" The Commonwealth" shall mean the Commonwealth of Australia as established under this Act. " The States " shall mean such of the colonies of New South Wales,
New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia, ..." -Commonwealth of Australia Constitution act Section 6
The 2017 New Zealand State election or the 39th New Zealand State election was held on the 28th of September to elect members to the 39th New Zealand Legislative assembly. The incumbent National government lead by Bill English with support from Simon Bridges' Liberals faced a tough reelection campaign ever since the 2013 state election as premier Bill English was reelected with a decent Majority but outside of election campaigns, Bill English was viewed as out of touch and boring. However, it was still looking likely National and the Liberals could mulster a majority against Labor leader David Shearer until 2 years after the election when David Shearer resigned the leadership. His successor Jacinda Adern was relatively well known and liked which spelt bad signs for the Nationals upcoming chances but Adern's experience kept Labor and the Nationals even one the TPP stakes. Another shakeup happened to the Liberals with a surprise resignation of leader Simon Bridges and another surprise win of Paula Bennet in the leadership contest. The government was starting to lose support and Labor started to gain momentum
Bill English announced the election would be on the 28th of September, the absolute longest time until the term was allowed to end. Labor had a TPP lead of 6% in the polls. Campaigning officially started on the 18th of August with Labor announcing many left-leaning policies right off the bat. In a shock move former National Party leader Winston Peters announced his intentions to run in the Northland electorate against National Candidate, Matt King. The Greens took a tactic of moving to the centre in response to Labors' move to the left in an attempt to syphon votes from all parties. Paula Bennet ended up committing many blunders on the campaign trail which National leader Bill English hastily justified giving Labor a lead of 55 to 45 in some TPP polls.
National took a campaign turn for the better after they started announcing High spending social and infrastructure plans on the campaign trail. The Liberals continued to dip in the primary vote to around 5-6% in the opinion polls. The Greens announced policies to protect Te Reo Maori, a language native to New Zealand that has been (arguably) neglected by the federal government which boosted it to 12% in some opinion polls. Labour started to dip in the TPP vote and the Primary vote but while keeping a lead over National. As election day approached the Liberals started to slowly recover and the Green primary vote started to be almost evenly split between Nationa and Labor in the TPP stakes
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On election night Winston Peters surprisingly won his Northland seat and James Shaw. Won his seat of Wellington Central against Labors' Paul Eagle giving the Greens its first seat. Labor picked up 7 seats and made a coalition deal with the Greens and Winston Peters to form a government with a vunrable majority of 2. Adern remains popular though and is doing well in the polls after the election, Paula Bennett's gaffes cost the Liberals multiple seats and subsequently after the election she resigned leaving a leadership contest sometime in mid-2018. 8-year Premier Bill English resigned in December 2017 leaving a leadership contest around August 2018. Jacinda Adern so far looks like she will have a sucsessful premiership and is looking at Australian Federal Politics at some point in the future.
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