Te Tai Tonga is a New Zealand Parliamentary Māori electorate, returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives. The current MP for Te Tai Tonga is Rino Tirikatene of the Labour Party, who in 2011 defeated Rahui Katene of the Māori Party, who won the seat in 2008.
Te Tai Tonga is by far the largest of the seventy electorates of New Zealand, covering all of the South Island, Stewart Island/Rakiura, the Chatham Islands, all the islands in the Southern Ocean and a large part of the Wellington urban area, namely Wellington City as far as Johnsonville, and Petone, Lower Hutt and Eastbourne from the Hutt Valley. Its huge size was marginally decreased after a review of boundaries in 2007, when the suburbs of Naenae and Taitā were moved into Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. Besides Wellington, the main centres in te Tai Tonga are Dunedin, Christchurch, Nelson, Timaru, Invercargill, Queenstown and Oamaru.
The main iwi of Te Tai Tonga are Ngāi Tahu/Kai Tahu, Kāti Mamoe and Waitaha, and in the North Island, Te Ati Awa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangatira and Ngāti Poneke, which is not iwi in the traditional sense, but an urban pan-tribal grouping. The Chatham Islands was invaded by members of Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama, and their descendents live there today, alongside the indigenous Moriori.
Read more about Te Tai Tonga: History