Joseph Mooney | |
|---|---|
 Mooney in 2023 | |
| Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Southland | |
| Assumed office 17 October 2020 | |
| Preceded by | Hamish Walker |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1979 (age 44–45) |
| Political party | National |
| Spouse | Silvia |
| Children | 3 |
| Profession | Lawyer |
Joseph Mooney (born 1979) is a New Zealand politician. In 2020 he was elected as a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives for the National Party in the Southland electorate. [1]
Mooney is originally from Hawke's Bay and grew up in poverty. At the age of 11,he and his younger brother left home and lived on the streets of Wellington for a week. [2] He dropped out of high school without any qualifications and worked in a range of areas including "orchards,forestry,fishing boats,building sites,retail stores,and skifields". [3] However,he later went to university where he obtained an honours degree in law. He became a senior trial lawyer and later a member of the Southland Branch Council of the New Zealand Law Society. In 2017 he was appointed by the Deputy Solicitor-General to the Crown Prosecution Panel for the Invercargill Crown Solicitor. He is also a court-appointed Youth Advocate. [4] [5]
Mooney has been a volunteer firefighter and army reservist. [4]
| Years | Term | Electorate | List | Party | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 –2023 | 53rd | Southland | 62 | National | |
| 2023 –present | 54th | Southland | 53 | National | |
Mooney was selected as the National Party candidate for the new Southland electorate in July 2020, following Hamish Walker's decision to leave Parliament after he admitted that he had leaked private patient information to the media. [5] Mooney won preference over journalist Olivia Caldwell and Dunedin restaurant manager Matthew French. [5] At the 2020 general election, he was elected to the Southland seat by a margin of 5,645 votes over Labour Party candidate Jon Mitchell. Labour, however, won the party vote in the electorate, with 38.7%. [6] Mooney has identified the first issue he intended to deal with as an MP will be to get more seasonal workers "on the ground" to address the fruit-picking "crisis" in Central Otago. [3] Mooney was one of five new National Party MPs in the 53rd Parliament. [7] [8]
From November 2020, Mooney served as National Party spokesperson for Treaty of Waitangi negotiations and associate spokesperson for defence. [9] Since December 2021, after Christopher Luxon became the party leader, Mooney has additionally been spokesperson for water and space. [10] [11] He served as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee and was also a member of the Regulations Review Committee from December 2021 to August 2022. [12]
In April 2023, National Party leader Christopher Luxon said Mooney had got it wrong after he made comments on social media about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, saying on Twitter that Te Tiriti o Waitangi promised tino rangatiratanga to every person in New Zealand. [13] Dame Claudia Orange, who has written extensively about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, said Mooney appeared to be subscribing to the old politics of former National leader, Don Brash. “That's just kind of one way that Don Brash tended to argue, and it's really got no substance to it, if you looked at why [tino rangatiratanga] was included in the Treaty and the effect that it actually gave Māori in terms of recognising their mana,” she said. [14]
During the 2023 New Zealand general election, Mooney retained his Southland electorate seat by a margin of 17,211 votes. [15]
Mooney and his wife Silvia have three children. [5] He is an enthusiast of skiing and mountain biking. [4] Former Labour MP Bill Fox is his great-great uncle. [2]
Te Pāti Māori, also known as the Māori Party, is a political party in New Zealand advocating Māori rights. With the exception of a handful of general electorates, Te Pāti Māori contests the reserved Māori electorates, in which its main rival is the Labour Party.
Māori politics is the politics of the Māori people, who were the original inhabitants of New Zealand and who are now the country's largest minority. Before the arrival of Pākehā (Europeans) in New Zealand, Māori society was based largely around tribal units, and chiefs provided political leadership. With the British settlers of the 19th century came a new British-style government. From the outset, Māori sought representation within this government, seeing it as a vital way to promote their people's rights and improve living standards. Modern Māori politics can be seen as a subset of New Zealand politics in general, but has a number of distinguishing features, including advocacy for indigenous rights and Māori sovereignty. Many Māori politicians are members of major, historically European-dominated political parties, while others have formed separate Māori parties. For example, Te Pāti Māori, holding six of seven Māori electorates, is one such party.
Shane Geoffrey Jones is a New Zealand politician and a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the New Zealand First party.
