Talk:Father of the House (New Zealand)

Sir Robert Macfarlane
Hello, according to Wikipedia's records and description of the qualifications for being 'Father of the House', it would seem that Sir Robert Macfarlane would be listed as being 'Father of the House' from the death of Sir Walter Nash in 1968 until his retirement from Parliament at the 1969 election. He does not appear to have had any gaps in his service from his election in 1939 until his retirement, whereas Sir Keith Holyoake was out of Parliament from 1938 until 1943. The fact that Macfarlane's electorate changed does not seem to be sufficient grounds for Holyoake taking precedence as 'Father of the House'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.33.119.55 (talk) 16:54, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * What you say seems to make sense. However we would need to check what the Wilson source states. --Hazhk (talk) 20:11, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you have a copy of Wilson's book?  Schwede 66  20:57, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't, no. I guess the definition of 'Father of the House' has been more flexible in the past and referred to the earliest elected member, only later coming to mean the longest continuous service. If we go by earliest elected then Winston Peters should be counted Father of the House. --Hazhk (talk) 12:26, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The user is right Macfarlane had the longest consecutive service after Nash. I've added him to the list. Kiwichris (talk) 06:13, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Further to this discussion, I was pleased to see that Kiwichris had changed the "first elected" field for Holyoake and Mallard to the beginning of their continuous service that qualified them to be Father, with footnotes about their earlier tenures, as I had always felt the previous way of doing things to be misleading. I thought I'd make the same change for other such instances, the two obvious ones being James Macandrew and William Steward, who currently are listed with earlier first elected dates than their predecessors.
 * When I looked at the case of Macandrew, however, I found that again Wilson seems to have taken a different definition. When Alfred Brandon retired in 1881, Macandrew had served continuously since 1865 (with two earlier tenures, 1853-58 and 1859-60), whereas Maurice O'Rorke had served continuously since 1861. In fact, I'm not sure that Wilson's list is even consistent with itself, as if Macandrew takes precedence over O'Rorke for being first elected earlier, he should also take precedence over Brandon, who was first elected in 1858. I'm assuming that this part of the page accurately reflects the list in Wilson's book, as I don't have it to hand either. But in a nutshell, Wilson seems to be a somewhat unreliable source for this particular page. Not sure how this should be dealt with! MW691 (talk) 12:13, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, I've had the chance to have a look at Wilson's book today, and have realised that I and perhaps others had misunderstood the sourcing of the list. Wilson doesn't list Fathers of the House at all. The citations are just for the dates of MPs' service, as listed in the role of members. The identity of the Father at any point in time has been extrapolated from the data by users putting this page together. So Wilson's reliability is not in question. (That's not to say the book is free of errors - I spotted a small one while flicking through - but that's only to be expected with the sheer quantity of obscure information it contains). In due course I'll go through the list and improve it as best as I can. MW691 (talk) 06:57, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

2021 Father of the House
With Nick Smith retiring, we have a weird position where the 'Father of the House' is split between both a woman and man: Nanaia Mahuta and Gerry Brownlee have both been continually serving in the house since 1996. I guess we have both a father and mother of the house now. Damien O'Connor can't hold the title as he wasn't an MP for half a year in 2008...

Will wait for official confirmation, of course, but still interesting!

Nauseous Man (talk) 04:46, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that with a tie, the title goes to the person who comes first in the alphabet.  Schwede 66  05:02, 31 May 2021 (UTC)


 * You're right, I just checked Erskine May and others for confirmation. It's technically by order of them being sworn in, so if Brownlee wasn't there on the day then he would miss out, but he was there so becomes the new father of the house. Nauseous Man (talk) 05:04, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Me again, the new father of the house is in fact Trevor Mallard. In the UK the speaker can't be the Father, but in New Zealand there is precedent. For example, Jonathan Hunt was both Speaker and Father simultaneously. Nauseous Man (talk) 04:12, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Queries raised by checking the list up to 1911
As I said above that I would, I've been going through the list to check its accuracy. In doing so I've made some fairly obvious corrections (including to some calculations of tenure length that were unambiguously wrong), but have also realised that the rules for determining this position don't cover every scenario, and as others have noted, have shifted over time. I've made up to 1911, and have decided that I should set out the issues and see what other people think before going any further.

