Tukituki is a New Zealand parliamentary electorate, returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives. Named after the Tukituki River which runs through the electorate, it was established for the 1996 general election and has existed since. The current MP for Tukituki is Catherine Wedd of the National Party, who won the seat from first-term Labour Party MP Anna Lorck.
Tukituki was created ahead of the change to mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting at the 1996 election; it is a merger of the old Hastings seat with Central Hawke's Bay District. Tukituki centres on the southern Hawke's Bay region, with the bulk of the electorate's population coming from the city of Hastings, with other towns drafted in to bring the electorate up to the required population. In 2008, a general northwards tug on boundaries in the Taranaki, Manawatū-Whanganui and Hawke's Bay regions saw Waipukurau and Waipawa moved into the Wairarapa electorate, in exchange for which Tukituki gained the suburbs and towns around Cape Kidnappers from the Napier electorate.[1] No boundary adjustments were undertaken in the subsequent 2013/14 redistribution.[2]
Labour's Rick Barker,[3] who had represented Hastings since 1993 was elected as MP for Tukituki, and re-elected twice before a large provincial swing to the National Party in 2005 cost Barker his seat.[4] This was the third time in over thirty years that a Hastings electorate had elected a National MP – the other two times being National's landslide victories in 1975 and 1990.
National's Craig Foss[5] first contested the Tukituki electorate in the 2002 election, but Barker comfortably held the electorate.[6] Ranked 47th on National's party list, Foss did not enter Parliament.[7]
Foss defeated the incumbent in the 2005 election.[4] He was returned to the 49th Parliament with a greatly increased majority in the 2008 election.[8] His majority increased to nearly 10,000 votes in the 2011 election.[9] In the 2014 election, his majority dropped to 6,490 votes.[10]
On 14 December 2016, Foss announced that he would quit politics at the 2017 general election.[11] The electorate was won at the election by Lawrence Yule, retaining it for the National Party.
Key
Members of Parliament elected from party lists in elections where that person also unsuccessfully contested the Tukituki electorate. Unless otherwise stated, all MPs terms began and ended at general elections.
Electorate (as at 26 November 2011): 44,708[15]
Refer to Candidates in the New Zealand general election 1999 by electorate#Tukituki for a list of candidates.