Electorates and Politicians of the Southern Bays 1853 – 2013

“Our” first member of parliament (then known as members of the house of representatives) was William Barnard Rhodes who switched seats to the City of Wellington electorate in for the 1855 election, and lost. He won the City of Wellington in 1858 and held it until 1866.

It is doubtful that the Southern Bays figured to any extent in his political life, given the sparseness of their population and the vast expanse of his electorate. But he was a most interesting politician, and there is no reason we should not claim him for his brief association with our area. He was, according to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, “Initially looked down on by the colonial élite, scorned for his readiness to engage in physical labour, and belittled for his parsimoniousness and his unprepossessing physical appearance”. But as it dryly notes:  “his social acceptance nevertheless rose commensurately with his cash balances”. He fathered a girl with Ōtahui of Ngāti Ruanui, and adopted the baby with his wife.  That baby’s own son later won the Victoria Cross.  Second Lieutenant William Rhodes-Moorhouse was the first airman to receive the honour, recognizing his heroism in a raid on the rail junction at Courtrai, Belgium. He died of wounds the next day.  

Rhodes Senior was succeeded in Wellington Country by Dudley Ward, who resigned in 1858. Ward is perhaps best known as the husband of Anne Ward, the first national president of the New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union. Dudley Ward later acted as a Judge of the Supreme Court in Dunedin and Auckland. 

The ensuing 1858 by-election was won by Alfred Brandon. He continued to represent the area when from 1860-1870 the electorate in which the Southern Bays were placed moved its northern boundary south a little, but continued to occupy a vast swathe of the North Island’s southern coast. It was, however, renamed Porirua.  Registered electors had reached 599 of a population of 2,748 by 1865-1866.

Aldred de Bathe Brandon was a lawyer, and like his predecessor was the grandfather of a heroic World War l aviator, also called Alfred de Bathe Brandon.  His son, again of the same name was  Mayor of Wellington. Brandon continued to represent our area from 1870 to 1881 during which time the name of returned to Wellington Country, with its boundary redrawn to include only the southern part of the Kāpiti coast as well as the arc from Porirua around to Miramar. There were 677 electors. 

So it continued until 1881, when the electorate of Wellington South was carved from Wellington Country, with the remainder being called “Foxton”.  Wellington South took in everything from Ōwhiro Bay in the west to Miramar in the East and went north to Oriental Bay. It was the growth of the Newtown area which allowed the development of this new electorate, with 1679 electors in 1881. In 1879 the life of a parliament was reduced from five to three years, and the 1881 election was the first to be held under univeral male suffrage. 

In that year, William Hutchison became the local member,after previously representing City of Wellington  but was defeated in 1884 by George Fisher.  Hutchison was also Mayor of Wellington and later represented Dunedin in parliament. George Fisher was also a mayor of Wellington, and also represented multiple electorates at different times – in his case Wellington East and City of Wellington. His term in Wellington South lasted only until 1887. 

In 1887, Wellington South joined the west south of Johnsonville to become Wellington South and Suburbs. There were 1,775 electors. Charles Izard, a notable Wellington lawyer represented the seat. 

In 1890, the Southern Bays became part of a much larger electorate: the City Of Wellington with 28,617 population and 8,786 electors.  Electorates grew because parliament had voted to reduce their number from 91 to 70. This was the election in which the principle ‘one man, one vote’ was established. You could no longer vote in more than one electorate. The City of Wellington was a three-member electorate, and George Fisher (earlier our member for Wellington South), Thomas MacDonald and John Duthie were elected. MacDonald soon resigned and was replaced by William McLean in 1893. McLean was defeated in 1893, but later became noted for importing what were possibly the first motor vehicles in New Zealand (see: Evening Post, 17 March 1898, p 5)

Of course, at this time there were only a handful of people living in the Southern Bays, but Island Bay in particular was beginning to attract settlers and fishermen, and people were beginning to consider its potential for day-trip tourism. 

The Southern Bays were lost to the City of Wellington electorate, and became part of Wellington Suburbs in 1892. For the election in 1893, women gained the right to vote, and for the first time the population and elector figures begin reflect those of an adult-franchise democracy: 9005 population, 4544 electors. 

The first representative of this new electorate was Alfred Newman who would also later serve as a Mayor of Wellington, and as MHR for Wellington East.  “Although a keen critic of the Liberal government of the 1890s, and politically conservative by colonial standards, he supported women's right to vote and to enter the professions, and in 1894 introduced a bill to enable Pākehā and Māori women to enter Parliament. 

A future Liberal Party leader Thomas Wilford was elected for Wellington Suburbs electorate in the 1896, but the result was overturned by an electoral petition. In a by-election, his place was taken by fellow liberal Charles Wilson but Wilford returned to win Wellington Suburbs in the 1899 election. Wilford was also to later be the High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in the 1930s. 

Wellington Suburbs continued to exist until 1902, by which stage settlement of the Southern Bays had begun in earnest. We were then made part of the new Newtown electorate, which also took in Brooklyn, Kilbirne, Berhampore and Miramar.  Newtown was won in 1902 by William Barber, a member of the New Liberal Party. He was also a long-serving city councilor. He won again in the 1905 election soundly defeating candidates including  Alfred Hindmarsh of the United Labour Party. 

