Councils defend candidates' starring roles in publications

Auckland Super City mayoral candidates Len Brown and John Banks. Photo / Dean Purcell

Super City mayoral candidates Len Brown and John Banks have taken centre stage in council publications - weeks before the election closes.

Using council publications in the build-up to an election is banned, but the councils are defending the move.

Manukau City Council executive Phil Wilson said a photo of a beaming Mr Brown on page three of an annual review did not breach electioneering guidelines, which are set by the Auditor-General.

The 12-page tabloid-sized review in full colour outlining how Manukau had gone from "strength to strength" in the past financial year went out as an insert in the September 12 issue of Manukau Matters. It cost $33,423 to print a copy for every one of the council's 110,000 ratepayers.

Mr Brown's campaign team did not want to comment about the anonymous complaint, but Mr Wilson said any suggestion the council had used the report for promoting Mr Brown was quite wrong.

"He is the leader of this city and for him to be invisible in a publication about our performance would have been bizarre," Mr Wilson said.

Meanwhile, the Auckland City Council, whose mayor John Banks is Mr Brown's main rival for the Super City leadership, splashed its own "2010 in review: a landmark year for council" on the front page of its September 5 edition of City Scene.

It did not include a photo of Mr Banks.

The Auditor-General's guidelines recommend that mass communication facilities, such as council-funded newsletters to constituents and mayoral or members' columns in council publications, be suspended during a pre-election period.

"A local authority must not promote, nor be perceived to promote, the election prospects of a sitting member," the guidelines said.

"Therefore, the use of council resources for re-election proposes is unacceptable and possibly unlawful."

Manukau City Council has not received a formal complaint about the issue.

- additional reporting Bernard Orsman