The South Island’s population is booming and is growing faster than the North and that suggests it may be time to increase the size of Parliament..
Yesterday’s announcement by Statistics NZ about the number and size of electorate seats for the next election confirms that.
The announcement calculates seat size and numbers based on the 2023 census.
The previous census was in 2020 but the 2023 census shows that the population growth rate has been higher in the South Island than the North.
Under the MMP legislation, the South Island is guaranteed 16 seats.
Therefore, to establish the size of an electorate, the population of the South Island is divided by 16. That means the more the South Island population grows, the quota for the number of electors in each electorate also grows.
Because the South Island has set that quota, Statistics NZ says the number of general electorates across New Zealand will now decrease from 65 to 64 at the next general election. There is no change to the number of Māori electorates, which remains at seven.
The number of electorates in the North Island will decrease by one from 49 to 48.
“This means there will be one more list seat in a 120-member Parliament,” acting deputy government statistician Kathy Connolly said yesterday.
The consequence of all this is that each electorate will now have nearly 50 per cent more voters in it than it did when MMP was introduced in 1996.
That is likely to lead to calls for more MPs.
Based on this data and population projections, the Representation Commission will now draw new electorate boundaries. And each one of thsoe electorates will have more electors than at the last election.
The general electoral population of the South Island is used to calculate the electoral population quota (the average size) for the South Island. The South Island quota, in turn, determines the number of general electorates for the North Island and the number of Māori electorates.
The quota for general electorates is:
in the North Island, 69,875 people
in the South Island, 70,037 people.
The quota for Māori electorates is 74,367 people.
Each electorate population is required to be within 5 per cent of the quota.
“It is now the role of the Representation Commission to determine the new electorate boundaries,” Connolly said.
The total number of general electorates will be 64, comprising 16 in the South Island and 48 in the North Island.
This will require boundaries to be redrawn by the Representation Commission.
The number of Māori electorates remains at seven, unchanged from the 2020 election.
There are three trends evident in the statistics unveiled yesterday.
The South Island population is growing in the Christchurch suburbs and the Southern Lakes.
Auckland’s population is shrinking in the inner city and rising in the outer suburbs
The southern half of the North Island has a static population while the so-called “Golden Triangle” cities of Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga are growing.
The South Island’s growth has caught observers by surprise.
The Selwyn electorate, which currently stretches from Arthur’s Pass to the south of Christchurch and all the way to the east coast, is “over quota” by 17,627 electors, the largest increase in the country.
The other Christchurch outer suburb seat, Waimakariri, is over by 7035, and the huge rural electorate of Waitaki, which includes Timaru and Oamaru but also the fast-growing Lakes District town of Wanaka, is over the quota by 7526.
And Queenstown’s electorate of Southland is over by 5844.
Otherwise, no South Island electorate has lost any voters, unlike the North, where eight electorates (six in Auckland and two in Wellington) have lost voters.
Of the ten biggest increases in the North Island, six are in Auckland and four in the northern half of the northern half of the North Island.
The Auckland increases in Whangaparāoa, Upper Harbour, Port Waikato, Papakura, Kaipara ki Mahurangi, and Takanini, which are all in urban fringe suburbs.
The pattern is clear: Seats in the inner city, such as Auckland Central, Mt Roskill, Mt Albert, Epsom, and Maungakiekie, are all declining while the outer suburbs are booming.
People familiar with the boundary-setting process told POLITIK that there were several options for removing the seat that must go in the North Island.
There could be rationalisation in the lower half of the North Island around the big rural seats of Rangtikei, Taranaki King-Country, and Whanganui; options might involve Rotorua, Taupo, and Waikato, or there could even be some rationalisation in Auckland.
But this redistribution raises a bigger question, and that is whether our electorates are becoming too big.
When MMP was introduced in 1996, general electorates had around 48,000 voters in each one.
That figure is now around 70,000 people, an increase of 46 per cent.
With that increase came larger and larger rural electorates, like East Coast and Northland, both of which required a 250 km drive to get from one end to the other.
However, reducing the size of electorates would mean increasing the number of MPs.
Using the 1996 figures as a base, the House would need to increase by between 20 and 30 seats to match the size of the 1996 electorates.
Ironically, the Royal Commission into the Electoral System, which proposed MMP, suggested that a House of 140 seats would be ideal but did not recommend it.
“Such a size would provide a Government caucus of at least 70, which would enlarge the pool of ministerial talent and increase the independence of the backbenchers,” their report said.
“However, we recognise that such an increase is likely to face some public resistance, and we have therefore sought to establish a level of increase which would be more acceptable to the public.”
And so, they recommended 120.
The Independent Review of the Electoral System, which was set up under the Labour Government but ended up reporting to Justice Minister Pual Goldsmith earlier this year, recommended an increased number of Parliamentary seats to account for population growth.
“We recommend unfixing the size of parliament so that it gradually grows in line with population changes,” their report said.
“This would be similar to the approach followed under First-Past-the-Post between 1965 to 1993 (which saw Parliament increase from 80 seats to 99 seats).
“It would continue to allow more electorates to be created over time, with extra list seats added to maintain a 60:40 ratio between electorate and list MPs.
The Review said that although a larger parliament might be unpopular with some people, many would oppose electorates representing more people or a bigger geographic area or uneven numbers of people.
“We think the shift to an unfixed parliament balances fairness, representation, and proportionality and provides an enduring response to population growth.
“It ensures electorates contain similar numbers of voters and preserves the representation function of the list seats.”
Yesterday’s report poses a dilemma for the National Party in particular.
Because they tend to hold large rural seats, their MPs are having to confront the practicalities of serving populations spread over larger areas directly.
But National is also the party that traditionally opposes any increase in spending on the processes of Government.
Whether Parliament does grow may depend on how loud National’s rural backbenchers can make their voices heard.
