Stan Whitehead

In the 1976 New Year Honours, Whitehead was appointed a Knight Bachelor, in recognition of his long public service to central and local government. After the surprise defeat of the Labour government he planned to retire at the 1978 election.

He suffered a heart attack in the last parliamentary session of 1975. After a period in hospital he recovered enough to campaign for re-election in Nelson. A day after his re-election he suffered a further attack and was hospitalised for 10 days.

In 1972, Whitehead was asked by Prime Minister Norman Kirk to become the Speaker of the House of Representatives during the Third Labour Government. Whitehead hosted Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at the 1974 Commonwealth Games and had the duty of presiding after the death of Kirk later that year. Whitehead stated that his time as speaker was the highlight of his career.

In 1957 he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Nelson Harbour Board and became heavily involved with the development of Port Nelson. In 1971 he was elected the board's deputy chairman and was still a member of the board at the time of his death.

Whitehead was first elected to Parliament in the 1957 election in the Nelson electorate. He held the electorate until his death in 1976. He had contested the seat twice unsuccessfully before in 1951 and 1954. After he became Labour leader in 1965, Norman Kirk designated Whitehead as Shadow Minister of Internal Affairs, Local Government and Civil Defence.

Whitehead featured along with Sonja Davies in protests over the closure of the Nelson railway line, which Davies wrote about in her book Bread and Roses, and also in the television series of same name. Davies was secretary of Whitehead's first successful election campaign in 1957.

In 1953 he was elected Nelson City Council and served four terms, including being Deputy Mayor in his final term (1962–65).

In 1928, he married Frances Edna Clark, at Greymouth. They had seven children together. The family moved to Inangahua Junction and he became secretary of the Inangahua school committee. He moved to Nelson and worked for Transport Nelson. He was on the Auckland Point school committee and was also the president of the parent teacher association. He was also on the council of the Nelson Polytechnic. He was an active trade unionist and was a member of the Nelson Trades Council for over 20 years.

Sir Stanley Austin Whitehead (8 October 1907 – 9 January 1976) was a New Zealand politician of the Labour Party. He was the eighteenth Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1973 to 1976, and Member of Parliament for the Nelson electorate from 1957 to 1976.