Roger Kerr, New Zealand public policy and business leader, executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, died from metastatic melanoma he was 66.

Roger Lawrence Kerr, CNZM , a public policy and business leader, was the executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable,^[1][2] a free-market think-tank based in Wellington, New Zealand. He is not related to fellow New Zealander Roger J. Kerr, the founder of Asia Pacific Risk Management.

(17 January 1945 – 28 October 2011)

Career

Kerr attended Appleby Primary and Waimea College in Nelson. He held an MA (Honours, First Class) from the University of Canterbury and a BCA from Victoria University of Wellington. He served as a director of the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand from 1986 to 1994,^[3] as a member of the Council of Victoria University of Wellington from 1995 to 1999, and as a member of the Group Board of Colonial Limited in Melbourne from 1996 to 2000.^[4]
Kerr spent much of his career in the economic policy debate in New Zealand, mainly through written commentary. Kerr was a vocal proponent of Rogernomics and of policies that can be broadly characterised as free market. Before joining the New Zealand Business Roundtable, he worked as an assistant secretary at the New Zealand Treasury and as a senior figure in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs including as a diplomat in Brussels.^[5]

Personal life

Kerr was married to Margaret Northcroft for over 30 years with whom he had three sons, Bernard, Nicholas and Richard, two of whom live in the United States and one of whom lives in New Zealand. The marriage to Northcroft ended in divorce. He married Catherine Isaac in January 2010. Kerr died on 28 October 2011, after battling metastatic melanoma for a year.^[6][7][8][9]

Awards

• NZIER Qantas Economics Award, 2001 ^[1]
• Tasman Medal, 1994
• Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to business.^[10]

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