The case against party tickets in local government

Adrian Taylor (a member of the Kaipatiki Local Board) writes:

Now into the second half of their second term Labour are looking down the barrel of the inevitable swing NZ voters have historically made between Labour and National: 2023 could be anyone’s at this stage. However the party bigwigs at Labour seem to have decided that the best approach to consolidating their unprecedented gains at the 2020 election is to swing the party’s support base into action to dominate local authority elections this October.  …

The New Zealand public has no taste for this any more than the excesses of the National Party a couple of terms into full flight. We like fairness and we are social minded, so we vote Labour, and we like independence and entrepreneurship, so we vote National, and those are the two fundamentals that keep us swinging between the two parties. It is my understanding that the National Party actually have a policy of not getting involved in local body elections: which I totally commend — and I’m a left leaning voter. (For transparency I have typically voted Labour and/or Green, I even stood for the Greens back in the late 90s and more recently I have voted TOP as well.)

So Adam is a left leaning voter, but he nails this point:

Labour should realize how bad the optics of this are going to be because the screaming question will now be: how will a local board team or Auckland City Councillors who have run on a Labour ticket be able to oppose their local Labour MP or the Labour Government on any of the many central government issues and policies that have a direct impact on councils, local boards and their communities? The answer is: they won’t, which means they will not be able to advocate for and represent their communities with a truly independent voice.

They won’t of course. In fact that is not even their role. A Labour Councillor’s job is to represent Labour to the Council, not to represent ratepayers and residents to the Government. They are bound by party rules that forbid them from voting against the party line.