Brian Rudman: Who'd blame voters for opting out of political game

Brian Rudman. Photo / NZ Herald

As the first soggy week of spring drew to a close, the John Banks spin doctors dashed out a press release headed "The autumn campaign begins!" What gives? Instructions coming in from a northern hemisphere mastermind? Then they revealed the depths of their exhaustion by going all soppy about the "kind words" that public relations men, Brian Edwards and Matthew Hooton have penned about their candidate.

But isn't that what PR men are supposed to do, butter up clients, either current or potential, in anticipation of work to come?

Equal silliness followed in my mailbox from mayoral candidate Andrew Williams, alerting me in a special announcement, that Mikey from the Higher School of Thought, had said nice things about him in a letter to the Herald's editor.

Mikey from where?

It's been that sort of campaign, and the worst of it is there's still three weeks to go. Three weeks for the candidates to try to spark a bit of excitement into the battle to be the first leaders of the new Auckland super city. But I'm not holding my breath.

The creation of a brand new Super City was supposed to energise and excite candidates and voters alike, breathing new life into the boringness that is local body politics. Unfortunately, the reverse seems to have occurred. The boringness has won out, expanding to fill the big new region-wide vacuum that the parliamentarians have bequeathed us.

In the last local elections in 2007, voter turnout varied from 35 per cent in Franklin, Papakura and North Shore, through 38 per cent in Manukau and Waitakere, 40 per cent in Auckland City up to 45 per cent in Rodney. With the mayoral campaign more than a year old and still not a issue between the two front-runners that's triggered more than a public yawn, hopes of a legitimising big turnout, seem doomed.

For the dullness of the mayoral campaigns, the responsibility must go in part, to the two leading candidates, who have adopted a risk-averse, all things to all people approach to the contest. We can also point the finger at the Super City promoters, who raised expectations with promises of new candidates of world class leadership potential, but spectacularly failed to deliver.

As for the battles below mayoral level, here the central politicians have to take the blame for the widespread ignorance among the voters. This paper has done its best to educate Aucklanders about the new structures and the candidates, but it's a herculean task which the Government, having redesigned Auckland local governance from the ground up, should have undertaken. It has failed abysmally in this educative task. In part, that's because there are no answers. No one, for example, from the minister down, knows what powers the local boards are going to have. But there's widespread ignorance on even basic issues like wards and boards and boundaries.

In 1967, when decimal currency was introduced, there was massive public education campaign, much of it on the still newish medium of television. Yet in 2010, the Government has put a similar bomb under Auckland local democracy, then left voters to sort out the new political currency as best they can. If voters choose not to play, can you blame them?