Kiwiblog

Local Government Online had a nifty portal last year for the local body elections. Well they have used that template to do the same for the general election – at vote.co.nz.

They list the candidates for every electorate, plus all the parties and their lists. Parties and candidates can upload material to it, and you can ask questions to the candidates.

I found their sister site for local body elections really useful, and this one should be a great resource also.

The Dom Post reports:

A website designed to help boost the country’s low voter turnout figures for local body elections has gone live.

The website, elections2010.co.nz, is a one-stop shop that aims to equip voters with all the information they need to vote in October’s local body elections.

Just 44 per cent of eligible local body election voters cast ballots in 2007.

By keying their residential address into the website, voters are instantly told which council and ward they are eligible to vote in and which candidates are standing for council and mayor.

The site contains detailed profiles on each candidate, including information on their political leanings, conflicts of interest and five main issues.

There are also links to candidates’ Facebook and Twitter pages and pre-recorded video addresses, and voters can post questions to candidates online.

The site, developed by Local Government Online with backing from Local Government New Zealand, also details which other entities voters are eligible to vote for, including district health boards and various local trusts. It will contain information on thousands of candidates, trusts, councils and boards.

What a good initiative.

I stuck in the street I live on, and it listed the four elections I can vote in, and where they have been supplied, a link to a candidate’s page.

What would be good is to take this further, and actually allow people to cast their votes via the Internet. One could have a ballot paper with hyperlinks to candidate’s pages. That way people would gain far more info than the usual 200 word biography you get in the post.

Well done to LGNZ and LGO for creating this.

A very good NZ Herald article:

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide is looking into law changes that could divide council spending between core services, which councils could automatically spend money on, and “extras” – cultural, environmental and social spending and business investments that could require approval from ratepayers.

I like the concept. It empowers ratepayers, while allowing Councils to perform core services without the possibility of inadequate funding.

Mr Hide has not listed all the services he considers core council responsibilities. But he said it would be a wide definition encompassing running libraries, transport and water services and rubbish collection.

Yesterday he listed Hamilton City Council’s investment in the Novotel hotel, Invercargill City Council’s investment in a Lotto franchise and South Taranaki District Council buying the Hawera movie theatre as examples of councils going beyond core functions.

Absolutely. And what Rodney is saying is not that Councils would be banned from doing this, but they have to get ratepayer approval.

Mr Hide said he would like voters to be able to indicate at local body elections how much they would be willing to pay in rate increases over the next three years.

Also a good idea.

Local Government New Zealand governance manager Mike Reid said many councils would not bother with innovative projects if they had to hold a referendum first.

“Invercargill could have held a referendum [on the Lotto shop] but the people on the local community board probably felt they knew what people wanted because they saw them every day in the supermarket,” he said.

If the community board members thinks it is an innovative project based on their supermarket conversations, then they can invest their own money into it – but their role is not to forcibly take money from ratepayers to spend on commercial competitive businesses.

“Any council that exposes itself to too much [financial] risk can be expected to be removed at the next election.”

Mr Reid cited Auckland City as an example of a council that had been changed several times because ratepayers were not happy with spending.

Yes, but by then the spending has occured and is generally not reversible.

Taking decision-making powers away from councillors would stop energetic and entrepreneurial people standing for local bodies, he said.

Councils are not meant to be entreprenuers. You want entrepreneurs when it is their own money they are risking – not everyone else’s. If Council has commercial subsidiaries then entrepreneurs can be appointed to those, but it is ridicolous to think that people get elected to territorial local authorities on the basis of their entrepreneurial activities.

“If it was such a great idea [requiring ratepayer approval] central government might like to apply it to itself, because we’re talking about quite small amounts of money.”

Also not a bad idea. Central Government should not be buying or establishing businesses in competitive sectors.

Gerard Langford, of South Taranaki District Council, said his council bought the Hawera cinema building for $1 million two years ago because the private owners were about to close it.

The community supported keeping the movie theatre, which was run by a trust using money from ticket sales and advertising, he said.

And if the ratepayers gave their approval, they still could.

Local Government NZ, along with NZ Post, ran a simulated election amongst secondary school students alongside the general election. This is a great civics initiative and 13,000 voted.

And those who want a smaller Parliament will be delighted with the results – a Parliament of only 107 MPs!

