Ponsonby or Grey Lynn or Parnell could end up with no local voice at all, says Brian Rudman
Today is your last chance to try to persuade the Local Government Commissioners to try harder in their redesign of the Auckland local government electoral landscape.
The underlying impetus behind creating a Super City was to correct the perceived imbalance between regional and local forces.
Auckland's progress was being held back, it was argued, because local city fiefdoms spent too much time scrapping with each other, and not enough time being Aucklanders.
But what is now being proposed by both the Government and the Local Government Commissioners risks swinging the scales too far the other way.
When the commission's draft proposals were released two weeks ago, I highlighted the undemocratic nature of the ward boundaries. The variation in population size between wards went way beyond the statutory deviation limit of plus or minus 10 per cent.
The inner city ward of Maungawhau-Hauraki Gulf, for instance, was 24.3 per cent under-represented, with only one councillor for every 88,000 residents. However the reluctant new citizens of Rodney were 24.3 per cent over-represented, with one councillor per 53,590 residents.
Indeed all but four of the wards exceeded the anti-gerrymander guidelines written into the Auckland legislation.
It's one thing for disproportion in the ratio to develop over time as populations wax and wane, but to so blatantly ignore from the outset the basic democratic belief that each vote is of equal value is hardly a reassuring entry to the brave new world of world-class citizenship.
The commissioners have been equally cavalier about the time-honoured requirement that in drawing up boundaries they also preserve and observe such basics as "communities of interest".
As Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney and former Auckland City councillor Greg McKeown asked in yesterday's Herald, where's the community of interest uniting the people of plush Paritai Drive, Orakei, and the people of Princes St, Otahuhu.
In front of me is a pamphlet headed "Local Government Commission abolishes Mt Eden" with a map showing the Mt Eden village shopping centre cut in two by the boundary between Maungawhau-Hauraki Gulf and Mt Albert-Mt Roskill.
Indeed the city end of Mt Eden joins with Parnell, Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Herne Bay to form a ward whose only commonality of interests seems to be we mostly live in gentrified old villas.
Perhaps to commissioners who live in deepest Rodney or Wellington, denizens of this new ward do all look and sound the same.
But to each other, our communities are distinctive - and we'd like to preserve that. But instead, we're given one councillor to represent us all and beneath that, just one local board to represent 78,860 mainland residents plus separate tiny boards for both Waiheke and Great Barrier islands.
At least, elsewhere in the city, local boards are selected on a ward basis, with elected members to represent localities like Devonport and Three Kings and Waikowhai.
But in the central board the five members are to be elected at large, meaning Ponsonby, or Grey Lynn or Parnell could end up with no local voice at all.
Wherever you look on the commission's blueprint, obvious communities of interest seem split or isolated. The solution seems obvious. Split the unwieldy two member wards, which create great sprawling electorates where nobody seems to feel at home, and have 20.
The other improvement would be to increase the number of local boards from the commission's 19 to the Government's top limit of 30.
Peter McKinlay, director of the Local Government Centre at AUT University, is highly critical of the commission's reasoning on this.
In an analysis of the proposals, he says that "arguably, the commission is undermining the potential for greater community engagement just at the time that the Government itself is emphasising its importance".
He worries that "the commission appears to have taken the view that local boards, and by definition local democracy, should be shaped to meet the administrative needs of the Auckland Council rather than the other way around."
He argues that "contrary to popular belief, New Zealand is significantly under-governed at the local level, a situation which the commission's recommendations will exacerbate".
He notes that in France, there is an elected official for every 120 people "which is why French micro-democracy is alive and kicking". In Germany the ratio is 1:250, in Britain it is 1:2600 yet in Auckland, a local board member will represent an average of 12,740 people. This, he says, "is clearly inadequate for this purpose".
If you agree the commission needs to try harder, you have the rest of the day to let them know at. http://www.lgc.govt.nz.
