I am absolutely intrigued to find that supporters of Napier’s partial ward system, are now saying that the Napier City Council has failed to make it work.
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Sorry – am I missing something here? The Napier City council is not making the system work? The Napier City Council never wanted the system in the first place. In the 2004/2007 council, only Robin Gwynn supported a ward system. Robin Gwynn was the only councillor to lose his seat.
A tiny but determined minority ended up putting enough pressure on the electoral commission to convince them, in Wellington, that wards would somehow benefit Napier. Surely if this determined minority wants to prove to the city that wards are good for Napier, it is up to them to prove it.
There is nothing at all stopping them from calling a meeting in their ward. I am sure their ward Councillors would attend as would most city wide Councillors.
To have a situation where a vocal minority inflicts a system on the majority who are against it – and then for that vocal minority to suggest it is someone elses job to make their system work beggars belief.
For similar reasons I believe the proposed system for local body governance in Auckland is fraught with difficulty.
The Lord Mayor of Auckland and his 20 Councillors will be governing – in a local body sense – 1.4 million people. That is one third of New Zealand’s population.
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The 20 Councillors will, no doubt, be elected on a party vote basis. So a Mayor and a simple majority of say, 11 Councillors, could be running a city made up of one third of New Zealand’s population.
For my dough that’s getting up the pointy end of the democratic process.
Surely such a system opens up all sorts of doors we simply don’t want to go through. Just imagine the resources the Government of the day could pour into the Auckland City Council to try and court favour with one third of our population.
Do you ever feel we change things for changes sake?
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