Mel Courtney

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

Member of Parliament

Parliament of New Zealand
Years	Term	Electorate		Party
1976–78	Labour
1978–81	39th	Nelson		Labour
1981–81	Changed allegiance to:			Independent

Mel 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. Mel Courtney was also a member of the Nelson City Council for nine years.

Independent

In March 1981 Mel 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.

Courtney's resignation from the Labour Party came at the end of a lengthy period in which public differences between him and his local electorate committee (and also the Nelson Trades Council) had occurred with increasing frequency. His 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 New Zealand Parliament.

1981 election

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

New Zealand general election, 1981 - Nelson result
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Philip Woollaston	8,198	40.41
	Independent	Mel Courtney	7,500	36.97
	National		2,749	13.55
	Social Credit		1,545	7.61
	Values		297	1.46
Turnout			20,289
Majority			698	3.44

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), New Zealand Parliamentary Record, 1840-1984 (4th ed.), Wellington, [N.Z.]: Government Printer 
• Wood, G. Antony (ed.) (1996), Ministers and Members in the New Zealand Parliament, Dunedin, [N.Z.]: Otago University Press 

External links

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

See also

• Nelson by-election 1976

Parliament of New Zealand
Preceded by Stanley Whitehead	Member of Parliament for Nelson 1976–1981	Succeeded by Philip Woollaston

Persondata
Name	Courtney, Mel
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1943
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death