Te Tai Tonga was established for the 1996 general election, replacing Southern Maori which had existed since the
first Māori elections in 1868. The 1996 election was the first to use the
Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system and a new formula for calculating the number of electorates, which resulted in an increase in the number of
Māori electorates from four to five. The main difference involves the separation of the
Wairarapa and
Hawke's Bay into seats wholly located in the North Island—initially
Te Puku O Te Whenua, and since 1999
Ikaroa-Rāwhiti.
Whetū Tirikatene-Sullivan had served as Southern Maori's representative in Parliament since 1967—during the terms of five different governments and nine Prime Ministers. However, the
New Zealand First Party challenger
Tū Wyllie tipped her out of the seat in 1996, as sixty years of Labour Party control of the Māori electorates ended. In
1999 New Zealand First lost its electoral footing after an unpopular term in office, firstly as junior government-coalition partner and then following an internal split in the party, with much of the party's original parliamentary caucus leaving the party ("
waka-jumping") to prop up the government of
Jenny Shipley (although Wyllie himself did not join the breakaway group). Along with a drop in the New Zealand First vote from thirteen to four percent nationwide came the return of the Māori electorates to Labour and the election of
Mahara Okeroa to Parliament as the Labour Party MP for Te Tai Tonga. A political difference of opinion between many Māori and the Labour Party emerged in 2004, when
Helen Clark's
Labour government introduced the
Seabed and Foreshore Bill, claiming the coastline for the Crown and in the process providing the catalyst for the launch of the
Māori Party (7 July 2004), which went on to win four of the seven Māori seats (but not the plurality of the party votes cast in those seats) at the
2005 general election. Te Tai Tonga did not form part of this electoral sea-change, with Okeroa's majority slashed from 8,000 to around 2,500 despite his facing two fewer contenders than in
2002.
Rahui Katene won the electorate for the Māori Party in the , defeating the incumbent. She was defeated after a single term; Rino Tirikatene, the nephew of Tirikatene-Sullivan, won the electorate in with a margin of 1,475 votes.
Members of Parliament Key List MPs Members of Parliament elected from party lists in elections where that person also unsuccessfully contested the Te Tai Tonga electorate. Unless otherwise stated, all MPs terms began and ended at general elections. ==Election results==