Helensville (New Zealand electorate)
Helensville is a New Zealand Parliamentary electorate, returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives. The current MP for Helensville is John Key, leader of the National Party.[1] He has held this position since 2002. The seat was created in 2002, but there was an earlier Helensville seat from 1978 to 1984.
Helensville covers an area of the rapidly growing northern Auckland urban fringe, drawing Helensville and Kumeu from Rodney District, moving south to take in Paremoremo, Greenhithe and Albany from North Shore City, and finally tacking west to include Whenuapai, Hobsonville and West Harbour from Waitakere City.
The seat was promulgated in time for the 2002 election, and is the second general seat created since the introduction of Mixed Member Proportional voting, in reaction to continued high population growth in and around Auckland. It was made by cutting off the northern flank of the seat of Waitakere and adding in areas from the Rodney around its southern boundary. Its only MP has been the current Prime Minister, John Key, who beat sitting Waitakere MP Brian Neeson to the nomination, and in a tight year for his party, won the seat by 1,705 votes in a split field when a disgruntled Neeson chose to stand as an independent. Helensville is partly rural, and wealthy beyond the national average, making it a safe National seat, and the results in 2002 notwithstanding, Key was returned easily in 2005 and 2008 with large majorities.
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| Name | Party | Elected | Left Office | Reason |
| John Key | National | 2002, 2005, 2008 | incumbent |
Members of Parliament elected from party lists in elections where that person also unsuccessfully contested the Helensville electorate. Unless otherwise stated, all MPs terms began and ended at general elections.
| Name | Party | First Elected | Left Office | Contested Helensville |
| Dail Jones (1) | New Zealand First | 2002 | 2005 | 2002 |
| Dail Jones (2) | New Zealand First | 15 February 2008 1 | 2008 | 2005 |
1 Jones re-entered Parliament on the resignation of Brian Donnelly in 2008.
| General Election 2008: Helensville[2] | |||||||||
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Notes: Green background denotes the winner of the electorate vote. Pink background denotes a candidate elected from their party list. |
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| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | Party Votes | % | ±% | ||
| National | 26,771 | 73.61 | - | 23,559 | 63.69 | ||||
| Labour | Darien Fenton | 6,224 | 17.11 | - | 6,826 | 18.45 | |||
| Green | David Clendon | 2,166 | 5.96 | - | 1,814 | 4.90 | |||
| ACT | David Garrett | 811 | 2.23 | - | 2,481 | 6.71 | |||
| United Future | Angela Lovelock | 309 | 0.85 | - | 289 | 0.78 | |||
| Libertarianz | Peter Osborne | 89 | 0.24 | - | 21 | 0.06 | |||
| NZ First | - | 940 | 2.54 | - | |||||
| Progressive | - | 195 | 0.53 | - | |||||
| Family Party | - | 182 | 0.49 | - | |||||
| Māori | - | 182 | 0.49 | - | |||||
| Bill and Ben | - | 170 | 0.46 | - | |||||
| ALCP | - | 131 | 0.35 | - | |||||
| Kiwi Party | - | 105 | 0.28 | - | |||||
| Pacific | - | 45 | 0.12 | - | |||||
| Alliance | - | 19 | 0.05 | - | |||||
| Workers Party | - | 9 | 0.02 | - | |||||
| NZ Democrats | - | 8 | 0.02 | - | |||||
| RAM | - | 8 | 0.02 | - | |||||
| RONZ | - | 4 | 0.01 | - | |||||
| Informal votes | 251 | 110 | |||||||
| Total Valid votes | 36,370 | 36,988 | |||||||
| National hold | Majority | 20,547 | |||||||
| General Election 2008: Hellensville[3] | |||||||||
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Notes: Green background denotes the winner of the electorate vote. Pink background denotes a candidate elected from their party list. |
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| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | Party Votes | % | ±% | ||
| National | 22,008 | 64.10 | 19,224 | 55.09 | |||||
| Labour | Judy Lawley | 9230 | 26.88 | 9761 | 27.97 | ||||
| NZ First | Dail Jones | 1400 | 4.08 | 2051 | 5.88 | ||||
| United Future | Andrea Deeth | 573 | 1.67 | 863 | 2.47 | ||||
| ACT | Stephen Langford-Tebby | 389 | 1.13 | 821 | 2.35 | ||||
| Māori | Awa Hudson | 359 | 1.05 | 142 | 0.41 | ||||
| Progressive | Julian Aaron | 318 | 0.93 | 218 | 0.81 | ||||
| Green | Helen Koster | 58 | 0.17 | 1407 | 4.03 | ||||
| Destiny | - | 151 | 0.43 | ||||||
| ALCP | - | 66 | 0.19 | ||||||
| Christian Heritage | - | 48 | 0.14 | ||||||
| Libertarianz | - | 16 | 0.05 | ||||||
| Direct Democracy | - | 11 | 0.03 | ||||||
| Alliance | - | 9 | 0.03 | ||||||
| NZ Democrats | - | 8 | 0.02 | ||||||
| Family Rights | - | 8 | 0.02 | ||||||
| 99 MP | - | 5 | 0.01 | ||||||
| RONZ | - | 5 | 0.01 | ||||||
| One NZ | - | 4 | 0.01 | ||||||
| Informal votes | 253 | 110 | |||||||
| Total Valid votes | 34,335 | 34,896 | |||||||
| National hold | Majority | ||||||||
The Helensville seat was created in 1978 from part of the Waitemata electorate, and in 1984 was absorbed into the West Auckland electorate. From 1978 to 1984 the electorate was represented by Dail Jones, then a National MP.
| Election | Winner | |
| 1978 election | Dail Jones (National) | |
| 1981 election | ||
- Electorate Profile Parliamentary Library

