Waka-jumping
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New Zealanders speak colloquially of waka-jumping (or more conventionally, party-hopping) when an elected politician switches political parties between elections (taking his parliamentary seat with him and potentially upsetting electoral proportionality in the New Zealand Parliament).
The advent of MMP in New Zealand parliamentary politics in the 1990s — culminating in the use of the new electoral system from 1996 onwards — led to a series of defections and re-alignments as the old monolithic two-party system broke up and many politicians struggled to define and project their images and beliefs in new parties and groupings. The new political climate tended to favour the foundation of political parties (whereas in former times dissidents had often simply became independent MPs). Voters tended to punish many waka-jumpers in this period, but some survived and flourished, often to the disgust of their former party colleagues. Due to the frequency of waka-jumping in national politics, New Zealand enacted legislation (the Electoral Integrity Act of 2001, since expired) which required politicians elected from a party list to resign from Parliament if they left their party's parliamentary caucus. As the actions of the Progressive Party in 2002 showed, parties can still find ways around such law.
The Māori word waka applies often to a Māori canoe (or any vehicle), and also metaphorically designates shared ancestry amongst Māori iwi.
Prominent waka-jumpers have included:
- Jim Anderton, 1989, from Labour to NewLabour
- Winston Peters, 1993, from National to New Zealand First
- Peter Dunne, 1994 - 1995, from Labour to United New Zealand
- Michael Laws, 1996, from National to New Zealand First
- Alamein Kopu, 1997 - 1998, from Alliance to Mana Wahine
- Tau Henare, 1998, from New Zealand First to Mauri Pacific
