Katherine O'Regan was a member of parliament from 1984 to 1999, representing the National Party.
21 Facts About Katherine O'Regan
1.
2.
Katherine O'Regan served as a minister for the National Government for six of those years.
3.
Katherine O'Regan chose a nursing career but left after two years due to suffering from back problems.
4.
Katherine O'Regan was a voting delegate for the National Party in the Raglan electorate candidate selection ahead of the 1975 election, where she supported Marilyn Waring.
5.
Katherine O'Regan was elected to the Waipa County Council in 1977 and served as a county councillor for eight years; she was the first woman to be elected to the council.
6.
When Waring, then representing the Waipa electorate, retired from Parliament, Katherine O'Regan was selected as the new National Party candidate for the electorate in 1984.
7.
Katherine O'Regan held Waipa for twelve years until it was abolished in 1996.
8.
On her entry to Parliament, Katherine O'Regan sought to highlight the plight of children with specific learning disabilities by introducing a private members bill seeking recognition by the education system of children with these disabilities.
9.
In 1993, Katherine O'Regan was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.
10.
In 1994, Katherine O'Regan led the New Zealand Delegation to the United Nations Population and Development Conference in Cairo and gave the Second Country Report to CEDAW at the United Nations in New York.
11.
Katherine O'Regan contested the Tauranga electorate against the former National Party MP for Tauranga, Winston Peters, who was contesting the electorate under his New Zealand First Party.
12.
Katherine O'Regan was unsuccessful in this election but remained in Parliament as a list MP.
13.
Katherine O'Regan continued her interest in population and development issues by establishing, with the help of Family Planning International, a New Zealand Parliamentarians' Group on Population and Development.
14.
Katherine O'Regan attempted to oust Peters from the electorate by encouraging voters to vote tactically, and vote for her rather than Labour's Wilson.
15.
Unlike in 1996, Katherine O'Regan was not high enough on National's party list to remain in Parliament and thus retired from politics.
16.
Katherine O'Regan was the chair of the Te Awamutu Community Public Relations Organisation.
17.
Katherine O'Regan was a council member of Family Planning New Zealand.
18.
Katherine O'Regan has two children to her first husband Neil Katherine O'Regan, whom she married in 1968.
19.
The couple divorced; Katherine O'Regan married former National MP Michael Cox in 1992.
20.
Katherine O'Regan was diagnosed, through the free screening programme she had established as Associate Minister of Health, with breast cancer in 2008.
21.
Katherine O'Regan died of her illness on 2 May 2018.