Tāmaki Makaurau by-election: What happens next?

Thursday, 26 June 2025

MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp died on Thursday morning, triggering a by-election.

Voters on the Māori roll in Tāmaki Makaurau will return to the polls following the death of sitting Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp.

Kemp, 50, died in the early hours of Thursday after battling kidney disease. She took leave from Parliament for six weeks last year, but had returned to the job and was in the House yesterday afternoon before travelling home to Auckland last night.

Her unexpected death forces a by-election in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate.

Graeme Edgeler is a barrister, commentator and expert on electoral law.

It’s too soon to say when that by-election will be held, but one constitutional expert, barrister Graeme Edgeler, expected it to be announced in “the next few days or early next week”.

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission said there were very strict rules to follow around deciding on and announcing a date.

Firstly, the Speaker of the House, Gerry Brownlee, must notify that Kemp’s seat in the House has become vacant and have this published formally in the New Zealand Gazette.

Labour MP Peeni Henare says the death of Takutai Karsh Kemp came as a shock. They met just yesterday.

Then, it is up to the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, to confirm the date for the by-election to take place.

Edgeler said Luxon would take advice on an appropriate day to hold the by-election before making any announcement, “and then someone will issue writs within the time period and the by-election will happen”.

The time period is 21 days from the vacancy notice being published, and the Governor-General is responsible for directing the Chief Electoral Officer to conduct a by-election in the electorate.

Labour MPs (from left) Carmel Sepuloni, Peeni Henare and Willie Jackson at Parliament on Thursday after the death of Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp.

Candidates can then be nominated to contest the by-election.

At the last election in 2023, Labour’s Peeni Henare lost to Kemp by a whisker-thin 42 vote margin after a recount. The result on election night had Kemp ahead by just four votes.

Henare was asked on Thursday morning if he had given any thought to the by-election. 'That's not where my mind is,“ he told reporters at Parliament.

His colleague, Willie Jackson, said they would not be talking about that 'at all until the appropriate time'.

He added: 'This is a time to grieve for Tarsh, for Te Pāti Māori and for the people of South Auckland and we just want to remember her and pay the appropriate tributes.'

Henare said he and his Youth MP spoke at length to Kemp yesterday about how close the pair were despite “despite her and I having contested the election”.

“She called me brother, and I called her sister, and that's how it was.'

Tāmaki Makaurau will return to the polls following the death of sitting Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp.

Should Henare contest the seat again and win, he would forfeit his list position to become an electorate MP.

That, said Edgeler, would see Labour bring in an additional MP off the list - likely to be Georgie Dansey, who contested Hamilton East in 2023 and was next on the party list.

“It happened when Jacinda Ardern won a by-election. She was originally a list MP, David Shearer resigned from Parliament … she won, and so then she resigned as a list MP and became the electorate MP instead and Labour got a new list MP. The same would happen here,” said Edgeler.

The Electoral Commission said that this would not change the current number of MPs in the House: 123.

“That’s because a by-election does not affect the number of list seats each party is entitled to - list seats are not recalculated after a by-election,” a spokesperson told The Post.

Should Te Pāti Māori retain the seat, then little would change as they would again have a caucus of six.

“Either way, that's going to bring us back up to the number [of MPs in Parliament] that we had yesterday,” said Edgeler.