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Stefan Lipa (born 1953) (LL.B (Auck) 1975) is a former New Zealand politician. He was president of the Social Credit Party (originally the Social Credit Political League; in 1985 its name was changed to the Democratic Party) from 1979 to 1987 and he was a leading advocate of proportional representation in New Zealand.
Lipa spent his childhood in Auckland and was educated at St Peter's College where one of the influential teachers was Tom Weal, deputy leader of the Social Credit Political League 1970–1972. Lipa studied law at the University of Auckland and practised law in Auckland.
Lipa was elected as a dominion councillor of the party in the 1970s. With Bruce Beetham, the leader of the party, he wrote a major submission on electoral reform to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reform. The submission proposed, inter alia , the introduction of proportional representation into the political system of New Zealand to replace the then current first past the post electoral system. [1] On 23 August 1979, at the party's annual conference, he was, at the age of 26, elected as president of the party, [2] a position he held until 1987. In the New Zealand general election of 1981, the party gained the greatest share of votes in its history, 20.65%. But the party only won two seats, giving poignant nuance to the work Lipa had done on electoral reform. From 1985 the Social Credit name was dropped, and the party became the New Zealand Democratic Party with Lipa continuing as president until 1987. In 1996, New Zealand obtained a proportional representation system when the first past the post system was replaced by the Mixed-Member Proportional Representation electoral system.
Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions among voters. The essence of such systems is that all votes cast – or almost all votes cast – contribute to the result and are effectively used to help elect someone – not just a bare plurality, or (exclusively) the majority – and that the system produces mixed, balanced representation reflecting how votes are cast.
Mixed-member proportional representation is a mixed electoral system in which votes are cast for both local elections and also for overall party vote tallies, which are used to allocate additional members to produce or deepen overall proportional representation.
The Christian Heritage Party of New Zealand was a New Zealand political party espousing Christian values and conservative views on social policy. Although it never won seats in an election, it came close to doing so in 1996 as part of the Christian Coalition and briefly had a member in Parliament.
Electoral reform in New Zealand has, in recent years, become a political issue as major changes have been made to both parliamentary and local government electoral systems.
The Alliance was a left-wing political party in New Zealand. It was formed at the end of 1991 by the linking of four smaller parties. The Alliance positioned itself as a democratic socialist alternative to the centre-left New Zealand Labour Party. It was influential throughout the 1990s, but suffered a major setback after its founder and leader, Jim Anderton, left the party in 2002, taking with him several of its members of parliament (MPs). After the remaining MPs lost their seats in the 2002 general election, some commentators predicted the demise of the party.
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The New Zealand Social Credit Party was a political party that was New Zealand's third party from the 1950s to the 1980s. It was elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives, holding one seat at times between 1966 and 1981, and two seats from 1981 to 1987. It was named the New Zealand Democratic Party from 1985 to 2018, and was part of the Alliance party from 1991 to 2002. It returned to the Social Credit name in 2018. The party deregistered itself in early 2023.
The 1981 New Zealand general election, held on 28 November 1981, was a nationwide vote to determine the shape of the 40th New Zealand Parliament. It saw the governing National Party, led by Robert Muldoon, win a third term in office, but the opposition Labour Party, led by Bill Rowling, won the largest share of the votes cast. Social Credit also won over 20% of the vote- their best result ever- but received no new seats. This was the second consecutive election in which National lost the popular vote to Labour. More electorates were rural and right-leaning than urban and progressive, and therefore National benefitted under the first-past-the-post electoral system. The fact the unpopular Muldoon was able to continue to govern anyway was a major catalyst for the growing public desire to reform New Zealand's electoral system. This happened within fifteen years, when the 1996 election was the first to use mixed-member proportional representation.
Bruce Craig Beetham was an academic and politician from New Zealand, whose career spanned the 1970s and early 1980s.
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Richard John Northey is a New Zealand politician. He was an MP from 1984 to 1990, and again from 1993 to 1996. He served on the Auckland Council between 2010 and 2013, and is a member of the Labour Party.
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Pakuranga is a New Zealand Parliamentary electorate. It gave the Social Credit Party one of its few MPs when Neil Morrison held the seat from 1984 to 1987, but otherwise the electorate seat has been held by the National Party since 1972. Its current MP is Simeon Brown who has held the electorate since the 2017 general election.
Rangitīkei is a New Zealand parliamentary electorate, returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives. The current MP for Rangitīkei is Ian McKelvie of the National Party. He has held this position since 2011.
Gary Thomas Knapp is a former New Zealand politician of the Social Credit Party.
Terence Michael "Terry" Heffernan was a New Zealand politician who stood for Parliament on eight separate occasions. Heffernan was originally a member of the Social Credit Party before joining the New Zealand First Party and later, the New Zealand National Party.
The Electoral Reform Coalition (ERC) is a group advocating electoral reform in New Zealand. It was founded in 1986. The group has been reformed as the Campaign for MMP to fight to retain Mixed-member proportional representation at the 2011 referendum on the issue.
Electoral reform is a change in electoral systems which alters how public desires are expressed in election results.
Thomas Kavanagh Weal was a New Zealand politician for the Social Credit Political League, the New Democratic Party and the short lived Christian Democrat party.
The Social Credit-NZ party was a political party in New Zealand which split from the New Zealand Democratic Party in 1988.