Geoff Thompson

Geoffrey William Fleetwood Thompson was born in Wellington on 11 June 1940. According to Who's Who in New Zealand, he was educated at Waterloo and Silverstream primary schools in the Hutt Valley, at Hutt Valley High School, Horowhenua College in Levin and Wellington College.

He studied law at Victoria University of Wellington and graduated with a Master of Laws (LLM) in 1966.

Thompson trained and practised as a barrister and solicitor. Early in his career he served as Crown Counsel in Hong Kong, and he later practised in Wellington and on the Kapiti Coast, including as a senior commercial partner in the firm Kiely Thompson Caisley. He retired from the law firm Duncan Cotterill in 2015 after a legal career of more than 50 years, with particular interests in business, governance and trusts.

When the Horowhenua electorate was created for the 1978 general election, Thompson won it for the National Party, defeating Labour's Alan Eyles, and became its first member of Parliament on 25 November 1978. He was re-elected in 1981 and served as a parliamentary under-secretary in the government of Sir Robert Muldoon from 1981 to 1984. At the 1984 general election he lost the seat to Labour's Annette King by 447 votes, and he was again defeated by King in 1987.

Thompson remained deeply involved in the National Party organisation. He was the party's 13th president from 1994 to 1998, succeeding Lindsay Tisch and followed by John Slater, while Jim Bolger and then Jenny Shipley led the government. His presidency coincided with the introduction of mixed member proportional representation, and he was part of the National team in the negotiations after the 1996 election, the first held under MMP, which produced the coalition with New Zealand First. He later chaired the party's rules committee.

In later life Thompson concentrated on forestry and the environment. He was the founding chair of the Forest Growers Levy Trust, which administers the commodity levy on harvested plantation logs introduced in 2014, and stepped down in 2021, when the former MP Stephen Franks succeeded him. He also chaired forestry companies and was a co-convener of the Bluegreens, the National Party's environmental policy group.

Thompson lived and worked for many years on the Kapiti Coast, north of Wellington, and his forestry and environmental interests occupied much of his later life. The National Party's tribute extended condolences to his children, his wider family and friends. Few other details of his private life were made public.

Geoff Thompson died on 19 October 2026, aged 86. The National Party announced his death in a press release on 20 October 2026, in which party president Sylvia Wood described him as a lifelong supporter and stalwart of the party who had made an enormous contribution over many decades as an MP, party president, chair of the rules committee and supporter of the Lower North Island region.

The political commentator David Farrar, who had known him for almost 40 years, wrote that Thompson had played a big part in getting National ready for MMP. The place and cause of death were not made public, and funeral details had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Thompson is remembered as the first MP for Horowhenua and as the National Party president who guided the party organisation through the move to MMP and the formation of the first MMP coalition government in 1996. His appointment as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1999 recognised his services to politics. In the forestry sector he helped establish the levy system that funds research, biosecurity and other industry-wide work on behalf of New Zealand's plantation forest growers.