 | ||
Mount Albert is a parliamentary electorate in Auckland, New Zealand, returning one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Representatives of New Zealand. It was represented by David Shearer from 13 June 2009 to 31 December 2016. It was represented by Helen Clark from the 1981 general election until her resignation from Parliament on 17 April 2009. It has elected only Labour Party MPs since it was first contested at the 1946 election. The current representative is Jacinda Ardern who was elected in a 2017 by-election gaining 77 percent of votes cast in the preliminary results.
Contents
Population centres
The 1941 census had been postponed due to World War II, so the 1946 electoral redistribution had to take ten years of population growth and movements into account. The North Island gained a further two electorates from the South Island due to faster population growth. The abolition of the country quota through the Electoral Amendment Act, 1945 reduced the number and increased the size of rural electorates. None of the existing electorates remained unchanged, 27 electorates were abolished, eight former electorates were re-established, and 19 electorates were created for the first time, including Mount Albert.
Mount Albert covers a segment of western Auckland City, based around the suburb of Mount Albert and stretching from Kingsland on the eastern periphery of the central city down to Sandringham and extending as far as Avondale on the seat's western edge. Changes brought about by an electoral redistribution after the 2006 census saw a swap of suburbs with neighbouring Auckland Central – Newton on the city fringe being returned to Auckland Central, having been moved out in 1999, and Point Chevalier being drafted in.
The present incarnation of Mount Albert dates to 1999, when the creation of the Mount Roskill seat necessitated removing the suburbs clustered around the north side of Manukau Harbour from the Owairaka electorate. The name Mount Albert had been out of use for only three years – before Owairaka was drawn up ahead of the change to Mixed Member Proportional voting in 1996, the Mount Albert electorate had been part of the New Zealand electoral landscape for fifty years.
History
Mount Albert was first created for the 1946 election. The electorate is notable for being contested by two later Prime Ministers, Robert Muldoon and Helen Clark.
The first representative, Arthur Shapton Richards, died after only one year in the office.
Richards was succeeded by Warren Freer in the 1947 by-election, and Freer held the electorate until he retired in 1981. Freer was challenged in the 1954 election by National's Muldoon (Prime Minister from 1975 to 1984). This occasion was Muldoon's first attempt at entering Parliament. He tried to claim the seat from Labour, but no National Party candidate has ever managed to achieve what Muldoon also couldn't do. Mount Albert's inner-suburb, working-class composition makes it one of the Labour Party's safest seats. Muldoon had also previously in 1951, failed to win the National nomination for the Mount Albert electorate.
Freer was succeeded by Helen Clark, who held the electorate until 1993, when it was abolished and she moved to the Owairaka electorate instead. When the Mount Albert electorate was re-established for the 1999 election, Clark became the representative again. Clark was Prime Minister from 1999 to 2008. In 2009, she resigned to become head of the United Nations Development Program,
Clark was succeeded by David Shearer through the 13 June 2009 by-election. He was re-elected as MP in the 2011 and 2014 general elections. However, his appointment to lead the United Nation's peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, pending his resignation, will result in a by-election in early 2017.
Members of Parliament
Key
Labour
List MPs
Members of Parliament elected from party lists in elections where that person also unsuccessfully contested the Mount Albert electorate. Unless otherwise stated, all MPs terms began and ended at general elections.
Key
National Green
2017 by-election
The following table shows the final results:
2011 election
Electorate (as at 26 November 2011): 45,208
2009 by-election
a Three candidates were list MPs elected at the 2008 election.