National’s Northland electorate candidate to be known this weekend

Northland National Party is selecting its new 2023 general election candidate on Sunday . Photo / NZME

Three wannabe Northland National Party electorate candidates will this weekend hear their fate as the party meets in Kaikohe to select its representative for the upcoming general elections.

Iain Huddleston, Northland National Party electorate chairman, said 148 voting delegates from among the party’s 10 branches in the electoral area were meeting on Sunday to make their decision.

He said the three nominees would be giving their final presentations to the voting delegates and the nominee with more than 50 per cent of the vote would be successful.

The three candidates are:

Current third-term Far North District Council (FNDC) councillor, town planner, farmer and forester, Ahipara’s Felicity Foy (Te Rarawa), 36.

Maungaturoto farmer Grant McCallum, 58, is the son of Ron McCallum who was the National Party’s electorate chairman for Kaipara with former MP Sir Lockwood Smith KNZM and for Whangārei with former MP John Banks CNZM QSO.

Former Kaipara Mayor, Matakohe farmer and cousin of former MP Sir Lockwood Smith KNZM, Dr Jason Smith, 51.

Ahipara's Felicity Foy is one of three candidates vying for a National Party ticket in Northland.

Maungaturoto farmer Grant McCallum is one of three candidates.

Former Kaipara mayor Jason Smith wants a National Party ticket. Photo / Michael Cunningham

The Northland electorate (and its equivalent predecessors) was represented by National MP John Carter QSO for 15 years from 1996 to 2011.

National’s Mike Sabin followed Carter as the seat’s next politician, winning at the 2011 and 2014 general elections.

Sabin won the 2014 election with a 9000-vote majority, only to resign four months later “due to personal issues’. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters won the resulting early 2015 by-election over National candidate Mark Osborne.

National’s Matt King won the seat two years later at the next general election in 2017, defeating Peters.

King in turn then lost out at the most recent general election in 2020 to then-sitting FNDC councillor Willow-Jean Prime - as part of New Zealand’s big swing to Labour at the election.

Prime became the voting area’s first Labour MP elected since her party won the predecessor Bay of Islands electorate seat in 1938. King initially won on the night by 729 votes only for final results to give Prime a 163-vote majority.

King quit National in February 2022 to set up his own party, DemocracyNZ.

The Northland electorate extends from a line between Mangawhai on the east coast and the upper Kaipara Harbour on the west coast, to Cape Reinga. It excludes Whangārei city. The major communities include Kaitāia, Russell, Kerikeri, Kaikohe, Dargaville, and Mangawhai.

Since its creation in 1996, the seat has been held almost exclusively by members of the National Party. It is New Zealand’s northernmost general electorate, encompassing Far North, Kaipara and a small rural section of Whangārei districts.

The Northland electorate was created ahead of the introduction of the MMP voting system in 1996. It is an amalgamation of two former electorates - Far North (which had replaced the Bay of Islands electorate from 1993 to 1996) and Hobson.