Kilda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Local government is how communities democratically decide what.
Happens in their backyards.
It could be the park on the corner, what day our bins go out, your neighbor's making too much noise, how much you pay in rates, or whether your dog can enjoy the beach off lead. Every day we encounter a council decision.
Whether we know it or not.
So why is voter turnout always so low? There are seventy eight local authorities in New Zealand, eleven regional councils, twelve city councils, fifty four district councils and Auckland Council which combined eight former councils in the Big Super City amalgamation of twenty ten.
That means there are a lot of roles up for grabs to.
Dive into what you need to know about this year's local elections.
Today on the front.
Page we have news Talks ZB News director and Local government reporter Michael Sergel. Michael, do we know anything about what voter turnout might be like this year?
And how it compares perhaps to previous years.
Yes, we've already got some numbers as of last week about eighteen percent turnout, which was compared to about ten point five percent at the same time last time, which is a positive sign. Voting is quite a bit higher in rural and provincial areas than Muori wards than it is in general metro areas. That's normal, that happens every time as well. We've got much lower turn out and Carterton and much higher turn out and wide Hoer. But that's also just because small population centers tend to buck
the overall national trends. And looking at the latest metro and numbers from this week, some cities with lower voter turnout last time, like Hamilton and Wellington are seeing a really huge improvement this time. But there's no real change in those two big cities, Auckland and christ Church.
And so what are the percentages? What are we looking at?
So we're looking at it varies between city and city that christ Church has sort of tends to have the highest turnout about twenty five percent so far, but the others it's in the teens.
I did hear an interview on z B recently and they were like, oh, we're hoping for forty percent, and everyone.
Was like, that is abysmal.
But forty percent if we're looking at like twenty twenty five, and that's one of the highest, forty percent is.
A good bench right, Yes, a forty percent it would be a pretty good sort of turnout for most centers, particularly given it's a postal vote. You don't get the same engagement that you get at a central election, particularly because we don't have the polling day and as many polling places as we would for a general election.
How many votes have been cast this far.
So we don't have sort of complete official numbers for the whole country. But yet, as I say, as of last week, about eighteen percent of people had returned their voting papers, which is a really positive sign compared to that very low turnout we saw in twenty twenty two.
I read your article where you delve into the more than two hundred people who will be elected unopposed this weekend.
Tell me about these numbers, yes.
Well, I mean may sing like a lot. I've been analyzing about seven thousand council races over five consecutive local elections that specifically me as councilors, local board members, community board members, anyone who sits around a council table and makes those decisions about what the council should be doing. And consistently across every single election, one in seven, more than one in seven people are being one just by just winning that race, just by standing in the race.
Which may seem like a lot, but it's actually been trending downwards. It's trended down by about a third since two thousand and one, and every election it generally tends to be lower than the last election. We've got three of christ Church's councilors, two of Auckland's already elected, and more than half of councilors on some councils have already won their seats just by filling in the application form.
Isn't that crazy?
I mean, is it because people don't understand what local government does?
But yeah, there's a range of factors potentially at play. Certainly, abuse and harassment does put a lot of people off low pay because some of these positions might only get paid ten thousand dollars and it may be thirty to forty hours a week of work for some people. So that definitely puts some people off as well. But then you know we're talking to the Gisbon mayra Het Stalks.
She's saying that often that's also a sign that people are happy with their current mayor or their current counselors, and so no one stands against those people because everyone quite likes them. We've got the case in Auckland with Desley Simpson, who's very popular in her ward, so no one has sort against her. We've got two of the major meal candidates both committing that they would like to a point heard their deputy. So in many cases it's also a sign that people are popular. And I mean
it's much lower than say the United States. We've got much more unopposed races than the UK or Australia, but fewer than the United States. Have actually looked at what's happened in the US, and I mean it's more than more than it's almost two thirds of me is and more than half of councilors in the US are unopposed, so they will pay de fault. So we're certainly not in that kind of situation. But then there's also the counter argument from some people that perhaps we have too
many roles. If all these positions are going unopposed. Maybe we need to reduce the number of local government roles and have a bit more competition for those roles.
Do you think there are any councils around the country that can perhaps be amalgamated, like the you know, the super city situation.
