Finally, the 2025 New Year honours list featured the longtime Timaru lawyer, who has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to people with intellectual disabilities and the community, spanning back to the 1980s.
Now retired to Wanaka, Mr Shaw admits to being surprised and chuffed when he received the email advising of his nomination — although ever the cautious lawyer, admitted he first thought it was perhaps a hoax.
Fittingly, he was in Wellington with his wife Raewyn on IHC business when the email arrived, as he says the award recognises not just his 40-plus years’ involvement with the organisation, but also Mrs Shaw’s unwavering support of the time commitment involved.
The couple kept the news to themselves until Christmas, when they were able to tell the family — their two daughters and a son.
"My youngest daughter said, ‘Dad, I used to look at the New Year’s Honours list, and the Queen’s Birthday list year after year, and ask, why is my dad’s name not there?"’
Mr Shaw’s involvement with IHC ran parallel with his 40-year-plus Timaru-based legal career.
Christchurch born and bred, Mr Shaw gained his law degree in the city, then spent six months in Australia before moving back to New Zealand at the beginning of 1979.
"I needed a job, and they were hard to come by at that time, but I was offered a job in Timaru at Petrie Mayman Timpany and More — which became Timpany Walton. I came down to Timaru and thought I’d be here for about two years, and then go back to Christchurch.
"But I fell on my feet in Timaru, it was a good firm. I was thrown in the deep end and doing as much court work as I wanted to."
Shortly after Mr Shaw started at the firm, the practice manager left to take up the role of branch manager at the IHC, and eventually asked the young lawyer if he would come on to the committee.
At that time, committee members were mostly parents of children and adults with intellectual disabilities, and the new manager felt some young blood was needed.
"So I said I’d do it. I spent four or five years on the committee and said I didn’t know if I was adding much at the time, and perhaps I should step aside ... but I stayed on."
Joining the local branch committee in 1983, by 1993 Mr Shaw had been elected president of the branch, travelling to Wellington for meetings four times a year. Five years later, he joined a new national IHC Board of Governance, serving on that from 1998 to 2005.
He took over as IHC president in 2002 during a period of major health and welfare reform that impacted on people with intellectual disabilities. At the same time, IHC was campaigning to move people out of large institutions and into the community, and to ensure that school-aged children with disabilities could be enrolled in mainstream education.
Mr Shaw served as New Zealand president from 2002-05, became an IHC New Zealand life member in 2005, and from 2007-19 was one of two IHC-appointed trustees on the IHC Foundation Charitable Trust.
When he returned to the board in 2019, and took over as chairman in 2020, it was to a far more complex organisation, and one dealing with the challenges of keeping 4000 disabled people and 4000 staff safe amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
It has been a point of pride that he has been involved for so long, without the usual catalyst of being a parent to a child with intellectual disabilities.
"My heart is in it, and I also believed in the philosophy of IHC; supporting people with intellectual disabilities to live ordinary lives in the community, and being bold and brave."
While funding for services is provided through the Ministry of Social Development, Mr Shaw said that had not stopped the organisation from embarking on court proceedings against the Crown to take them to task over their failure to provide proper education to young people.
"We’re not scared in the sense to bite the hand that feeds us."
While his involvement with IHC continues, the pace of life for Mr Shaw and his theatre nurse wife has slowed somewhat since the couple both retired in March 2022.
"We’d had a holiday home in Wanaka for more than 30 years, and it was always our intention to retire here."
Timaru remains an important part of his life; the support from Mrs Shaw and the children — who only ever knew him as being involved with IHC and going away a lot — and from the law firm who had allowed him the time to take up the many roles with IHC and other organisations including South Island Masters Games, the Aorangi Stadium Trust, in the football community as a member of the board of Federation South, and running training sessions for the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce.
"Timaru has been kind to me, and I like to think I have repaid some of that."
