David William Parker (born 1960) is a New Zealand lawyer, businessman and politician who has been a Labour Party Member of Parliament since 2002.

Parker said one of his early roles was to identify commercial opportunities emerging out of universities and Crown Research Institutes and develop corporate structures for them.

[15][17][18][19] From about 1999, and spurred by his opposition to then government's energy reforms,[7] Parker began planning a political career and joined the Labour Party.

[20] Ranked an unwinnable 47th place on the party list, and himself not expecting to make it into Parliament, Parker won an upset victory over the incumbent, Gavan Herlihy, by 648 votes.

He said he supported waste minimisation efforts and suggested that energy consumption and resource depletion should be added to indicators of economic performance, in addition to gross domestic product (GDP).

He criticised the governance of the Reserve Bank by Don Brash, who was by then also a first-term MP, saying that the late 1990s "marked the greatest mismanagement of the New Zealand economy" since the days of Sir Robert Muldoon.

[35] He unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Labour Party leadership election and was demoted by incoming leader Andrew Little after refusing the finance portfolio,[36][37] but continued as shadow attorney-general and eventually became environment and foreign affairs spokesperson.

Parker's appointment as Attorney-General and "a de facto Minister of Infrastructure" in his second term, despite his Otago election defeat, was criticised by the National Party due to his apparent inexperience.

[43][44][45][46] Parker resigned from the Cabinet in March 2006 (see § Attorney-General) but was reappointed with the energy, climate change, and land information portfolios that May.

[54] Political commentator Colin James wrote of the incident: "[it] must be the world’s first resignation by a minister for something he thought he might conceivably have done but turned out not to have... David Parker is one of the few to end 2006 with reputation enhanced.

[59][60] Power shortages were a persistent trend through Parker's time in the portfolio, with additional gas-generated electricity commissioned to ease demand in 2008.

[63][64] As climate change minister, Parker announced the cancellation of a proposed carbon tax, pursuant to a coalition agreement between Labour and New Zealand First.

[73][74] An investigation by the State Services Commission cleared Parker of charges of inappropriate ministerial direction,[75] although some commentators like the Herald's Fran O'Sullivan and the National Party's Gerry Brownlee were highly critical both of the report's findings as well as of Parker's role and "impatience" in pressuring the environment ministry on a political appointment.

[91] It was reported that he withdrew because a key backer, Grant Robertson, had shifted his allegiance to Shearer,[92] who defeated David Cunliffe in the election and appointed Parker as the finance spokesperson.

[101] Instead, Parker was assigned a range of portfolios including shadow attorney-general and spokesperson for trade and export growth, the environment and, after the resignations of former leaders Goff and Shearer, foreign affairs.

He appointed retired judge Tony Randerson, who had previously been on a review panel for the RMA before its enactment, to make recommendations about the future direction for resource management.

[131] Parker said his rationale for replacing the RMA was that it had become too complex and expensive, without adequately protecting water quality or decreasing carbon emissions.

[133] Parker launched the government's freshwater policy statement in September 2019, which aimed to improve water quality in lakes and rivers.

[134] A report Parker had commissioned the previous year had found significant water quality issues, including increases of nitrates and E.

[136] Tighter water quality regulations, including controls on winter grazing of stock, were enacted in 2020 and these were soon described as "onerous" and "unworkable" by farming lobbyists.

[145][146][147] After leaving the economic development portfolio, Parker was continued as the responsible minister for the venture capital fund through his associate finance delegation.

[150] In August 2018, Parker led the passage of the Overseas Investment Amendment Act 2018, that banned the sale of existing residential property in New Zealand to foreign buyers.

[156][157] In 2019, Parker announced government support for Saudi Arabia "agri-hub" he had questioned, and described as a bribe, in Opposition had been cancelled.

[163] Parker also conducted work on tax inequality, which he said was his main priority in the portfolio and was inspired by reading Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Parker said the "internationally ground-breaking research" revealed a "large differential between the tax rates ordinary New Zealanders pay on their full income compared with the super-wealthy".

[169] The bill, which passed its third reading in August 2023,[170] was described by National Party opponents as "David Parker's pet envy project.

[174] His stance was criticised by The New Zealand Herald's Claire Trevett as "an ill-timed bout of personal principle that carries a whiff of petulance and selfishness" that came in the lead-up to an election and amid several other resignations of Cabinet ministers for various scandals, but was praised by former revenue minister Peter Dunne as the correct decision and by journalist Simon Wilson for being a rare act of principle.

[129][186][187][188] In 2003, Parker supported a petition calling for the government to hold a royal commission of inquiry to review the case of Peter Ellis.

[129] Parker is opposed to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and supports the creation and international recognition of a Palestinian state.

[158] In 2023, Parker described Capital to The Spinoff as the book "everyone should read" because it demonstrated how wealth is being concentrated among very few individuals and that this has largely been missed because of a lack of sufficient, accurate data-based monitoring.