The first issue is how to sort out a confusing tangle of claimants for the position in 1871, after Hugh Carleton lost his seat. Edward Stafford had served continuously since the 1855 election, with one very small gap. He resigned from one electorate on 19 November 1868, and was elected unopposed in a by-election in another electorate the next day (I have not seen any explanation of why he would want to do this). Did a gap of this sort reset the clock and disqualify him? There's no more recent occurrence of this sort to use as a precedent (if Winston hadn't lost his seat in 2008, we could have had one from his by-election in 1993) and there doesn't seem to be one to adopt from the UK either. If Stafford did remain qualified, he was Father until 1878. If Stafford was disqualified, next in line is John Williamson, also first elected in 1855, but after Stafford alphabetically. His election was declared void on 16 August 1871 two days after the opening of the new parliament. Anticipating this, he did not take part in the swearing-in. He then won the by-election to fill his seat unopposed on 1 September. If Stafford's gap disqualified him, then Williamson's must too. But the question is whether he could be considered to have been the Father from the end of Carleton's term until 16 August - in other words, should the voiding of his election be retrospective, taking into account that he never took the oath or sat in Parliament during this period. The third claimant is David Monro, whose continuous service begins at an 1858 by-election, two months before Alfred Brandon (who is currently shown as Carleton's successor) also won a by-election. Monro was unseated by an electoral petition, but this only happened on 20 September, so unlike Williamson, he was sworn in and took part in the sittings of the House (in fact, he made the very first speech of the session, nominating the Speaker). If Williamson qualified to be Father until 16 August, then Monro was surely qualified to be Father from then until 20 September. If Williamson did not qualify, does that apply to Monro too, or were his circumstances different? Apologies if the above is too hard to decipher - I've tried to outline it as clearly as I could, but it is pretty confusing.

The other question concerns William Steward, currently listed as being Father from the death of Seddon in 1906 to his retirement in 1911. Steward's continuous service began in 1881, with a previous tenure of 1871-75. The issue I've stumbled upon is that Thomas Duncan also entered Parliament in 1881 and served until 1911 (without previous service). Under the current practice of breaking ties by alphabetical order without considering previous service, he would come before Steward, who hence was never Father. But there are two citations of contemporary newspaper articles that called Steward the Father. One did so because he was the only remaining MP who served in the parliament elected in 1871 (so going by earliest service rather than longest continuous). The other suggested that he kept the title even after he left Parliament, until his death a year later (although that article contains at least two errors of fact, so it's quite possible that the writer thought that he died in office). The point is that primary sources gave Steward the title, but current practices do not. Which should we go by? Either way an inconsistency arises.

I must apologise for the ridiculous length of this comment. Well done to anyone who reads it all the way to this point. MW691 (talk) 13:27, 8 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Well done to you for putting the effort in. Can't really help at present as I've been temporarily separated from my copy of Wilson's good book. Those are some vexing issues. If I had to make a call on whether resigning one day and winning a by-election the following day constitutes a break, I'd say no, it doesn't. I'm saying that because you could not have stood in the by-election in any other way than resigning first (that said, George Grey did stand in two different electorates in the 1875–1876 New Zealand general election and got elected twice, which did cause quite some upset and in the end, he did not get away with it). It does not really matter why Stafford did that (maybe he physically moved from one electorate to another).  Schwede 66  02:01, 9 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi, Schwede66 (and anyone else interested in this obscure topic) and thanks for your helpful thoughts. Apologies for not responding for all these months. I wanted to think about this topic in more depth and do some detailed searching of old Hansard, and it's only recently that I've got around to it. I've reached a conclusion that I was already moving towards back in June, which is that it's not possible to have a comprehensive list of Fathers of the House that both follows consistent rules and reflects historic practice, except perhaps for the last thirty years. In a nutshell, MPs have applied different criteria at different times, and have never produced an official list. I think this is probably because it's always been an informal, honorary position without written rules, whereas a number of other parliaments give their most senior member the job of presiding over the election of the Speaker, and hence have to codify the role in their standing orders.


 * I'll run through some specific examples to show what I'm talking about. In June I took James Macandrew out of the list, because he never held the role under the longest continuous service principle. But it's clear from Hansard and Papers Past that he was widely referred to as the Father in the latter part of his career. In the 1890s John Hall and Alfred Saunders were both described as the Father, despite long gaps in their service as MPs. I mentioned the case of William Steward above. A much more recent example is the state of affairs between 1984 and 1990. We currently list Muldoon as becoming Father after the retirement of Mick Connelly at the '84 election, as the longest continuously serving MP. But Hansard shows that MPs regarded Bob Tizard as the Father, as the earliest serving and longest cumulatively serving member, having entered Parliament in 1957, but been out from 1960 to 1963.


