High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Waikato is the name of a current electorate in the New Zealand Parliament from 2006; which earlier existed for two periods, 1871 to 1960 and 1969 to 1996 when MMP was introduced.The electorate was created after the 2006 census, as the successor to the former Piako seat. Piako has been pulled north to account for changes both in Auckland (whre population growth has pulled the boundary of Port Waikato around the Waikato River), and in the central North Island, where several electorates went into the boundary review under quota, forcing their boundaries further north. It has lost the towns of Te Aroha to Coromandel and Cambridge to Taup , and in exchange gained the rural and semi-urban areas around Hamilton East, and Huntly, Te Kauwhata and Meremere from Port Waikato.