National Party. Having joined the National Party in 1976, he served as National President of the Young Nats among other positions, and became the then-youngest MP for Waikato in the 1981 elections. In the 1984 elections, he was elected MP for Raglan, which he held until the 1996 elections, when he chose to become a list MP.

Upton became one of New Zealand's youngest ever Ministers in the Cabinet in 1990, when he became Minister of Health, Minister for the Environment, and Minister of Science and Technology. In the environment post, Upton enacted the Resource Management Act 1991. He was responsible for establishing the Crown Research Institutes. He has an interest in sustainable development, and chaired the OECD's Round Table on Sustainable Development. He resigned from Parliament in 2001, and moved to France. He took up a full-time post at the OECD, and his two children thus learnt to speak French. He now a part-time consultant at Price Water House Coopers and there is big hope that that will become full-time in the near future. His son Geoffrey William Alexander Upton also went to Southwell School and now attends Christs College, where life for him boarding in Jacobs house is going very well indeed. His daughter Laura Beatrice Upton still attends Southwell School.