Brian Rudman: Banksie raids true-blue emergency kit

John Banks holds 6-month-old Holly Mahuru. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Auckland mayoral candidate John Banks' last-ditch battlecry, "Beware the South Auckland hordes are coming to get you," came straight out of his old National Party candidate's emergency manual.

It's a dusting down of the domino theory his mentor Rob Muldoon used back in the 1960s and 1970s to scare up support for New Zealand's military role in Vietnam. If South Vietnam fell, went the mantra, the red/yellow peril would flow down the map and be in Auckland by Christmas.

What Mr Banks seems to have forgotten is that back then Mr Muldoon wasn't also seeking electoral support from the area he was bagging.

One can only assume, given Mr Banks continues to repeat the warning that as mayor his centre-left rival Len Brown would bring the South Auckland infection to the rest of the city, that private polling is showing so little support for Mr Banks south of Otahuhu that he has little to lose by alienating the whole area.

Certainly the Cheshire Cat grins on the faces of Len Brown's supporters would back this up. Their polling apparently upholds a weekend poll in the Herald on Sunday, showing that of those who had voted Mr Brown had 56 per cent support compared to Mr Banks' 33 per cent. Private polling also shows right-wing independent Colin Craig nudging 10 per cent, votes which Mr Banks desperately needs.

Joining in the Brown euphoria is former Labour Party president Mike Williams who, while carefully not picking a winner in a recent blog, is anointing Mr Brown's young campaign organiser, Connor Roberts, as a worthy member of "the pantheon of great political organisers with the likes of Sir George Chapman and Matt McCarten".

He modestly leaves himself out of that list but he can certainly speak from experience. He was campaign organiser for Labourite Cath Tizard's first successful bid for the Auckland mayoralty and for the two that followed.

Like Connor Roberts, he also aroused the sleeping South Auckland Labour vote in the 2005 general election, increasing the turnout by 46,000 votes and ensuring Helen Clark a record third term as prime minister.

Mr Roberts has succeeded by doing all the basic campaign mechanics well. He's organised the churches - a centre of local social life - to ensure their congregations vote. He's rallied the unions to do likewise with their membership. Basic stuff, perhaps, but rare in the context of an Auckland local body campaign.

By yesterday afternoon 45.6 per cent of voters had returned their ballot papers, nearly 15 percentage points more than at the same time in the 2007 campaign. Mr Banks will be hanging his hopes on the fact that turnout in places he should be doing well in like Orakei (52.6 per cent) and Howick (52.3 per cent) is now higher than Brown strongholds like Mangere-Otahuhu (42.2 per cent) which had made the early running.

Whether the final turnout will reach the 59.8 per cent record set in 1986 by Auckland City voters following the introduction of postal voting, we'll know tomorrow. It's certainly going to be well up on the 35-45 per cent recorded three years ago across the region, and the 30.4 per cent in 1983 in Auckland City which helped trigger the introduction of postal voting.

A Herald-Digipoll survey in 2007 underlined how damaging low-voting is to the left. Of intending non-voters in Auckland City, 46.7 per cent identified with Labour and a further 13 per cent with Greens. North Shore patterns were similar. In Manukau, non-voters were 66.7 per cent Labour, 8.3 per cent Green. Only in Waitakere was the situation reversed, with 50 per cent of non-voters National to Labour's 37.5 per cent. Is it any wonder that Mr Banks has felt the need to resurrect the domino theory?

Of course, while the mayoral tussle seems to have improved voter turnout, it has also taken attention away from the contests to elect the 20 councillors and 149 board members who together will have the power to approve, or reject, the programme of action Mayor Brown or Mayor Banks puts forward.

With many of the candidates hiding behind "independent", predicting which side of the fence they will fall has been, as always in local body politics, one of the least satisfying aspects of this democratic exercise. When shopping, I prefer as much labelling as possible. It's so much easier to ensure you get the model you want and for demanding a refund for non-performance afterwards.