Contents

Mount Victoria (New Zealand electorate)

The 1941 New Zealand 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 Victoria.^[1]

The First Labour Government was defeated in the 1949 election and the incoming National Government changed the Electoral Act, with the electoral quota once again based on total population as opposed to qualified electors, and the tolerance was increased to 7.5% of the electoral quota. There was no adjustment in the number of electorates between the South and North Islands, but the law changes resulted in boundary adjustments to almost every electorate through the 1952 electoral redistribution; only five electorates were unaltered.^[2] Five electorates were reconstituted and one was newly created, and a corresponding six electorates were abolished (including Mount Victoria); all of these in the North Island.^[3] These changes took effect with the 1954 election.^[4]

After the war, Jack Marshall briefly established himself as a barrister, but was soon persuaded to stand as the National Party's candidate for the new Wellington electorate of Mount Victoria in the 1946 election. The electorate was marginal, but he won it by 911 votes. He was, however, nearly disqualified by a technicality – Marshall was employed at the time in a legal case for the government, something which ran afoul of rules barring politicians from giving business to their own firms. However, because Marshall had taken on the case before his election (and so could not have influenced the government's decision to give him employment), it was obvious that there had been no wrongdoing. As such, the Prime Minister, Peter Fraser of the Labour Party, amended the regulations.^[5]

Marshall held the electorate for the three terms of its existence.^[6] Through the 1954 election, he transferred to the Karori electorate.^[7]

Jack Marshall became Prime Minister in the Second National Government in 1972, after Keith Holyoake retired. He was defeated by Norman Kirk in the 1972 election, and was replaced as leader of the National PartybyRobert Muldoon in 1974.^[5]

The Mount Victoria electorate was represented by one Member of Parliament.^[8]

Key

  National

• McRobie, Alan (1989). Electoral Atlas of New Zealand. Wellington: GP Books. ISBN 0-477-01384-8.
• Wilson, James Oakley (1985) [First published in 1913]. New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1984 (4th ed.). Wellington: V.R. Ward, Govt. Printer. OCLC 154283103.
• Norton, Clifford (1988). New Zealand Parliamentary Election Results 1946–1987: Occasional Publications No 1, Department of Political Science. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington. ISBN 0-475-11200-8.