Deborah Hill Cone: Boring election but exciting future

Douche or Turd? Photo / Dean Purcell

So it is almost over, and I think it is fair to say the Super City election has not exactly set voters' hair on fire.

One of my friends said it reminded her of the South Park episode (aired just before the 2004 American presidential election) when Cartman and Kyle were pressured to exercise their democratic right to vote, even though the standing candidates (for the South Park Elementary School mascot) were a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. Douche or turd?

Tricky choice. At the time I am writing this, it seems pretty clear the business community and old, establishment Auckland could put up with Len Brown as mayor but South Auckland - and Maori, Labour and Green voters - could not live with John Banks.

That is a choice Banks himself made in the rather autistic way he has run his campaign.

Did he really think it would help his case on the Close Up debate last week when he told Brown he didn't "want South Auckland replicated across the North Shore and across all of Auckland".

This is a rational comment; to a robot, that is.

Certainly South Auckland has lower income levels and more social problems than other parts of the city, so it is logical not to want to copy that.

But to a human being, this just looks mean-spirited and offensive. It ignores the fact that Manukau has lots of positive things going for it - there are some beautiful and wealthy parts of Manukau, it is young, lively, diverse and dynamic and is also where a large amount of the city's businesses are based.

For someone who came from a working class background, Banks seems to have adopted a pull-the-ladder-up-behind-me attitude to the blue-collar side of town.

Surely since he managed to bootstrap himself to success he knows the way to achieve anything is by being positive, not by saying Manukau is a "social disaster".

That's the spirit, Tiger. But the good thing is, although the election itself is almost over, this is not the end, it is just the beginning.

We are going to have a new style of local government and I have to confess I am excited about it.

Until now local body politics have been relegated to the community newspapers and the issues have been too diverse, the personalities too obscure and the debates too tedious to turn into water-cooler chat. Trying to get anyone to even take notice of civic issues was a struggle.

But with our new Super City local body politics is getting a makeover and it's going to be sexy.

Everything is going to be bigger. More money, more influence, more energy and just more interesting.

We will have a City Hall with enough power in its corridors that we could host our own Spin City (the hit 1996 television series set in the New York mayor's office).

And the star of the show will be ... drumroll please ... Douche or Turd?