Te Atatū (before 2008 spelled Te Atatu, without a macron) is a parliamentary electorate, returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives. The current MP for Te Atatū is Phil Twyford of the Labour Party. Population centres The 1977 electoral redistribution was the most overtly political since the Representation Commission had been established through an amendment to the Representation Act in 1886, initiated by Muldoon's National Government. As part of the 1976 census, a large number of people failed to fill in an electoral re-registration card, and census staff had not been given the authority to insist on the card being completed. This had little practical effect for people on the general roll, but it transferred Māori to the general roll if the card was not handed in. Together with a northward shift of New Zealand's population, this resulted in five new electorates having to be created in the upper part of the North Island. The electoral redistribution was very disruptive, and 22 electorates were abolished, while 27 electorates were newly created (including Te Atatu) or re-established. These changes came into effect for the . Te Atatū comprises the suburbs of West Auckland on the western side of the Whau River in Auckland. The main parts of the seat are the suburbs of Glendene, Te Atatū, Lincoln and Massey. Boundary changes in the leadup to the 2008 election have seen the northern boundary edge northwards to include Massey East, with a small southern block transferred to the neighbouring Waitakere seat. The makeup of Te Atatū shows that while its population is composed roughly inline with the national average: It is roughly the same ages as the nation (with slightly more residents over fifty), and its average income ($22627) is only slightly lower than the rest of New Zealand. Its main point of demographic difference with its country is ethnic – it has more Asian New Zealanders and more Pacific Islanders than the rest of the country. History The Te Atatu electorate was created ahead of the 1978 election by pulling apart the seat of Waitemata; its first MP was future cabinet minister Michael Bassett, who had been the MP for Waitemata from 1972 until 1975 before an anti-labour landslide cost him his job. Bassett held the seat until his retirement in 1990, when a toxic battle to succeed Bassett in an already lean year for Labour