{"story":["New Zealand's first general election ran from July to October 1853, over 24 electorates returning 37 members. Few people seemed interested: in 13 of the electorates the candidates were returned unopposed, so 20 of the 37 members entered Parliament simply by standing. Governor George Grey called the provincial councils together first, and they all met in late 1853, while the General Assembly did not meet until May 1854, 16 months after the Constitution Act came into force. Critics said he had given provincialism a head start on central government. Grey replied that many men sat on both bodies and could not attend two at once. He left late in 1853 to govern the Cape Colony, so the Assembly was opened by Colonel Robert Wynyard, commander of the troops and acting governor from January 1854. Wynyard had also won the election for superintendent of Auckland in 1853, until the Colonial Office told him to give it up.","Getting members to Auckland, then the capital, was hard in itself. The government had to hire ships to collect them, and some spent two months at sea. One ship anchored a mile offshore, and members waded through mud and stones to the beach, then carried their bags half a mile to waiting carriages. Parliament opened at noon on Wednesday 24 May 1854, Queen Victoria's birthday, to a 21-gun salute from Fort Britomart on a wet, miserable day. The 37 members took their oaths before Wynyard, and three days later came the state opening. Their building was not ready. The House eventually sat in a plain two-storey structure put up in haste below the governor's residence and nicknamed the 'Shedifice', where the wind whistled through the walls and the roof leaked. In his opening speech Wynyard told members it would rest with them whether New Zealand became 'one great nation' or 'a collection of insignificant, divided and powerless petty States'.","What members most wanted was not in the Act at all. The colony's executive was still made up of Crown officials answerable to the governor, not to Parliament. On 2 June Edward Gibbon Wakefield moved a resolution for responsible government, and it passed almost unanimously. Wynyard believed he could not change the system without instructions from London, and his Attorney-General told him he had no power to dismiss the official members of his Executive Council. As a compromise he added three members of the House, James FitzGerald, Henry Sewell and Frederick Weld, to the council, and later one member of the Legislative Council. The newcomers expected the officials to be pensioned off and a real cabinet to follow; Wynyard saw it as a stopgap while he wrote to London. When the new ministers asked him to bring in full ministerial responsibility at once, he refused, and on 2 August, after seven weeks, the 'ministry' resigned.","Wynyard then turned to Wakefield as his sole adviser, which enraged the House. On 17 August, as Wynyard moved to prorogue the Assembly, Sewell tried to suspend standing orders so debate could continue. The minority who followed Wakefield tried to leave so that the two-thirds of members needed to suspend standing orders would not be present, and Sewell was reported to have seized the Nelson member James Mackay by the throat. Wynyard brought the session to a hasty close. When the House met again on 31 August he appointed a second mixed council, led by the Auckland member Thomas Forsaith and drawn from Wakefield's few remaining supporters, but it could not command a majority and was gone within days. Wynyard went back to governing through officials alone.","London's answer came in 1855: there was no objection to responsible government and no new law was needed, provided the retiring officials got fair pensions. The approval was announced to a short session that met on 8 August 1855, and the new governor, Thomas Gore Browne, arrived in September, but fresh elections were needed before responsible government could begin. The site of that first Parliament, off Parliament Street in Auckland, was marked in 1954 and landscaped again for the 150th anniversary in 2004."],"sources":[{"title":"First sitting, 1854","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/history-of-parliament/first-sitting-1854","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"New Zealand Constitution Act comes into force","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/proclamation-of-1852-constitution-act","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Self-government and independence – Responsible government","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/self-government-and-independence/page-3","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"The 1852 Constitution and Responsible Government (1966 Encyclopaedia)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/history-constitutional/page-4","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Grey, George (Dictionary of New Zealand Biography)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1g21/grey-george","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Sewell, Henry (Dictionary of New Zealand Biography)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1s8/sewell-henry","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Wakefield, Edward Gibbon (Dictionary of New Zealand Biography)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w4/wakefield-edward-gibbon","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Wynyard, Robert Henry (Dictionary of New Zealand Biography)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w40/wynyard-robert-henry","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Travers, William Thomas Locke (Dictionary of New Zealand Biography)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1t105/travers-william-thomas-locke","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Premiers and prime ministers – Premiers, 1856–1891","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/premiers-and-prime-ministers/page-2","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"1st New Zealand Parliament","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_New_Zealand_Parliament","publisher":"Wikipedia"}]}