The HeartLandNZ party was founded in 2019 because a group of growers, farmers and primary industry businesspeople felt that government policies were not only seriously misguided but had become unworkable.

Regulations were actually becoming destructive to the sector which produces 80% of New Zealand’s export income.

The party stood in Port Waikato at the last election in 2020 and got a creditable 8,500 votes for its candidate Mark Ball. After the election the incredibly hardworking team behind Mark stepped back from their party involvement and returned to their regular businesses.

That was around the time that I got involved because I felt that a rural/provincial party was an idea whose time had come. We have had a small but dedicated group of volunteers working hard to keep the idea alive.

In the last four weeks we have had two outstanding potential candidates pull out for personal reasons.

Under the circumstances, the party management team has therefore decided not to contest this year’s election.

We know the provincial sector is hurting and undoubtedly needs its own representation in parliament. Tractor protests feel good, but they are too easily ignored in Wellington.

The provincial MPs of the National Party are unfortunately swamped by their urban MP counterparts who have to cater to the soft-centre urban voter.

Real change for rural/provincial NZ we believe will only come with its own parliamentary representation. The key to this will be for HeartLandNZ to focus on winning electorate seats and encouraging voters to give their party votes to National or ACT thus creating additional ‘overhang’ seats in Parliament without cannibalizing seats on the right.

We take inspiration from the rural voters in Holland who this year voted 17 parliamentarians into their 72-member senate! This was in response to the same sort of unscientific, uneconomic supposedly ‘green,’ anti-rural legislation that is now being imposed on New Zealand.

One of the overriding issues we have faced is with our social media presence. We have only 
recently got all the factors into play to focus on this.

Our goal therefore, looking ahead, is to be build a strong social media and membership and support base along with a strong leadership team to enable us to successfully contest the 2026 election and put representatives of the real producers of New Zealand in parliament.

So, we will continue to comment on the policies and politics that in particular affect Rural and Provincial NZ and we look forward to your ongoing support and welcome your feed back and input.

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