Larry David Baldock is a New Zealand politician. Before entering national politics, he was involved with Youth With A Mission and spent 15 years living in the Philippines. After returning to New Zealand in 1996, he joined Future New Zealand in 1999, standing as a candidate in the Tauranga electorate at that year's general election. In 2001, he was elected to the Tauranga City Council, and served as a list MP for United Future New Zealand from 2002 to 2005.
Nanaia Cybele Mahuta is a New Zealand former politician who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of New Zealand from 2020 to 2023. A member of the New Zealand Labour Party, Mahuta served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for 27 years, at first for the party list and then for three different Māori electorates, latterly for Hauraki-Waikato. Mahuta served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 6 November 2020 to 11 November 2023. She received international recognition as the first woman to hold the Foreign Affairs portfolio. In October 2022, Mahuta became the Mother of the House, having served continuously in the House of Representatives since the 1996 general election. She lost her seat in parliament in the 2023 general election to Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, who was subsequently Baby of the House.
Ron Stanley Mark is a New Zealand politician of the New Zealand First party, and former soldier, who served as Minister of Defence between October 2017 and November 2020. He served as mayor of Carterton from 2010 to 2014, and again from 2022 defeating incumbent Greg Lang.
Anne Merrilyn Tolley is a New Zealand politician.
Mount Maunganui is a major residential, commercial and industrial suburb of Tauranga located on a peninsula to the north-east of Tauranga's city centre. It was an independent town from Tauranga until the completion of the Tauranga Harbour Bridge in 1988, which connects Mount Maunganui to Tauranga's central business district.
Ngāi Te Rangi or Ngāiterangi is a Māori iwi, based in Tauranga, New Zealand. Its rohe extends to Mayor Island / Tuhua and Bowentown in the north, to the Kaimai Range in the west, south of Te Puke and to Maketu in the east.
The Christchurch City Council is the local government authority for Christchurch in New Zealand. It is a territorial authority elected to represent the 396,200 people of Christchurch. Since October 2022, the Mayor of Christchurch is Phil Mauger, who succeeded after the retirement of Lianne Dalziel. The council currently consists of 16 councillors elected from sixteen wards, and is presided over by the mayor, who is elected at large. The number of elected members and ward boundaries changed prior to the 2016 election.
The mayor of Tauranga is the head of local government in Tauranga, New Zealand's fifth-largest city. The mayor presides over the Tauranga City Council. The mayor is directly elected using the single transferable vote method. The current mayor is Mahé Drysdale, elected in the 2024 Tauranga local elections.
New Zealand has a unitary system of government in which the authority of the central government defines sub-national entities. Local government in New Zealand has only the powers conferred upon it by the New Zealand Parliament. Under the Local Government Act 2002, local authorities are responsible for enabling democratic local decision-making and promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of their communities, as well as more specific functions for which they have delegated authority.
Tauranga is a coastal city in the Bay of Plenty Region and the fifth-most populous city of New Zealand, with an urban population of 161,800, or roughly 3% of the national population. It was settled by Māori late in the 13th century, colonised by Europeans in the early 19th century, and was constituted as a city in 1963.
The 2019 Tauranga mayoral election was part of the New Zealand local elections that were 12 October 2019 to elect the Mayor of Tauranga. It was won by Tenby Powell who defeated the incumbent mayor Greg Brownless.
Tania Tapsell is a New Zealand politician. She has served on the Rotorua Lakes District Council since 2013 and was elected mayor of Rotorua at the 2022 local elections. She is the first woman of Māori descent to hold the role.
The Local Electoral Amendment Act, now repealed, was an Act of Parliament in New Zealand which eliminated mechanisms for holding public referendums on the establishment of Māori wards and constituencies on local bodies. The Act was supported by the Labour, Green and Māori parties but opposed by the opposition National and ACT parties. National attempted to delay the bill by mounting a twelve-hour-long filibuster challenging all of the Act's ten clauses.
The Water Services Reform Programme was a public infrastructure restructuring programme launched by the Sixth Labour Government to centralise the management of water supply and sanitation in New Zealand. It originally proposed shifting control of stormwater, drinking water and wastewater management from the country's 67 local councils to several new publicly-owned regional entities by July 2024. Details of the proposed reforms were announced in October 2021. The Three Waters reforms were criticised by several mayors and the opposition National and ACT parties.
Māori wards and constituencies refer to wards and constituencies on urban, district, and regional councils in New Zealand that represent local constituents registered on the Māori parliamentary electoral roll vote. Like Māori electorates within the New Zealand Parliament, the purpose of Māori wards and constituencies is to ensure that Māori are represented in local government decision making.
Sharon Norma Shea is a New Zealand chairperson. She has various governance roles and holds board memberships, mainly in the health sector. She was the penultimate chairperson of the Bay of Plenty District Health Board before its disestablishment and the co-chairperson of the establishment board of the Māori Health Authority.
The Water Services Entities Act 2022 is an Act of Parliament in the New Zealand Parliament that creates four new water services entities to assume the water services responsibilities of territorial authorities. The Bill is part of the Sixth Labour Government's Three Waters reform programme. The Bill passed its third reading on 7 December 2022, and received royal assent on 14 December 2022.
The 2024 Tauranga mayoral election was held to elect the mayor of Tauranga as part of the 2024 Tauranga local elections. The election took place between 29 June and 20 July 2024, with the official results released on 25 July. It was the first election since the Minister of Local Government appointed a Crown Commission on 9 February 2021 to oversee all of Tauranga City Council's governance responsibilities. The election was held using the Single Transferable Vote system.
The 2024 Tauranga local elections were held via postal voting from 29 June 2024 to 20 July 2024. Elections in Tauranga covered one territorial authority, the Tauranga City Council.
On 9 February 2021, the New Zealand Government suspended the Tauranga City Council, the largest city in the Bay of Plenty Region, and appointed a government commission of four administrators to the territorial authority instead. Anne Tolley was the chair of the commission. The suspension was to last until October 2022, in time for the 2022 New Zealand local elections, but was later extended to July 2024. The voters of Tauranga were thus having a local election outside of the normal three-yearly cycle and because the next New Zealand local elections are to be held just fourteen months later, the electoral term for the incoming council was set at four years.
