This dataset is the definitive set of regional council Māori constituency boundaries for 2020 as defined by the regional councils and/or Local Government Commission, and maintained by Stats NZ(the custodian).This version contains 5 Māori constituencies, excluding area outside constituency.Māori constituencies are established under the Local Electoral Act 2001 and result from the division of a region for electoral purposes.Māori constituencies are divisions of regional council areas. They are created, based on population, to be the voting areas within councils. Māori constituencies are defined at meshblock level.If a regional council decides to have a Māori constituency, the constituencies within the council are known as general constituencies and Māori constituencies.Classifications exist annually from 2005 to 2020.The boundaries of Māori constituencies may be reviewed before each three-yearly local government election. Regional councils must review their representation arrangements at least once every six years. The provisions for such reviews are contained in the Local Government Act 2002.Māori constituencies are numbered based on their corresponding regional council. Each Māori constituency has a unique four-digit code. The first two digits represent the regional council that the Māori constituency lies within. The last two digits are sequential and represent the number of Māori constituencies within a regional council. For example, the Waikato Regional Council (03) contains two Māori constituencies which are coded 0301 and 0302.In the 2020 classification two regional councils have Māori constituencies: Waikato and Bay of Plenty. Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The column name for those without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’.This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.
Source
Māori constituencies are based on the meshblock pattern. Non-alignment of meshblock and cadastral boundaries are one of a number of reasons for meshblock boundary adjustments. Other reasons include requests from local authorities, Local Government Commission, Electoral Representation Commission and to make census enumeration processes easier. From the meshblock pattern, higher geographies, including the 2020 Māori constituency pattern, were dissolved using the dissolve tool in the Arc GIS suite.
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