We've had two examples, two really good examples in recent years with christ Church and Banks Peninsula amalgamating and then Auckland's bigg amalgamation. And people have divided opinions on those. But they are also calls in Hawk's Bay and Wided Upper in Southland from algamating local government. And there's also places where you might look at a map and you wouldn't know where the boundary line was between Wellington City
and Pottydoa for example, or between Nelson and Tasman. You could look at a map and not know where those council boundaries are, so peraps you know, there may be a case for algamation there as well.
Are there any roles around the country where there are actually no candidates?
Yes? Actually, and this is something that happens every single election. Many roles have no candidates. This election alone, we've got positions on community boards and for Katane Wellington, Do Lakes, New Plymouth, Rural Hastings, Hamna Springs, McKenzie Gore. These are jobs that absolutely no one stood for.
That no one so what happens?
So they have to be filled because you know, they're roles that have to be filled, So they're subject to buy elections, most likely next year. The local ratepayers will then have to pay for those by elections, which will cost tens of thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And ironically, these by elections tend to be far more competitive than the main local elections because people suddenly realize, oh, there's these jobs up for grabs, and so ironically you often have multiple people standing for a role that no one wanted in the first place, which is ironic, and that there's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of salaries that no one has applied for, which is unheard of in any other industry.
Right now, I mean, do you do you need any prerequisites to put No?
I mean there's there's basically no, there's no sort of standards you need to meet. Really if if I mean if you're not in prison and you know you win, well, I mean if you apply. If you pay the money, then you know you can. You can take these roles and I suppose represent your local community. The qualities that I'd love to see from our elected members.
Vision, passion, I can do, attitude and pragmatism.
And they absolutely need to be able to build consensus to get decisions made. Elected members are essential for Auckland because a wide range of perspectives is needed to guide our government.
They represent the people of that community. They know the communities, they know the issues, and I think it's a very very good model, very important model to encourage local people to stand for their local body.
So at the moment, looking at the local elections twenty twenty five, I mean I'm sitting there on Saturday. What elections are heating up the most? Where do I watch?
Yeah, there's a number that I think you should look out for. I mean, obviously we've got Wayne Brown in Auckland, film Major in Christchurch, George Reddicks Redick in Dunedin and Nick Smith and Nelson all seeking a second term elect did on that blue wave last time. In Wellington, We've got and little most likely according to the latest polling, winning the Wellington Maror Race, but lots of interesting candidates
in that race. Some sitting councilors, an ice cream chain owner, a silly hatter and even a clown standing in that race, all hoping to be mayor. And in Hamilton we're getting a new mayor. A bit of a generational battleground happening there as well. You may remember Ben Bell, themir of Gore who considered resignation after surviving a no confidence motion after that rift with the CEO.
That's right, and he was the youngest life.
And he was the youngest last time as well, and he is seeking a second term, so it'll be interesting to see what happens there. Nearby an in for Cargo, we've got Nobby Clark, who obviously came under a bit of fire for some comments at a public event and also some comments in an interview with Guy Williams. So he is now retiring. His brother, Andrew Maxwell Clark is standing for mayor of Invercargol, and he's also standing for
mayor of Tasman. Then we've got another Tasman mayor who's standing for five mayoralties in five different parts of the country.
How can you do that?
You can? Both of them are well within the rights to stand for multiple different mayalties. So we've got one guy standing for two, one guy standing for five, and I suppose they picked the one that they want the most if they if they were to win multiple races.
Is that because they are in different property around the country, or that you.
Can just stand in multiple elections and some people do. This guy in Tasman has stood for those five mayorties last time as well, so he's a repeat, repeat candidate. In Clipita, we've got Craig Jepson, the self described Trump of the North. He's the guy that sort of enforced a ban on kadokey in council meetings. He also stopped climate change work, so he is he's actually stepping aside, but he's endorsing his deputy, who has sort of a
similar vision. It sort of interesting to see what happens there. We've got some long standing maya's stand down. We've got some well known names standing. Oscar Kitely, Real Housewives star Anne Bartley Burton is standing as well in local boards. And we've got a comedian, Jermaine Ross, who's asking people not to vote for him, but he's obviously a well
in recognized name in the community. Too, and you may member Michael Organ, who was the subject of David ferry As twenty twenty two documentary Mister Organ, he is standing for a council seat in Wanganui and inn Waidoa. We have one counselor who is hoping to get elected. He's campaigning for the councilor to get involved in the cannabis trade. So be interesting to see if he gets any support around the council table if he is elected on Saturday.
Yeah, I mean, why does that comedian not want anyone to vote for it?