In 1908 nearly all this area was included in a restored Wellington Suburbs electorate, extending from Miramar to Porirua. Population: 13,147; electors 8,631. The successful candidate was Robert Wright, who was defeated by Hindmarsh in 1911. In 1914 he won the adjoining Wellington Suburbs and Country electorate, and continued in parliament until 1938. He was briefly Minister of Education, and also, like so many of our early representatives, Mayor of Wellington. 

Hindmarsh would later represent this area as the member for Wellington Suburbs and Country Districts from 1911. The  population was  14,992, with  7858 electors. In that year Alfred Hindmarsh won the seat. His story featured in our last Southern Bays, as a one-time resident of Island Bay who went on, in 1916, to become the first leader of the parliamentary Labour Party. In 1918, the electorate lost its northern territory, retreating down to Porirua,  and with it lost the ‘and country district’ in the name, returning to Wellington Suburbs. Population 17239, electors 11 595. In that year, Hindmarsh died in the influenza epidemic, leading to the victory in a by-election of the famous Bob Semple (later the member for Miramar), who was by then out of prison where he served time for his opposition to conscription. 

Semple was our member for only a year, before he was defeated by Lt-Col George Mitchell DSO, a Boer War and Gallipolli vetern recently returned from the war so opposed by Semple. He was, however, to survive only a single term as member, before losing to Labour’s Robert McKeen, a Scots immigrant, union official and future speaker of the House. He was in parliament  until 1954, and like so many of our local politicans, also served as Mayor. In his case, of Ōtaki. 

McKeen represented us as member for Wellington Suburbs until 1927, when the Southern Bays were incorporated into Wellington South, very much smaller in areas than the past electorates of a similar name, but with 19,991 population and 18,372 electors.

McKeen was still the member in 1946, when Island Bay became the name of the electorate of the Southern Bays, with 14,509 electors, virtually the whole adult population. He finally stepped down in 1954, after which Island Bay electorate was again was represented by a politician who would lead the Labour Party (Sir) Arnold Nordmeyer. Like his predecessor Alfred Hindmarsh, he lived in Island Bay itself and was a very actice member of the Presbyterian Church, having previously been a minister (of religion). He was famously the Minister of Finance in the single-term Labour Government of 1957-60. He introduced what became known as the ‘black’ budget which, in the light of future events now seems merely a light grey. He was also a favourite among journalists for later determining, as a mediator, the ‘Nordmeyer relativity’ which linked journalists’ pay to the Metal Trades Award.  

Sir Arnold was suceeded as member for Island Bay in 1969 by Gerald O’Brien, who served three terms before losing to another Labour candidate, Frank O’Flynn, who had won party selection against him. 

Gerald O’Brien was a Vice President of the Labour Party, a close colleague of Labour Leader and Prime Minister Norman Kirk, and a committed peace activist. Frank O’Flynn was a Queen’s Counsel, and a son of one of the early leaders of the Labour movement, with whom he shared a name. He was Minister of Defence at the time New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy was developed in 1984-87, and also had the distinction of being the only lawyer ever to win a defamation case against the politician Robert Muldoon.

The Bays’ first woman representative in a general electorate succeeded Frank O’Flynn in 1987. Elizabeth Tennet represented Island Bay for three terms. She was a former leader of the Clerical Workers Union and had the distinction, previously, of being the first woman factory inspector. 

Island Bay was represented by a succession of five Labour MPs since its inception in 1946.  It was absorbed with Miramar into the Rongotai electorate with the beginning in 1996 of Mixed Member Proportional representation, or MMP, which reduced the number of electorates. Rongotai elected and re-elected Annette King as the local MP until 2017.  Annette King had been the MP for Horowhenua from 1984 until 1990, and represented Miramar, Island Bay’s adjoining electorate, before they were merged. She was a Minister in both the 4th and 5th Labour governments, and in opposition became deputy leader of the Labour Party after the 2008 elections. She was suceeded as Labour candidate and MP by Paul Eagle, a city councillor, deputy mayor and the son of a former Methodist minister of Island Bay. He served as MP from 2017 to 2023. He did not stand in the 2023 election and was suceeded by Julie Anne Genter of the Green Party. 

The Māori electorates covering the Southern Bays

In 1867, our area came under a Māori electorate for the first time. With the New Zealand Wars coming to an end, the Northern, Eastern, Western and Southern Māori seats were established, with a male adult franchise. The Southern Bays became part of the Western Māori electorate which stretched as far as Auckland in the North, Tauranga in the North East, New Plymouth in the West. The MP tasked with representing this impossibly-large electorate was Mete Paetahi, and no fewer than 12 Western Māori MPs followed him until 1954, when the Southern Bays became part of the Southern Māori electorate. They were 1871: Wiremu Parata, 1876: Hoani Nahe, 1879: Wiremu Te Wheoro,  1881: Te Puke Te Ao, 1893: Ropata Te Ao, 1902: Henare Kaihau, 1905: the renowned (Sir) Maui Pomare, 1930:Taite Te Tomo, 1935: Haami Tokouru Ratana, the first Ratana/labour representive in the seat, 1945: Matiu Ratana, 1949: Iriaka Matiu Ratana. Mrs Ratana was the first Māori woman member of parliament, and the first woman to represent the Southern Bays in parliament

 In 1954 our area became a part of Southern Māori at which point it was represented first by (Sir) Eruera Tirikatene and then by his daughter  Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan ONZ. In 1996 under MMP, the seat passed to New Zealand First’s Tu Wyllie, and in 2002 to Labour’s Mahara Okeroa, who in turn lost in 2008 to Rahui Katene of the Māori Party.