Michael Allan Woodhouse is a former New Zealand politician. He was a Member of Parliament for the National Party from 2008 to 2023.
Rino Tirikatene is a New Zealand Labour Party politician and a former member of the House of Representatives. He comes from a family with a strong political history.
Paul Jonathan Goldsmith is a New Zealand historian and politician. The biographer of several leading right-wing political and business figures, he was first elected a list member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the National Party at the 2011 election.
Todd Michael Muller is a New Zealand politician who served as the Leader of the New Zealand National Party and the Leader of the Opposition from 22 May to 14 July 2020.
Shane Raymond Reti is a New Zealand politician and a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives, and a Cabinet Minister with the roles of Minister of Health and Minister for Pacific Peoples, since 27 November 2023. He was first elected at the 2014 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Whangārei electorate. He is a member of the New Zealand National Party and served as its deputy leader from 10 November 2020 to 30 November 2021 including a period of five days as interim leader following the ousting of Judith Collins.
Christopher Bishop is a right-wing New Zealand National Party politician who was first elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives in 2014 as a list MP. Bishop won the Hutt South electorate in 2017 but lost the seat in 2020. He returned to Parliament as a National list MP and served as National spokesperson for Housing and Infrastructure and was the Shadow Leader of the House. He is the Chairperson of National's 2023 Election Campaign. He is the current MP for Hutt South. He is a former lobbyist for tobacco company Phillip Morris.
Christopher Aidan Penk is a New Zealand politician who has been a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives for the National Party since 2017.
Teanau Tuiono is a New Zealand politician. In 2020 he became a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives as a representative of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Nicola Valentine Willis is Deputy Leader of the National Party and Minister of Finance in a Coalition Government with ACT and New Zealand First. Willis entered the New Zealand Parliament in 2018, when she inherited Steven Joyce's seat in Parliament as the next on the party list after his retirement from politics.
The 2023 New Zealand general election was held on 14 October 2023 to determine the composition of the 54th Parliament of New Zealand. Voters elected 122 members to the unicameral New Zealand House of Representatives under the mixed-member proportional (MMP) voting system, with 71 members elected from single-member electorates and the remaining members elected from closed party lists. Of the 72 electorates, only 71 seats were filled, with the remaining electorate MP determined in the 2023 Port Waikato by-election, due to the death of one of the general election candidates. Two overhang seats were added due to Te Pāti Māori winning six electorate seats when the party vote only entitled them to four seats, with an additional overhang seat added after the by-election making for 123 members of parliament.
Nicola Anna Grigg is a New Zealand politician and Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives representing the Selwyn electorate since October 2020. Since 27 November 2023, she has served as the Minister of State for Trade, Minister for Women, and an Associate Minister of Agriculture in the Sixth National Government. She is a member of the National Party.
Southland is an electorate to the New Zealand House of Representatives. It was first created for the 2020 New Zealand general election and has since then been held by Joseph Mooney of the National Party.
Rachel Jane Brooking is a New Zealand Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament who served as the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries and Minister for Food Safety in the Sixth Labour Government. She first became an MP at the 2020 New Zealand general election. She is a lawyer by profession.
Penelope Elsie Simmonds is a New Zealand politician, Member of Parliament and a Minister in the House of Representatives for the National Party. She previously served as the chief executive of the Southern Institute of Technology. Following the 2023 New Zealand general election, Simmonds assumed the disability issues, environmental, tertiary education and skills, and associate social development and employment portfolios in the Sixth National Government.
Several polling firms conducted opinion polls during the term of the 53rd New Zealand Parliament (2020–2023) for the 2023 New Zealand general election. The regular polls are the quarterly polls produced by Television New Zealand conducted by Verian and Discovery New Zealand (Newshub) conducted by Reid Research, along with monthly polls by Roy Morgan, and by Curia. The sample size, margin of error and confidence interval of each poll varies by organisation and date.
Tamatha-Kaye Erin Paul is a New Zealand activist and politician who is a Member of Parliament for Wellington Central. In 2018 she was the first Māori woman to be elected President of the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association. Running as an independent Paul was elected to the Wellington City Council in 2019. She joined the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand ahead of the 2022 local elections.
Tama William Potaka is a New Zealand politician and Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives representing the Hamilton West electorate. He is a member of the National Party and was chief executive of Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki before entering Parliament.