After being re-elected for a second term as New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern is now being given the privilege to form the country's most inclusive parliament ever. The ruling Labor Party announced after Ardern's landslide win that the country's next parliament will be comprised of several people of color, a high number of women, and members of the LGBTQ community.
Paul Spoonley, a professor at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University, said that country's next parliament is the most diverse ever created in terms of its indigenous, ethnic, and gender representation.
Around half of the 120 parliamentary seats are female and 16 are indigenous Maori. The parliament will also welcome its first candidate of African origin and the first candidate of Sri Lankan origin.
About 10 percent of the members of the house are also openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. This included a seat for Finance Minister Grant Robertson, who is openly gay. Apart from having diverse members, the new parliament also now has many younger members. Most of those elected as members of parliament are millennials.
Ardern's liberal Labor Party won 64 seats out of the 120 for parliament. It also got 49 percent out of the vote, eclipsing the 27 percent gained by the National Party. During her speech after winning the elections, Ardern said that the margin of her party's victory had far exceeded their expectations.
Ardern had attributed her landslide victory to her government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. At her speech on Sunday, Ardern said that she plans to immediately begin forming a new government to continue her work on responding to the health and economic crisis.
Unlike other countries in the Pacific region, New Zealand's immediate response to the pandemic has been largely successful. As of this week, the country had reportedly only 1,886 positive cases and 25 fatalities. Much of those that had been infected have already recovered, with the country now having only 37 active cases.
Following Ardern's win, health officials had reported one new case of community transmission in the country. New Zealand has had no new infections for over three weeks prior to the newly reported case. Officials said that the new case was a man working at the ports, which likely contracted the virus after working inside one of the docked foreign ships.
