1989 Christchurch mayoral election

← 1986 14 October 1989 1992 →
Turnout	121,295 (60.37%)
Candidate Vicki Buck Morgan Fahey Margaret Murray Party Independent United Citizens Christchurch Action Popular vote 63,025 30,662 25,387 Percentage 51.96 25.27 20.92
Mayor before election Hamish Hay Elected mayor Vicki Buck
Councillors
All 24 seats on the City Council 13 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– United Citizens Dennis Rich 30.84 7 −3 Labour Alex Clark 21.80 7 −2 Christchurch Action Margaret Murray 26.29 6 New Independents for Papanui ward Des King & Gordon Freeman 4.54 2 New Independent N/A 15.81 2 +2 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Results by ward

The 1989 Christchurch mayoral election was part of the New Zealand local elections held that same year. In 1989, election were held for the Mayor of Christchurch plus other local government positions. The polling was conducted using the standard first-past-the-post voting method.

Sitting Mayor Hamish Hay retired and was succeeded by Labour Party councillor Vicki Buck who became Christchurch's first female mayor.^[1]

There was deadlock on the city council with a four-way split in its membership. The Labour Party won a plurality of seats with eight seats, the United Citizens won seven, the new Christchurch Action ticket with six seats and the remaining three seats won by independent candidates. Prior to the election there was a schism on the right wing Citizens' Association resulting in two conservative tickets running against each other.^[2] Christchurch Action was set up, comprising former councillors from districts that merged with the city as part of the 1989 local government reforms.^[3]

The following table gives the election results:

As part of the 1989 local government Reforms the amount of local government wards increased from 5 to 12 with each ward electing 2 members, as opposed to the 4 (or 3 in the case of the west ward) that wards previously elected. The size of the council also increased from 19 to 24.

The Christchurch Action team was founded on 13 August by Margaret Murray, its goals were based on improving city services, additional police, and improving efficiency of the council.^[5]

There were changes in political affiliations during the council term. Carole Evans, councillor for the West Ward who ran under the Citizens' team in 1986 ran as an independent. Two sitting councillors from the abolished Waimairi district council, Gordon Freeman and Des King, stood under the Independents for Papanui ward team. Phillip Carter, who was the son of councillor and deputy mayor Maurice Carter ran for the Action team as opposed to his fathers affiliation of Citizens.

Buck was elected the first ever female mayor of Christchurch and 4 women were elected to the council. Margaret Murray and Morgan Fahey both conceded in a friendly manner in person on the night. Morgan Fahey, her nearest opponent, became the Deputy mayor.

Despite losing the Mayoralty, Action performed very well and Citzens' lost its overall majority on council. There was accusations that Action split the centre-right vote and lead to no overall control on council. Because of the Citzens' animosity towards the action team Labour and Citzens' formed an alliance on the council which resulted in Action missing out on a fair share of committee chairmanships.^[6][9]

Dennis Rich retained his position as team leader after the election but Labour's team leader Alex Clark was replaced by Pegasus councillor David Close after Clark expressed a preference to focus on his regional council seat. Clark was also unable to secure a committee chairmanship, even in transport despite his advocacy for a city owned bus company.^[9]

Although Labour candidate Arthur Adcock had won on election night by a margin of 19 votes, independent Mike Stevens refused to concede and sought multiple rounds of recounts, eventually resulting in Adcock losing his seat to Stevens.^[7] This meant Labour's election night plurality of seats was also lost. There was also legal action in the Papanui ward over the nature of election material.^[10]

Mayor Buck initially tried to get councillors to sit in alphabetical order next to each other, however, councillors ended up moving their own name plates around to sit in party/team blocs.^[11]