Mel Courtney
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Melvyn Francis (Mel) Courtney (born 1943) is a former Labour then Independent Member of Parliament for Nelson, in the South Island of New Zealand.
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[edit] Member of Parliament
Mel Courtney represented the Nelson electorate from 1976 to 1981 and was Opposition Spokesman for Horticulture and Fisheries for five years. He was a recipient of both the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977 for service to the community and the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal in recognition of services to New Zealand. Mel Courtney was also a member of the Nelson City Council for nine years.
[edit] Independent
In March 1981 Mel Courtney announced that he had let his membership of the Labour Party lapse. Soon after, he withdrew from the Labour Party caucus and sat in the New Zealand House of Representatives as an independent.
Courtney's resignation from the Labour Party came at the end of a lengthy period in which public differences between him and his local electorate committee (and also the Nelson Trades Council) had occurred with increasing frequency. His announcement of his independent candidacy for the 1981 general election was made only a few days before the 35th anniversary of the death of Harry Atmore, MP for Nelson from 1911 to 1946. Atmore had been the last independent MP to be elected to the New Zealand Parliament.
At the 1981 election supporters rallied around Mel Courtney's Independent campaign and, although defeated, it was by the narrow margin of 698 votes. Courtney took a very creditable 37.0 per cent of the total vote, only 3.4 percentage points behind the Labour candidate and nearly three times as many votes as the National candidate's share of the vote. This was the best result by an independent candidate in New Zealand Elections in nearly forty years.
[edit] Further Reading
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- Levine, Steven & McRobie, Alan (2002), From Muldoon to Lange: New Zealand Elections in the 1980s, Rangiora, [N.Z.]: MC Enterprises
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- Rice, Geoffrey (ed.) (1992), Oxford History of New Zealand, Auckland, [N.Z.]: Oxford University Press
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- Wilson, James Oakley (1985), New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840-1984 (4th ed.), Wellington, [N.Z.]: Government Printer
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- Wood, G. Antony (ed.) (1996), Ministers and Members in the New Zealand Parliament, Dunedin, [N.Z.]: Otago University Press