How is this possible? It is an obscure feature called underhang – the opposite of overhang. Let us look at the results:

1. National 28.4%, 36 seats, 29 elects, 7 list
2. Labour 25.0%, 32 seats, 16 elects, 16 list
3. Bill and Ben Party 11.7%, 15 seats, 0 elects, 15 list
4. Greens 11.2%, 14 seats, 0 elects, 14 list
5. Legalise Cannabis 10.5%, 13 seats, 0 elects, 13 list
6. Maori Party 4.9%, 6 seats, 6 elects, 0 list
7. ACT 1.9%, 2 seats, 1 elect, 1 list
8. NZF 1.0%, 1 seat, 1 elect, 0 list
9. United Future 0.7%, 1 seat, 1 elect, 0 list

Now the Bill and Ben Party only had two candidates (Bill and Ben!) on their party list, so there would be an underhang of 13 MPs for a Parliament of 107. This means to form a Government you need 54 votes. So what would the Government be?

You could do National 36 + ALCP 13 + Maori 6 = 55

More likely is Labour 32 + Greens 14 + ALCP 13 = 59

The electorate seat won by NZ First was actually in Tamaki, so their sole MP would be a Doug Nabbs.

They have given results for each electorate also. Below are the seats where a different party would have won the electorate vote if the kids were the real electors:

1. Auckland Central – Labour
2. Bay of Plenty – Labour
3. Dunedin North – National
4. Invercargill – Labour
5. New Lynn – National
6. Rimutaka – National
7. Tamaki – NZ First
8. West Coast-Tasman – Labour
9. Whanganui – Labour
10. Wigram – National
11. Ikaroa-Rawhiti – Maori

It is great to see the kids encouraged to take part in mock elections and vote. The results do show though why the Greens are bonkers with their campaign to lower the voting age to include 16 and 17 year old schoold students.

Aaron Bhatnagar blogs on the results of the Local Government NZ elections which saw Hastings District Mayor Lawrence Yule elected President and Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast Vice-President. I expected Lawrence to win the top job as the smaller councils do tend to be a bit wary of the larger Councils dominating.

One can understand they are so wary, when you see what Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey said:

Yesterday, Mr Harvey wished Mr Yule well – but then launched a fresh attack, saying urban centres were the powerhouse of the economy but would continue to be denied a voice in local government.

“The country survives on the strength of the cities and what we bring to the economy. Local government believes it is based around a bunch of cow cockies,” he said.

“I’d rather have cities than cows. It’s always anti-Auckland, it pulls down the competitiveness of New Zealand. It holds New Zealand back. It’s a bizarre sort of thinking that the cities need to be punished. “The rural sector has always dominated local government. This is the sector with their roads that no one drives on, and places no one goes to.

“They think a farmer from Hawke’s Bay can spend that amount of time profiling local government. That’s what they voted for.”

And people wonder why the term JAFA is so popular. Harvey is arrogant and ungracious.

Two Mayors are standing for the presidency of Local Government NZ. Lawrence Yule from Hastings and Wellington’s Kerry Prendergast.

I have the privilege of knowing both contenders, so can say I think it is excellent they whatever the decision, Local Government NZ will be well served.

I’ve known Kerry (and Rex) for a long time, as you would expect in the small city that is Wellington. Lawrence I have got to know through a mutual friend and he is a very nice guy.

Nominations are open until 31 May, so there may be other contenders. It’s a pretty high profile and influential position so will be interesting to see how it goes.

Every Council that has submitted on the Government’s Affordable Housing bill is against it, and Local Government NZ has said it does not know of a single Council who would use it, if passed.

Here are some quotes:

Auckland said the bill would require it to analyse who qualified as needing an affordable home.

“This bill requires [councils] to take an interventionist role in social policy and the domestic arrangements of residents that Auckland City Council does not consider appropriate for local government.”

Indeed.  It means big rates rises for everyone, including oh yeah home owners.

Manukau City’s submission called for the bill to be withdrawn, saying it left councils and ratepayers effectively subsidising cheaper houses.

This is all the Government seems to know sometimes. Instead of focusing on fundamentals such as how to improve the overall wealth of NZ, their instinctive response to every issue is merely for rich pricks to subsidise everyone else.

We’ll see this later this year when all taxpayers will be asked to have more of their tax dollars go towards extending paid parental leave.  That won’t stop people fleeing to Australia.

The North Shore City Council said it would need two years and up to $250,000 to establish a policy on implementing the changes.

The bill’s provisions would push up the overall cost of housing, leaving “middle-income New Zealanders” paying more for their homes.

Yep affordable housing for Labour means having “rich pricks” or as NSCC calls them “middle-income NZers” paying more for their housing.