Democracy a joke at the local government polls
Voters in Auckland and nationwide will soon choose mayors, councillors and members of local boards, district health boards and licensing trusts. Regrettably, only 43 per cent of voters exercised their democratic right in New Zealand’s last triennial local government elections in 2016. Yet local government decisions affect most people more than do edicts from central government.
By largely disregarding local government, central government and the media worsen its plight. Consequently, voters know little about most local government candidates.
This ignorance allows central government, powerbrokers and lobbyists to have a virtual free hand, leading to unwanted and at times dire consequences.
Like a delicate plant, an enlightened democracy will wither and die unless tended with great care. All levels of society need to participate in the democratic process, or its priceless free choice, free expression and personal initiative will be threatened. Our forebears died in their centuries-long struggle to establish the liberal democracy we assume is our entitlement.
The current council members nationwide are predominantly white males: middle-aged and a few elderly. They are pejoratively known as “pale, stale males” (I’m of this ilk but without any involvement ever in local or central government).
Only about 6 per cent of councillors are aged under 40. New Zealand is markedly multi-ethnic with many religions, faiths and ideologies. However, few members of ethnic minorities are elected to local or central government roles. This applies also to young adults.
The Auckland super city, with one third of the country’s population, has more than 230 different ethnicities. The makeup of the various councils and boards exemplify the disconnection between government and the general public.
Our mainly 19th-century Britishinherited outdated Westminster democracy needs radical revision. The eminent mid-to-late 20th-century Conservative Party politician Lord Hailsham perceptively maintained that Westminster democracy is an elective dictatorship.
Certainly, our mid 20th-century Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was a dictator in all but name. And Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas behaved similarly in the late 1980s as he ushered in Rogernomics.
Unless we can make our democracy function significantly better, we are unlikely to realise our potential in the contemporary complex, interconnected digital world.
The overweening power exercised by central government is shown by how it spends about 85 per cent of the taxation raised throughout the country.
Consequently, local government is cash-strapped, making major local issues such as transport, healthcare, education, housing and the environment extremely difficult to deal with. This is the negation of an enlightened local democracy.
Further, central government is bedevilled by our short, three-year parliamentary term. Hence, central government is reluctant to implement legislation addressing major issues for fear of losing the forthcoming election since the hoped-for electoral benefits take time to materialise.
An enlightened local democracy is not just a “nice to have” but a prerequisite if New Zealand’s population of five million are to be wealthy and equitable. Finland, Denmark and Norway, whose populations are close to ours, are characterised by their wealth and equity of opportunity.
In marked contrast to us, local government in those countries spends about 85 per cent of all tax raised, enabling many of their local communities and regions to prosper.
I hope the voters will turn out in their droves for the October local government elections and in the general election next year they will back parties that want to give local government the resources and powers it needs.
John Hawkes is a fourth-generation Kiwi; a medical graduate of Dunedin Medical School; a consultant rheumatologist near London for 25 years; a NZ athletics champion; and author of New Zealand: Paradise Squandered?