Door slammed on public meetings
Palmerston North City Council staff have pulled out of organising public, meet-the-candidates sessions in the lead-up to October’s local body elections.
The traditional meetings where people could meet those seeking a seat around the council table have been the victim of a change in local election management. With the city’s long-serving electoral officer, John Annabell, planning to retire in November, before election donations and spending returns are finalised, the council decided to hire electionz.com to manage the election. And with that change has come advice from electionz.com electoral officer Warwick Lampp that council staff should not be involved in running meetings because it risked undermining their professional duty to remain politically neutral. Acting council strategy and planning manager David Murphy said council staff had accepted that advice.
But it is a change Massey University senior journalism lecturer Catherine Strong describes as ‘‘worrisome’’ and retiring city councillor Jim Jefferies finds disappointing.
Lampp said it was good practice for councils, particularly executive officers, not to be involved in the politics of the election. ‘‘Our advice across all our councils is that meet-thecandidate events should be organised by community groups or the like.
‘‘None of my councils get involved in organising these events, other than sometimes providing the venue.’’ Electionz.com runs the elections for 46 city, district and regional councils, and nine district health boards.
Strong said she found it worrying councils were being told not to arrange meetings. ‘‘It has a little bit of a concerning tinge, that they don’t trust staff to be non-political with something as simple as organising an event.
‘‘And what if community groups don’t do it?’’ Strong said an opportunity to meet and watch candidates was more valuable for voters than a few words about them in the voting packs or in the media. Loss of public opportunities to speak also disadvantaged newcomers.
Jefferies said stopping councilhosted events deprived the community of an opportunity to see those candidates in person.
Manawatu¯ People’s Radio has teamed up with the Community Services Council to host candidate meetings at Hancock Community House, starting at 11am today.
Radio manager Fraser Greig said the events would be recorded so the public would also be able to view them at leisure.
Public bodies are notoriously risk averse, sometimes comically so. But there’s nothing funny about Palmerston North City Council’s decision to heed advice not to host meet the candidates public meetings ahead of this year’s local body elections.
The advice, from electoral officer Warwick Lampp, is that council staff risked their political neutrality through involvement in running meetings.
This seems strange because the meetings can be hosted by an independent chairperson, lessoning the risk of a council official having to tell a candidate to get off the stage.
Now, even taking to a stage is left to community groups and interested parties, for it is only they who can organise candidates’ meetings in Palmerston North.
The city council running scared is a bad look when surely its core responsibility is to promote local democracy and ensure voters are as informed as possible.
As Massey University senior journalism lecturer Catherine Strong says, it’s strange city hall doesn’t trust its staff not to act in a professional manner.
Of course, it’s possible at a public event they may have to step in as a form of security if joke candidates such as serial mayoralty hopeful Ross Barber require encouragement to stop speaking, or to get back on topic.
But if this happens in front of an audience of
interested voters they would have witnessed for themselves the likely illogical outburst that led to such an intervention and would probably cheer it on.
Both Strong and retiring city councillor Jim Jefferies rightly condemn the council’s move as putting newcomers at a disadvantage, because they have one less platform from which to articulate their candidacy.
Lampp works for electionz.com, which runs elections for 46 councils and nine district health boards around New Zealand.
According to him: ‘‘None of my councils get involved in organising these events, other than sometimes providing the venue.’’
That’s a worry and if those decisions are made upon his advice, electionz.com might have to reconsider its approach because a private entity really has no place meddling in civic affairs and contributing to furthering ignorance about local body politics.
Lampp’s argument that it’s good practice for councils not to be involved in the politics of an election is, on the surface, sound, but simply holding candidates’ meetings to better inform the public is not political in itself.
Jefferies is also right that meetings organised by community groups could attract voters with a particular rather than a general focus.
Local body politics is too important to leave to chance, so the city council must change its stance and fulfil its responsibility to educate voters by holding public candidates’ meetings.
The city council running scared is a bad look when surely its core responsibility is to promote local democracy and ensure voters are as informed as possible.