Mel Courtney

Melvyn Francis "Mel" Courtney (born 1943) is a Nelson City Councillor and a former Labour then Independent Member of Parliament for Nelson, in the South Island of New Zealand.

Member of Parliament

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. Courtney is currently in his fourth term on the Nelson City Council.

Independent

In March 1981 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.

The Labour Party suffered defeats in the 1975 and 1978 general elections under the leadership of Bill Rowling. Courtney saw the momentum that had been gained under the Prime Ministership of the charismatic Labour leader Norman Kirk (1972–74) was being eroded and lost by Rowling. Courtney firmly believed that change was needed in the leadership in order to beat Robert Muldoon and the National Party. Rowling was not an effective counter to Muldoon: in Parliament Muldoon had the measure of Rowling and Rowling was perceived as weak in the media. After Courtney's strong performance in the Nelson by-election in 1976 the 1978 Labour Party general election result was a "major disappointment" for Courtney (Henderson, 1981). In the December 1980 leadership vote of confidence Courtney voted against Rowling. Rowling clung onto the Labour leadership by one vote-his own (Bassett, 2008).

Courtney's 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 Parliament of New Zealand.

1981 election

At the 1981 election supporters rallied around Courtney's Independent campaign and, although defeated, it was by the very narrow margin of 698 votes. Courtney took 37.0 per cent of the total vote, 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 40 years.

Further reading

• Levine, Steven; McRobie, Alan (2002), From Muldoon to Lange: New Zealand Elections in the 1980s, Rangiora, [N.Z.]: MC Enterprises 
• Rice, Geoffrey (ed.) (1992), Oxford History of New Zealand, Auckland, [N.Z.]: Oxford University Press 
• Wilson, James Oakley (1985) [First published in 1913]. New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840–1984 (4th ed.). Wellington: V.R. Ward, Govt. Printer. OCLC 154283103. 
• Wood, G. Anthony, ed. (1996). Ministers and Members: In the New Zealand Parliament. Dunedin: Otago University Press. 

External links

• Mel Courtney's Political Papers. National Register of Archives and Manuscripts
• Radio New Zealand Interview 1981. Sound Archives
• Nelson City Council Roll of Honour

See also

• Mabel Howard
• Nelson By-election 1976
• Nelson Railway and Nelson Railway Proposals

Mel Courtney's grandfather, H.F. Courtney, was an engine driver on the Nelson Railway from 1915 to 1920 and lived at Glenhope. See Voller, Lois (1991), Appendix in Rails to Nowhere: The History of the Nelson Railway, Nelson, [N.Z.]: Nikau Press

• James Courtney, Military Cross
• People's Republic of China-New Zealand Relations
• Timeline of New Zealand's links with Antarctica

Mel Courtney attended the 21st Anniversary of Scott Base in 1978 representing the New Zealand Parliament.

• Fishing industry in New Zealand
• Limehouse Declaration

For contemporaneous events in Britain between January and June 1981 and the Council for Social Democracy.