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Ōhariu is a New Zealand Parliamentary electorate returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives. It was contested for the first time at the 2008 election. It is the successor to Ohariu-Belmont, first contested at the first Mixed Member Proportional election in 1996. Through its existence Ohariu-Belmont was represented by Peter Dunne, leader of the United Future party. Dunne contested and won the new electorate in 2008.

The boundaries of the two electorates are near identical except for the removal of the eponymous Lower Hutt suburb of Belmont into the Rimutaka seat and the addition of Crofton Downs from Wellington Central. The new electorate contains the section of Wellington City between Crofton Downs and southern Tawa, including Ngaio, Khandallah, Johnsonville and Newlands. The rest of the electorate consists of Lower Hutt's hill suburbs of Korokoro, Maungaraki and Normandale. Ōhariu is one of 11 electorate names to include a macron, for the first time.

Both Ohariu-Belmont and Ōhariu are young, white and wealthy; it has the largest number of 30-49-year-olds in the country, and the highest number of families earning between $70,000 and $100,000 per year. 80% of its population is New Zealand European, 10% Asian and 6% Māori.^[1]

Despite Dunne having a 7,702 vote majority in Ohariu-Belmont at the 2005 election^[2], United's performance was less impressive. In 2005 it won just 5.6% of the party vote (down from 13.0% in 2002) in an electorate dominated by the big two parties: National came out on top in the party vote with 43.1%, beating Labour by 3.6%, having been reduced to 24.4% three years earlier^[3].

Historically Ohariu (without a macron) was an electorate based around north and western Wellington, contested between 1978 and 1990. A substantial redrawing of Wellington's boundaries ahead of the last First Past the Post election in 1993 led to Ohariu being divided between Wellington-Karori and the new electorate of Onslow. Dunne, then a member of the Labour Party, was the MP for the old Ohariu between 1984 until its abolition, and won Onslow in 1993.

Members of Parliament for Ohariu

Unless otherwise stated, all MPs' terms began and ended at general elections.

¹Dunne defected to United New Zealand in 1995.

Election results

2008 election

References