 * After Tizard retired in 1990, Muldoon and then Jonathan Hunt were inarguably Father. But the rules as we set them out on this page only seem to have become the consensus at the time of Hunt's retirement in 2005. On Hunt's last day as Speaker, Richard Prebble claimed to be his successor during a debate, presumably following the earliest serving and/or longest cumulative service definitions. Following Prebble in that debate, Michael Cullen claimed the title for himself, based on continuous service. The next day, while congratulating Margaret Wilson on being elected Speaker, Winston identified Helen Clark as the Mother of the House, having adopted the UK rules of continuous service and alphabetic tiebreaking from a book by John Parker. Those principles seems to have been accepted (the list currently cites that Hansard for Clark), and applied ever since.


 * The point I'm trying to make is that it is possible to put together a consistent list by applying the rules as currently understood, but it seems like such a list would be the definition of original research, in that there is no source for the list (as opposed to the dates that the list is based on), and there are sources that contradict the list. I hope I've explained myself clearly, and not included too much unnecessary information. MW691 (talk) 05:59, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * , oh dear. What a mess. OR is not what we ought to be doing. Helpful and clever people work at the parliamentary library. Maybe they could shed light on the issue.  Schwede 66  07:32, 11 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's a very good suggestion. I've sent them an email (which includes an emphasis of the non-urgent nature of my query!) MW691 (talk) 08:50, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

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2022 Father of the House
Kia ora, I am an employee of the Parliamentary Service. With Trevor Mallard's resignation, he is no longer Father of the House. Could this page be edited to reflect that?: a) Gerry Brownlee is now Father of the House, b) Nanaia Mahuta is still Mother of the House, and c) they both were elected to Parliament on the same day. I am trying to act properly, in line with Wikipedia guidelines and those of my organisation. I am unsure how to incorporate the connected contributor template. &#42;frijōndz (talk) 22:09, 20 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks,, for handling your COI in an appropriate way. I've updated the page. As far as I know, we have adopted the convention that whoever gets sworn in first is Father or Mother, i.e. it's not a shared job. But let's see whether reliable sources turn up that show a split role; we can always amend things following a discussion.  Schwede 66  22:37, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, for making the change. If I manage to find a source about the Mother and Father of the House, I will alert you to it. However, because the matter is a convention, I think it's unlikely any such source does exist. &#42;frijōndz (talk) 19:14, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Simultaneous father and mother
When Nanaia Mahuta and Gerry Brownlee were considered father and mother concurrently most of us probably assumed it was a special thing since they were elected the same day. However, the parliament website now lists Judith Collins as the mother. So this article may need a fundamental rearranging of some sort, and possibly a rename. 203.211.79.215 (talk) 00:35, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We could keep the current format and just split it in two, or perhaps we could take inspiration from how US states display their senators. Just a thought. 203.211.79.215 (talk) 01:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have thrown together a rough draft of what that could look like. 203.211.79.215 (talk) 05:47, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 203.211.79.215 (talk) 10:03, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That looks good. Thank you.  Schwede 66  16:43, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I would prefer a separate list or a separate article. This is too cluttered and confusing in my opinion. Kiwichris (talk) 07:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Mother of the House?
It has been raised as to whether this article should accommodate the seemingly quite recent (since last year) unofficial title of "Mother of the House". This was briefly the case with Helen Clark from 2005 to 2009 that a female MP was the longest continuous serving hence the title amendment. However in 2022 the title was shared rather than defaulting by alphabetical in order of the swearing in ceremony. Now it seems to have split entirely by gender which suggests a different but concurrent title. It seems however to contradict the information on Parliament's website that a father or mother is "The title given to the MP who has served the longest without a break". That is Brownlee who has been there six years longer than Collins suggesting completely separated titles (even if they are both unofficial honourary titles at that). Further to my comment above I recommend starting a new article. starting with Mahuta in 2022 with a note about Clark from 2005 to 2009. Kiwichris (talk) 04:08, 18 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I would want to see Parliament updating its website. But once they have done so, I agree with Kiwichris - those could be two separate articles.  Schwede 66  07:20, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree that an entirely separate article is needed. If the above combined list is disfavoured, then I think simply separating the lists on the same article (renamed of course) should be just fine. 203.211.77.190 (talk) 01:17, 28 January 2024 (UTC)