Talk:New Zealand Parliament

A resignation

Parliament is reduced to 119 members following Andrew Falloon's resignation "effective immediately". He is no longer listed on the Parliament's list of members. Since Falloon was an electorate MP his seat is now vacant.

References

Seating plan

@AusYou @Hazhk. The current seating plan has two vacancies, and that should be reflected in the seating plan. Until the vacant members are sworn in, we should show that. As the Green Party doesn't really have "15 seats" and can only vote with 14 at the present moment. Same with National being down one. Kiwiz1338 (talk) 04:53, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

You claim that the parties "claim" these seats. There is no such thing as that. You are sworn in as a member of parliament, and you represent your party in that seat. You cannot claim a seat when you don't have an MP to be in it, even if you have won that seat in the election, and that is confirmed when the parliament seating diagram shows the vacancies. Kiwiz1338 (talk) 05:02, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

@Kiwiz1338: I get your point but the problem now is that all reliable sources state that the National Party has 49 MPs and the Green Party 15. Not only news media but the Parliament website too: See here. The infobox states there are 123 MPs in total, but now the numbers below don't add up. I think the infobox should simply reflect the number of elected MPs the parties have, but perhaps footnotes should be added for the National and Green figures to indicate that members have not yet been sworn in? Of course this is a temporary issue because the two MPs should be sworn in soon.
I should have started a discussion first and I apologise for reverting your revision to your own graphic because that was impolite. Your work in creating the seating plans is really appreciated. --Hazhk (talk) 16:07, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

No, not your fault. I think a footnote would work untill they are sworn in. Kiwiz1338 (talk) 16:13, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Crossbench

I'm considering the labelling of the parties on the infobox as 'cross-bench', as far as I am aware parties not in government are almost always referred to as being part of the opposition, regardless of whether those opposition parties work together. There have definitely been isolated instances where media coverage has labelled parties non-aligned with either the major party in government or opposition as on the cross-benches, but as far as I am aware this isn't really used commonly, and in technicality all parties not in government are part of the Official Opposition.

Just wondering if anyone has any particular thoughts on this? Currently it just feels incorrect from my perspective. I'll also note that NZ has a section in Crossbencher#New Zealand also only notes that they are "sometimes" referred to as that, and only provides two references that back this up from the early-mid 2010s, and the rest remains unsourced. Carolina2k22 • (talk) 05:20, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Interesting question. Not sure what I think. But, on a matter of fact, the Official Opposition is always only either Labour or National. Other parties may be opposition parties, but not part of the Official Opposition. Nurg (talk) 09:49, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I'd like to suggest that the content of New Zealand House of Representatives be merged into New Zealand Parliament. It's unusual for unicameral parliaments to have one page for the chamber and a separate one for the Parliament (i.e. Folketing, Althing, Seimas, Saeima, etc.), and I think it's redundant for both to still exist. The infoboxes are practically identical and there is some overlapping content as well. A lot of the content on each page that isn't duplicated across both articles is actually relevant to both articles, such as the HoR page talking about the eligibility criteria to be an MP or the Parliament page's #Term of Parliament section. I don't see any reason why combining the content of the two pages would be an issue, and there are multiple issues with the current situation. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 01:17, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Oppose - as the article notes, parliament is not just the HoR, and it was not always unicameral. Seperate articles allow material to be properly seperated, and some of it would simply be out of place on the HoR article.--IdiotSavant (talk) 01:35, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Hellenic Parliament, the Folketing, and many more were also previously bicameral, but only one article exists in these instances, because the former lower house more or less became the sole chamber. Also, the article itself points out that "parliament" in New Zealand is often used to refer to solely the HoR (a potential argument that "Parliament" is the WP:COMMONNAME), and the only meaningful difference between the Parliament of New Zealand and the New Zealand House of Representatives is that the former also technically includes the monarch, but it also notes that the monarch doesn't participate in the legislative process in any way except for signing a bill into law, which makes the distinction very slight, and I don't see a reason why that couldn't theoretically be included on the HoR's page. Another point I've noticed is that both articles include a link to the same website as the "official website" for the body (parliament.nz). – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 01:54, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Are you two discussing a merger to New Zealand Parliament or a merger to New Zealand House of Representatives? Nurg (talk) 08:23, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

The suggestion was to merge into New Zealand Parliament, but i'm open to going either way, I just figured that NZP is a semanticly broader article name, so it makes more sense to merge the content into there. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 08:26, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

Support - If the content is merged into the New Zealand Parliament page, I am fully on board with that. For all intents and purposes, the Parliament solely refers to the House, and there is little reason to separate the content to a page for a unicameral chamber that used to not be analogous for the Parliament as a whole. The Legislative Council has its own page, which should be more than enough to document the existence of this formerly bicameral legislature which stopped being so almost a whole lifetime ago. Vereted (talk) 23:44, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Support, as nominator, as Vereted said, there's already a page for the Legislative Council of New Zealand, and common usage of the term "New Zealand Parliament" refers to the House alone, not the combined entity of the unicameral chamber and the monarch. I think it's pretty clear this falls under either WP:DUPLICATE or WP:OVERLAP, as the scope of the two articles is almost identical, I don't understand the argument that because the chamber was previously bicameral that a separate article for the now-unicameral chamber should remain. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 11:43, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Oppose. GlowstoneUnknown is right about some content being duplicated in both articles and that this is problematic. This is especially evident with NZHR content in the infobox for New Zealand Parliament. Work needs to be done on this aspect. However, I don't accept the argument that because the parliament is currently unicameral the articles should be merged. It has been unicameral for 75 years and was bicameral for about 96 years. To merge on the basis of its current status seems like a type of recentism to me. Besides, reintroducing a 2nd house is a current topic of discussion, e.g. [1], [2]. The scope of the two articles is not identical and they are not duplicates. They do have overlap, but there is a degree of overlap in many cases of a higher-level topic and a subsidiary topic. It is true that "Parliament" is used with several different meanings – these include the debating chamber, and the whole Parliament House – but I don't see that as a reason to necessarily merge. The articles are about constitutional matters, and I feel that the constitutional distinction is important enough for there to be two articles, regardless of (or as a corrective to) the ambiguity that often occurs in the popular press. I am open to changing my mind, but I am not persuaded by the arguments presented so far. Nurg (talk) 11:24, 18 March 2026 (UTC)