The 1941 New Zealand census had been postponed due to World War II, so the 1946 electoral redistribution had to take ten years of population growth and movements into account. The North Island gained a further two electorates from the South Island due to faster population growth. The abolition of the country quota through the Electoral Amendment Act, 1945 reduced the number and increased the size of rural electorates. None of the existing electorates remained unchanged, 27 electorates were abolished, eight former electorates were re-established, and 19 electorates were created for the first time, including Mount Albert. Mount Albert covers a segment of the western Auckland isthmus, based around the suburb of Mount Albert and stretching from Kingsland on the eastern periphery of the central city down to Sandringham and extending as far as Avondale on the seat's western edge. Changes brought about by an electoral redistribution after the 2006 census saw a swap of suburbs with neighbouring – Newton on the city fringe being returned to Auckland Central, having been moved out in 1999, and Point Chevalier being drafted in. The present incarnation of Mount Albert dates to 1999, when the creation of the Mount Roskill seat necessitated removing the suburbs clustered around the north side of Manukau Harbour from the Owairaka electorate. The name Mount Albert had been out of use for only three years – before Owairaka was drawn up ahead of the change to Mixed Member Proportional voting in 1996, the Mount Albert electorate had been part of the New Zealand electoral landscape for fifty years.
History
Mount Albert was first created for the 1946 election. The electorate is notable for being contested by three later Prime Ministers, Robert Muldoon, Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern. The first representative, Arthur Shapton Richards, died after only one year in the office. Richards was succeeded by Warren Freer in the, and Freer held the electorate until he retired in 1981. Freer was challenged in the by National's Muldoon. This occasion was Muldoon's first attempt at entering Parliament. He tried to claim the seat from Labour, but no National Party candidate has ever managed to achieve what Muldoon also couldn't do. Mount Albert's inner-suburb, working-class composition makes it one of the Labour Party's safest seats. Muldoon had also previously in, failed to win the National nomination for the Mount Albert electorate. Freer was succeeded by Helen Clark, who held the electorate until 1993, when it was abolished and she moved to the electorate instead. When the Mount Albert electorate was re-established for the, Clark became the representative again. Clark was Prime Minister from 1999 to 2008. In 2009, she resigned to become head of the United Nations Development Programme. Clark was succeeded by David Shearer through the 13 June 2009 by-election. He was re-elected as MP in the 2011 and 2014 general elections. However, his appointment to lead the United Nation's peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, pending his resignation, will result in a by-election in early 2017. After the by-election, Jacinda Ardern became the new representative for the electorate, and became Labour leader 8 weeks before the 2017 election after Andrew Little stepped down as Labour leader. Ardern also moved electorate from Auckland Central, and won the Mt. Albert MP role in the 2017 election.
Members of Parliament elected from party lists in elections where that person also unsuccessfully contested the Mount Albert electorate. Unless otherwise stated, all MPs terms began and ended at general elections. Key
