Following election night, political parties have welcomed new MPs with many making their way to Parliament this week for their induction.
After every election, new MPs undertake a parliamentary induction where they pick up everything from their new phones, to a meet and greet afternoon tea with the Press Gallery.
A question mark hangs over New Zealand's election result following the arrival of the Opportunity Party, a major seat overhang and no clear winners. While the majority of new MPs will be sticking around, one or two usually don't survive once special votes are counted.
But for now, these are the country's newest MPs.
New Zealand First
Former Financial Markets Authority (FMA) chairman Craig Stobo and former All Blacks captain Taine Randell will be entering Parliament for the first time after NZ First secured 9.78% of the vote which translates to 12 seats.
Stobo previously told interest.co.nz that if he got into Parliament and was in a position to make changes, he wanted to support the NZX to be able to accommodate dual-class shares for listings.
Stobo resigned as FMA chairman in May after an independent review found “just cause” for him to be removed from the FMA board based on public comments.
Meanwhile Randell, who captained the All Blacks between 1996 and 1999, previously told the NZ Herald he’d had a “fascination” with politics from a young age and he had always liked NZ First leader Winston Peters.
Speaking to reporters on Monday morning, Randell was asked if he wanted to be a minister, to which he replied: “I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at this, so I might be useless. I might be awesome. We’ll see how it goes.”
Asked if he could put in a Members’ Bill on Monday, what that would be, he said it would be that people had to be citizens in order to vote in New Zealand.
Harete Hipango-Brownlie, Michael Laws and Alfred Ngaro have returned to Parliament as list MPs for NZ First, having served as National MPs previously.
Opportunity
Surpassing the 5% Parliamentary threshold at 5.96%, the Opportunity Party has a projected number of seven seats.
These new MPs include Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong, who previously worked at KPMG on sustainability and climate consulting.
While the role was advertised on Seek, Wong applied after seeing it on a party newsletter, saying she was frustrated at the change in direction the Government had taken around climate legislation and what that meant for the business community.
Previously speaking to interest.co.nz, Wong said her upbringing being surrounded by "lots of different people from different walks of life" had "shaped my view that different perspectives are really valuable, and that coming at a particular problem from one perspective all the time is not a useful approach."
Kayla Kingdon-Bebb has also made it to Parliament. Before entering, she was the chief executive of World Wide Fund for Nature New Zealand. She has also worked at the Ministry for the Environment and as Director of Policy for the Department of Conservation.
Following comments made by Michael Laws, Kingdon-Bebb was asked on Monday how she felt about potentially seeing him during their induction week.
She said: “Honestly, I’m not thrilled at the idea of being alone in a room with him. But it’s for New Zealand First to determine.”
Other new MPs from Opportunity include Daniel Eb, Jodie Kuntzsch, Eden Skipper, Sarah Lucas and Jessica Hammond.
Hammond has run for Opportunity four times. Asked why she thought this time was different compared to previous years, Hammond said: “I think we've had 10 years of learning what it took to get here, including having an incredible leader like Qiulae leading the charge and representing us [and] having an experienced team. It's been a work of 10 years, but also … a lot of this is down to Qiulae.”
Greens
The Greens had its best party vote result ever at this election - receiving 13.30%. The party has so far won two electorate seats and has 14 list seats.
New Green Party MPs include Tania Waikato, a lawyer with over 20 years of experience in civil litigation, employment law, resource management and Te Tiriti o Waitangi. She is also a rongoā practitioner.
Alongside Waikato is former Nelson deputy mayor Rohan O’Neill-Stevens and Craig Pauling, the former chair of the Canterbury Regional Council.
ACT
On election night, the ACT Party received 10.92% of the party vote and has a projected 13 seats in Parliament.
New MPs include the well-known, former broadcaster Paul Henry. In the 1999 general election, Henry ran for the National Party as its Wairarapa candidate. He lost to Labour’s Georgina Beyer.
Other new ACT MPs include James Christmas, a lawyer who has previously worked as a senior adviser to former prime ministers John Key and Bill English. Iain Murray is also heading to Parliament as an ACT MP after being the principal of Hornby High School, along with intellectual property lawyer and computer scientist Antonia Modkova.
Labour
A familiar face, former Cabinet minister Michael Wood is so far the leading candidate for Mt Roskill. With special votes yet to be counted, Wood currently has a margin of 262 votes.
Wood previously held portfolios such as transport, workplace relations and safety and immigration during the Sixth Labour Government. He resigned in June 2023 after failing to properly declare and manage conflict of interests involving personal shareholdings.
Also in a tight electorate race is Craig Renney, who is the leading candidate for Wellington Bays by just 140 votes. He has previously worked for Grant Robertson and used to be the chief economist and policy director at the Council of Trade Unions.
Other new Labour MPs include former police superintendent Rakesh Naidoo, former national secretary of the NZ Dairy Workers Union Chris Flatt and Kingi Kiriona, a former journalist and well-known figure in education and cultural development. Kiriona is also a composer.
Also joining Parliament is Mananui Ramsden, who won the electorate of Te Tai Tonga, George Hampton and Dominik Yanzick.
Te Pāti Māori
During the election campaign, Te Pāti Māori ran a candidate-vote strategy by selecting just one list candidate outside its seven Māori electorate candidates.
“Candidate vote Te Pāti Māori. Party vote Green or Labour, you choose,” it said in a statement.
On election night, Te Pāti Māori secured five electorate seats and 0.57% of the party vote.
Aperahama Edwards is the leading candidate for Te Tai Tokerau, ahead by 436 votes.
Before running, Edwards was the chairman of the Ngātiwai Trust Board and was one of three Māori leaders behind Hinemoana Halo, which Te Ao Māori News described in 2022 as an initiative which supported "Māori to protect, care for, manage and monitor Aotearoa’s coastal waters and high seas in partnership with local communities, using both traditional approaches and science".
Like Mt Roskill and Wellington Bays, Te Tai Tokerau is one of a handful electorates people are watching out for in the special votes due to the tight margins.
National
The National Party swept up 42 electorate seats on election night and 29.21% of the party vote. With no projected list seats, senior National MPs Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee will no longer remain in Parliament.
But several new National MPs are joining Parliament including Mahesh Muralidhar and Jessica Rowe.
Muralidhar won the Tāmaki electorate seat, returning it to National after it was held by former ACT MP Brooke van Velden.
He is the founder and chief executive of venture capital firm, Phase One Ventures. On Phase One Ventures’ website, it said Muralidhar was an early leader at graphic design platform Canva and had held executive roles at places like software company Simply Wall St.
Meanwhile former journalist and foreign policy officer Jessica Rowe secured the electorate seat of Kaipara ki Mahurangi, a safe seat for National. Rowe took over as candidate after Chris Penk, in August, confirmed he would not be standing.
This came after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon accused Penk of launching a leadership challenge and stripped him of his ministerial portfolios.
Rowe is engaged to the chief executive of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ben King.
Other new National MPs include Port Waikato MP Matthew Paul, Whangārei MP Lloyd Budd, Papakura MP Emma Chatterton, Nelson MP Blair Cameron and West Coast-Tasman MP Katie Milne.
Paul has worked as the managing director of an environmental and landscape consultancy, Budd previously worked in real estate, Chatterton was senior adviser to Education Minister Erica Stanford, Cameron has consulted for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank while Milne is a dairy farmer.
Milne won Fonterra's New Zealand Dairy Woman of the Year in 2015 and New Zealand's Women of Influence Rural winner in 2015. She was the first woman president of Federated Farmers and was in this role from 2017 to 2020.
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