So he says he's told Ryan Bridge on Hill Now a few weeks ago that basically it was a bit of a deer and so he lost the deer. He's standing, but he's asking people not to vote for him. He's just hoping that his campaign, I suppose, sort of attracts a bit of interest in the local board races, which are really important around Auckland and often get you know, as we say, have really low voter turnout, but they matter a lot.
O Zelenski was a comedian. He got put into a big role.
I've read a piece in newsroom from Mark Dolder examining He examined one thousand council candidates. You've got a hand and done seven thousand, but they did a thousand, and it shows candidates for local and unitary councils are overwhelmingly older, they're men, and they're white.
Does this come as a surprise.
To you, Absolutely not. If we look through the candidate list for the last two decades, consistently, there has been an over representation of European New Zealanders, of men, of older people, and that's been across almost every part of the country. There's a new demographic survey of those standing in Auckland this year and that shows a decline in pacifica a decline in news on European but still overrepresented. There is an increase in Asian candidates standing, but they
are still vastly underrepresented at the local level. And we've also seen a trend the number of women standing has actually started to drop again. So we saw that rise, you know over.
Deck Bak, I remember that that was rising at one point.
And we've seen a lot of obviously a lot of women mayors, a lot of women counselors, but the number of women standing for those roles is starting to drop again. And a key factor of that talking to a lot of women in local government is the abuse and harassment they receive, which tends to be higher for women than it is for men.
What have they told you, Well.
We certainly know that there's a lot of sort of gender based sort of harassment and abuse and that can be very intimidating. And yeah, it's kind of worrying if we're seeing things sort of trend in the opposite direction and we're seeing women vastly underrepresented at the local government level.
Yeah, I remember that survey that came out of former female members of parliament saying about all of the abuse that they got on a daily basis, and it certainly does beg a question on whether you know, the public needs to calm down a bit against women.
And local government. Usually on surveys have actually found a similar thing at the local level, and we've had a number of councilors actually resign or retire from local government in recent years because as women they received a lot of abuse.
Has anyone kind of backed out of the race because of that.
This year, I'm not sure aware of any examples, but certainly in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty two, and even back in twenty sixteen, we had we had counselors saying I've had enough of the abuse, and that you know, women counselors saying, you know that they were being targeted so often and they just had enough and it wasn't worth it for the amount of money they're receiving, for the amount of I suppose positive you know, feedback they get.
There was just so much sort of overwhelming negative sort of abuse and harassment. And also people forget that a lot of these elected members, they are only one vote around the council table, and there's only so much they can do. A lot of these issues, a lot of things in the hands of central government, and even as ME is, a lot of the power is diffuse. So that they can set the media agenda, they can set the council agenda. With their budgets, they can I suppose,
lead a lot of the council meetings. But even still, even as ME is the only one vote around the council table and the council can only do so much itself.
As well, what does the council do?
So councils do lots of things. I mean, most significantly, I suppose that the roads, the three waters, so you know, the sewerage and the water supplies, the parks, the libraries, most of the things that we use on an everyday basis, like everything that we need to leave the house, if we do leave the house on a day to day basis, we need the councils to be running those things. And whether you're a ratepayer or a renter, which is an indirect form of rate payer, you're paying for those services.
And in recent years as well, we've seen rates go up quite significantly in some parts of the country, you know, by up to twenty percent a year in some places, and that definitely sort of affects households that definitely haven't seen their incomes increase by that much.
And tell me about what happens this Saturday.
So basically, if you haven't already sent off your vote in the post, you're going to need to send it, take it to a voting place. That's supermarkets, that's libraries, and also council offices. You can also cast a special vote at some of those places as well. Then at midday Saturday, those ballot boxes will be closed strictly at midday, the vote counting of those ballot boxes will begin. We
will start to get some preliminary results. They're indicative, they tend to be, you know, sort of follow through to what the final results are, but they're not official. Those results will start coming through from one o'clock one thirty and through the afternoon and evening, and they will tell us most likely who has won those key races, the meilt races, the councilor races, and to some extent the
local board community board races as well. Some of those results may change if there's some really close races, and we saw that last election with some of those sort of councilor races, ward races in some of the big cities. But we will know most likely the mayors of our largest cities on Saturday afternoon, and we will have all of those results throughout the afternoon on news talk SeeDB and at INSIDHERL dot cod at INZID as well.
Looking forward to it. Thanks so much for joining us, Michael.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at nzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Jane Ye and Richard.
Martin, who is also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.