North rushes to oppose Ma¯ori wards

Hundreds of Northlanders opposed to Ma¯ori wards have already signed up to New Zealand’s biggest opposition to the Ma¯ori wards campaign.

“The phone’s been going non-stop,” Democracy Northland leader John Bain said.

Democracy Northland is seeking 11,000 signatures across three citizeninitiated petitions to oppose recent decisions in favour of Ma¯ori wards/ constituencies by three of the North’s four councils: the Northland Regional Council (NRC), the Whangarei District Council (WDC) and the Kaipara District Council ( KDC).

Bain said petitioners were clamouring to sign up.

He said hundreds of petitioners’ signatures had already come just 24 hours after Democracy Northland’s initial public provision of polling petition forms.

This was done through a full-page advertisement in the Northern Advocate newspaper on Wednesday.

The long-time NRC councillor and former deputy chairman spearheaded setting up Democracy Northland after resigning on the spot and walking out of the council’s October 20 meeting.

He did so over what he called “broken democracy”, exiting just ahead of a 7-1 vote for the constituencies. That departure came after he had initially tried — but failed — to get the council to instead initiate a poll of its ratepayers first.

Northland’s three councils are part of seven nationally that this year decided in the wards’ favour. It’s the only region where all its councils voted on the wards at the same time.

Democracy Northland is running a co-ordinated regional campaign calling on electors to individually sign up to two separate petitions against these decisions — one demanding an NRC poll, the second demanding the same of their local district council.

Bain said the group was aiming for 6500 electors’ signatures for the NRC petition, 3500 for the WDC petition and 1000 for the KDC one.

Under the Local Electoral Act (LEA) a total of 9897 electors’ signatures is required for the Democracy Northland petitions to be valid.

Councils must go ahead with polling if 5 per cent of registered electors demand they do. This equates to 6027 people from NRC’s 120,458 electors, 3080 people from WDC’s 73,563 electors and 790 people from KDC’s 15,806 electors.

Polling results are binding on councils and consistently overturn Ma¯ori wards. This has happened with all but one New Zealand’s most recent nine polls nationally.

Councils must go ahead with the polls if demanded. This would cost Northland ratepayers $360,000: NRC $240,000, WDC $90,000 and KDC $30,000.