Peter Tait (mayor)

Sir Peter Tait, KBE (5 September 1915 – 31 January 1996), was a New Zealand National Party Member of Parliament, Napier mayor, small businessman and opponent of New Zealand's Homosexual Law Reform Act.

Five fishermen sitting by their nets on a beach, with a young boy, Peter Tait.

Tait was born on 5 September 1915, in Wellington's Island Bay suburb. His family were Scottish immigrants, originally from the Shetland Islands. His father Jack and his uncles Peter and Ross belonged to the best known Shetland fishing families in Island Bay. Through his early life, Tait suffered from tuberculosis, which meant that he was unable to play an active role in New Zealand's Second World War effort, nor could he become a Baptist minister.

He moved from Waipukurau, a rural community, to the East Coast of the North Island, and ultimately settled in Napier. Once established there, he opened a shoe store, which came to have branches in Waipukurau, Napier, Hastings and Dannevirke.

Member of Parliament

Tait served as the National Member of Parliament for Napier (1951–1954).

Mayor of Napier

Two years after leaving Parliament, he became Mayor of Napier for the next eighteen years (1956–1974).

Tait was a Baptist, who helped to organise the Coalition of Concerned Citizens in the mid-eighties, and fought against homosexual law reform. Ultimately, though, the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed its final reading.

Tait then ran foul of his former colleagues in the 'Gang of Twenty' affair in 1989 when the contributory mortgage company he chaired, AdvisorCorp, found itself the target of attacks from National Party leader Jim Bolger. Bolger would later publicly apologise to Tait, but two of the principals in the company were successfully prosecuted and AdvisorCorp collapsed.

He funded the Tait Fountain in Napier, which commemorates Victory in Europe Day and was dedicated on 9 May 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the end of that war.

Tait was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1967 New Year Honours and promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 New Year Honours. He died in 1996.