Nelson mayor Nick Smith has been tasked with overseeing a new group to explore local government electoral system reforms, including the implementation of four-year terms, and ways to increase voter turnout - including moving on from postal voting.
Nick, who will chair the reform group, says he is concerned about the decline in voter participation.
While turnout for the general election was reasonably high - 80 percent - by international standards, local election turnout was a “real challenge” at about half that.
Nick says it wasn't helped by different councils running their own campaigns and operating different voting systems. And, the use of postal voting was “unsustainable”.
“Post is in serious decline, we’ve got a significant number of households these days that don't even have letter boxes and do all of their business online.”
With the coalition government considering four-year terms for the national parliament, it is important local elections remain synchronised, Nick says.
“If you’re going to have a four-year proposition for Parliament, we need to align that with councils or you’re going to get a real confusion between our local and central government elections.”
Nick says he hopes a bi-partisan approach could be agreed upon to drive sensible change and ensure mayors and councillors can claim a mandate.
“In the time that I’ve been a publicly elected figure, those rates of voting have dropped by 25 percent, almost to the point where it’s a threat to the mandate that mayors and councils have to speak for their communities.”
Local Government New Zealand president, Selwyn mayor Sam Broughton, says serious reform is needed.
“Currently, local elections are cumbersome and inefficient compared with the general election. We also feel there is too much time and money wasted by having short three-year terms.
“Local government does important work and makes long-term decisions on behalf of our communities. It’s important we have a strong local democracy backing that, but we need to get the settings right.”
LGNZ’s view is to move to a four-year term. While Nick says there were disadvantages over the three-year term, he had some reservations.
“While I’m pretty supportive of shifting to a four-year term, of which I think there would be real benefits for local government, we also need to be very mindful that we do not want to be having Parliamentary and local elections at the same time.
“I think that would compromise the proper separation of powers between local and central government. But that will be one of the issues we'll need to explore as an electoral reform group.”
The other members of the reform group are Whakatāne councillor Toni Boynton, Lower Hutt mayor Campbell Barry, Waipā mayor Susan O'Regan, and Gisborne mayor Rehette Stoltz.
Nick says the broad political allegiances of the group were deliberate (Nick is a former National MP, whereas both Barry and Boynton were Labour-affiliated), as bipartisanship was essential to achieve reform.
