Tauranga preliminary results:
National’s Sam Uffindell has ridden a blue wave to re-election in Tauranga — and hit back at Chris Hipkins’ “bed leg” debate dig.
The preliminary count gave him a nearly 8000-vote lead over Labour’s Jan Tinetti in the traditionally safe National seat.
Addressing supporters at No 1 The Strand about 9.30pm, he said Tinetti had called to concede the seat.
At sixth on Labour’s List, former school principal Tinetti would also return to Parliament.
In his speech, Uffindell thanked the supporters and volunteers, those who had put up hoardings to “paint the town blue”.
The former banker also thanked friends, his brother Harry, his “precious little girl smiling away” — daughter Lily, 6 — and, in particular, his wife Julia.
”I wouldn’t be able to do this without you…I love you.”
”We ran a really hard campaign and we talked about the things that mattered to New Zealanders, which was the cost of living, law and order, obviously infrastructure, health and education.
“Locally, we’ve got lots of roading challenges so we’re able to focus on that.”
Uffindell told the Bay of Plenty Times he would continue to work hard for Tauranga as there were “a lot of things we need to improve around here”.
”I’ll keep advocating hard within the National Party to make sure we get the people’s voice of Tauranga heard in Wellington and get the investment that we need up here.”
After tonight’s celebrations, he planned to “wake up and watch the rugby and hope that the All Blacks win”.
Earlier, he hit back at Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ reference to bullying allegations against him in the final leader’s debate.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon took a shot at the five ministers who have left Labour this year, to which Hipkins replied with a reference to the accusations against Uffindell from his youth.
“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. None of my MPs beat people up with a bed leg,” said Hipkins.
Asked about it in Tauranga tonight, Uffindell told the Bay of Plenty Times: “There were two people out there and I thought one of them looked like a prime minister who was talking about the issues that mattered to New Zealanders and I thought the other didn’t.”
He said he had enjoyed being an MP so far and calling it “a unique experience is probably an understatement”.
In his first 100 days, he said he wanted to focus on getting on top of the city’s infrastructure needs, giving people a voice around Tauranga City Council’s Plan Change 33, and “making sure that we’re moving back to local democracy as soon as possible”.
Asked about the grocery shopping situation in his household after he copped flak for his comments on the subject in a speech earlier this year, he laughed and brushed the question off: “I think those are personal matters and we’ll keep them to ourselves.”
National Party supporter Cheryl Trotter, 76, said Uffindell would be “great” for Tauranga because he was “young” and “energetic”.
”He has got a lot of work ahead of him but I think he’s got the energy to get stuck in and get the job done.”
Asked if bullying allegations against Uffindell would affect his political career, she said it was “difficult” because “at what point in life do you get on with living and forget about what happened when you were 15 or 16 years of age?”.
”There’s not a person around that hasn’t put a foot out of touch and made a mistake.”
Supporter Bernadette Bridgens said Uffindell worked “really hard” and she hoped he would “go up the ladder” to a higher ranking. He is number 57 on the party’s list.
“We would like democracy back in Tauranga … Sam promised that.”
Bridgens said crime was “really bad” — she hoped there would be more police so people could feel safe.
Tinetti told the Bay of Plenty Times she was obviously disappointed by the result but would return to Parliament as a List MP and felt privileged to still be serving the community.
She and fellow Labour candidates, Bay of Plenty’s Pare Taikato and Waiariki’s Toni Boynton, hosted an event for supporters at Whareroa Marae in Mount Maunganui.
Tinetti said it has been a “tough campaign”.
”We’ve put everything on the table and we’ve absolutely gone out there and given it our everything.
”I know that the country is in a bit of a funk at the moment after everything that we’ve been through in the last few years … but I know that we’ve done everything that we can.”
Tinetti said she was “absolutely committed” to the work of the Labour Party and was proud of what the party had achieved.
She said the fondest memory for her today was a mum who voted for the first time and indicated it was for Labour due to the policies it had pushed through in the past six years.
Tinetti said she still had a fun night with karaoke and she sang Love Shack with Bay of Plenty candidate Pare Taitako, along with Hey Mickey and Suspicious Minds.
Asked earlier in the evening how this election would compare to 2020′s, Tinetti said the previous election was “different”.
”We had just come through the biggest disruption that any of us had ever known … and so people were in a very different space.”
With about a third of the vote counted, Labour Party supporter Derek Jackson said the results were “not looking great” for Labour.
He did not believe a National and Act coalition would be “very good for the country moving forward”.
Jackson referred to their promise to repeal the Three Waters reform.
”We’ll hope. The Labour vote can come up at the end as we’ve known — I’ll always remember the 2005 election.”
Also standing for Tauranga in 2023 were independent Larry Baldock; Green’s Justin Crooks; New Zealand First’s Erika Harvey, Act’s Christine Young, New Conservative’s Jono Langridge, Vision New Zealand’s Leon Samuels, Chelsea Stokman representing the Animal Justice Party and Mikaere Sydney for Te Pāti Māori.
Tauranga is considered a safe blue seat, with five of the past six MPs for Tauranga from National, with the partial exception of Winston Peters who won the seat for National in 1984 before jumping ship and representing the electorate for his new party, New Zealand First.
Peters lost the seat to National’s Bob Clarkson in 2005 and missed out again in 2008 in a hard-fought race against new National candidate Simon Bridges.
After 14 years as an MP, Bridges announced in March last year he was quitting politics and stepping down as an MP, triggering a byelection.
In May 2022, Uffindell was chosen as the National Party candidate to stand in the byelection and on June 18, Uffindell won in a landslide victory to replace Bridges.
Final vote counts released by the Electoral Commission in July 2022 showed Uffindell received 11,613 votes, followed by Labour’s Jan Tinetti with 5259 votes.
In August 2022, Uffindell was stood down from Parliament amid allegations of bullying while he was at university but was later reinstated to caucus after a report by Maria Dew, KC, found the university claims could not be substantiated.
Labour candidates had gradually chipped away at Bridges’ margin in recent elections, narrowing it from about 18,000 votes in 2008 to just over 11,000 in 2017.
In the 2020 election, Bridges received 18,721 votes, followed by Tinetti with 16,865 votes.
Tauranga also had an assortment of other minor party candidates to choose from in this election, as well as one independent, Larry Baldock, a former MP and former deputy mayor of Tauranga.
The Green Party is represented by Justin Crooks, who exports mānuka honey and promotes electric mobility products and converting fossil fuel vehicles to electric.
Erika Harvey, a community advocate and business owner, is representing New Zealand First.
Christine Young, a former chartered accountant who now runs a martial arts centre, is representing the Act Party.
Jono Langridge is the candidate for the New Conservative Party.
Destiny Church pastor Leon Samuels is representing Vision New Zealand.
Chelsea Stokman is representing the Animal Justice Party and Mikaere Sydney is representing Te Pāti Māori.
Megan Wilson is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.
An experienced boatie died when his boat capsized on Tairua bar in January 2022.