Murray King may be a dairy farmer, but you will seldom find him milking cows because he is too busy promoting and developing the New Zealand dairy industry.
In the King’s Birthday Honours, he has been awarded the Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), for his services to the dairy industry, which includes a long list of leadership and governance roles.
For 14 years he was on the Livestock Improvement Corporation board and 12 of those as chairman with the goal of providing genetics expertise, information and technology to the dairy sector.
He has been involved in Fonterra governance development programmes, the development of leaders in rural New Zealand and for the past 25 years has been committed to the development of the Waimea Community Dam. He is chairman of the Waimea Irrigators Ltd and is on the board of the Cawthron Institute.
The cows still get milked on the Waimea Plains dairy farm where he grew up and milk is turned into ice cream, while his family business has expanded to larger dairy farms in Canterbury. It is his passion for the industry that drives his roles outside the farm gate.
“I’m not the sort of person to be stuck in a cowshed and that’s one of the reasons I’m involved in other ways. And if you open your mouth, you get a job. It’s a family thing too – a sense of obligation for community involvement and industry involvement. And I’m a nosey bugger and want to be involved.”
He admits he thought long and hard about whether to accept the award or not because everything he has been involved in has been a team effort.
“But it’s a great honour and it needs the respect of that. But my success is due to other people as well. Plus, it’s really important to highlight the positive in the industry – and not just the dairy industry but the primary sector.”
Murray says leadership is about taking people where they often don’t want to go, while governance is about making good-quality decisions.
“You do it because you want things to be better. Problems are to solve rather than be a problem. You have to look for a solution because every problem has a solution.
“I’m very patriotic and I want things to be better. That’s why you do these things.”
