Mayor calls for exams to test councillors’ abilities
It will be back to school for councillors if Porirua mayor Anita Baker gets her way. She wants councillors to sit regular exams to measure their competency.
As a long-standing justice of the peace, she has to sit regular exams and can see no reason why councillors should not do the same.
‘‘I just think an exam keeps it relevant because things to do change,’’ Baker said.
A range of current and former politicians spoken to doubted it would work and argued voters had to make more effort to check out candidates and vote for the ones that had the competency to do the job.
Local government is getting increasingly complex and Baker said it was clear many voters and candidates had limited understanding of how councils worked.
Sitting an exam should be treated as a ‘‘performance review’’ and voters should expect their representatives to understand issues like local government legislation and resource consent.
Baker believed the continuing decline in voter turnout was a growing concern and that part of the problem related to voters losing confidence in elected members.
That partly reflected the way candidates made promises around issues like Three Waters and sacking council staff, which they could not fulfil, she said.
But former Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan does not support exams.
‘‘It sounds like a good idea but democracy is about the butcher, the baker and candlestick maker sitting around the council table and making decisions.’’
Voters, he said, had to ‘‘take more responsibility’’ and elect people who were up to the task.
Having civics taught at school would help voters and politicians make better decisions, he said.
Political scientist Jean Drage also had misgivings about the exam proposal.
‘‘How much would that help the public . . . of course they [politicians] should be trained but sitting exams is slightly oldfashioned to me.’’
Exams would not stop candidates making promises they could not fulfil, and she said voters had to take more responsibility choosing who got their tick.
Councils should do more to educate the public on what they did and it was up to politicians to call out candidates who made promises they could not keep, she said.
Former Upper Hutt councillor and mayoral candidate Angela McLeod is another who does not back exams.
‘‘We have to do something but I am not sure exams are the right thing to do because councillors are elected by the public.’’
Requiring councillors to pass an exam, would undermine the voting process, she said.
There was, however, an ‘‘appalling lack of knowledge’’ of what councillors did and
McLeod said that had to change.
The lack of civic training at school was a big part of the problem, she said.
A bigger issue than exams was the ‘‘misogyny’’ being faced by female candidates, McLeod said. It was discouraging women from standing and lowering the overall calibre of candidates.
Baker said she was regularly called racist names due to her views on Three Waters and support for karakia before meetings. She agreed that female politicians were being targeted.
Local Government New Zealand president Stuart Crosby described the idea of exams as ‘‘interesting’’ but he agreed with Baker that local government was becoming much more complex.
LGNZ was increasingly involved in professional development and upskilling for mayors, and Crosby said the draft Review of the Future For Local Government recognised it was becoming an increasingly complex role, he said.
Baker has discussed her idea with colleagues and hopes it will encourage a discussion about how politicians can be more effective.