Māori politics. In particular, the Ratana church expanded its political participation, standing candidates for Parliament. In the 1935 election, Ratana won two of the four Māori electorates. The Ratana MPs did not remain independent for long, however – they quickly merged into the Labour Party, which they saw as best addressing Māori needs. By 1943, the Labour/Ratana alliance had won all four Māori electorates, establishing a pattern of dominance that many people thought was unbreakable. Among the most prominent Māori MPs in the Labour Party were Eruera Tirikatene, who was succeeded by his daughter, Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan – both represented Southern Maori in Parliament for several decades. Despite Labour's dominance of the Māori vote, the National Party, Labour's main opponent, occasionally elected Māori MPs in general electorates. Ben Couch (Wairarapa) and Rex Austin (Awarua), were elected in 1975, the second and third Māori elected to a general seat (after Sir James Carroll in 1893). Winston Peters, elected to Tauranga in 1984 (he had previously stood for Northern Maori) is half Māori. In the 1996 election, a major shift in Māori politics occurred when Labour lost all the Māori electorates (of which there were now five) to the New Zealand First party. New Zealand First, while not a Māori party, has a strong Māori wing, and its leader, Winston Peters (originally of the National Party), is half Māori. New Zealand First's clean sweep of the Māori electorates surprised many observers, who had believed that Labour's grip was too strong to be broken. In the 1999 election, Labour won all the Māori electorates back again, but the traditional Māori allegiance to Labour has been re-evaluated – Labour cannot, most observers say, simply take Māori support for granted. Since the advent of the MMP electoral system, Māori representation in Parliament has increased – Māori are able to be elected as list MPs, bypassing the problem of securing an electorate. This has been particularly noticeable in parties which have traditionally contained few Māori – MPs such as Georgina te Heuheu in the National Party and Donna Awatere Huata in the ACT party are not likely to have entered Parliament without MMP, given the difficulty that their parties would face contesting the Māori electorates. At present, there are twenty nine Māori MPs in Parliament, with Labour taking all six Māori electorate seats after the 2017 election, which also saw the loss of all Māori Party seats.