Low voting begs democracy query

Wanganui voters meet district council candidates at a pre-election forum. It's a major surprise that voter turnout was down, writes MP Chester Borrows. PICTURE/FILE

Well, the local government elections have come and gone with lots of surprises and some expectations of more of the same.

The major surprise for me was seeing that the voter turnout was down again on the last local body election, and I wonder how much of a democracy we can have if the turnout continues to drop - but then maybe choosing not to vote at all is the greatest freedom.

Having witnessed elections in some other places, such as the Pacific Islands, I think we are all a pretty apathetic bunch.

This recent election seems to have been an endorsement of councils who can get along and those that have a reputation for scrapping first and governing later have been dealt to quite substantially.

I wonder, too, if local councils had devolved power from central government, whether people would take more interest. If schools, welfare, housing and the like were council responsibilities, then maybe we would pay more attention.

My recent experience is that when this happens there can be a community-based response to local issues, but it was very difficult to achieve a national focus on anything.

With 43 different police forces in Britain, the enforcement of the law and the options for resolutions are all over the place. What would be a problem in one county is not in another.

When it comes to welfare and education, it is worse - there is no way to take a national initiative and ensure all children, or beneficiaries, get what they've paid their taxes for. I walked into classrooms in Nova Scotia and found that while the education seemed to be top class, as much as I could witness, the conditions were appalling. No carpet on the floors, no whiteboards, no technology in the classrooms, no pictures on the walls, and most buildings in need of refurbishment.

In that city, schools were built to a good standard but refurbishment meant fixing a broken window, not painting the walls or buying new equipment. So social policy even at community level becomes a bargaining tool at election time.

Most councils in New Zealand complain that devolution of responsibility from central government is okay if it comes with the money to do it but, in the main, they'd rather operate as they do now, with a confined and limited local responsibility for water, sewerage, local infrastructure and some local projects, rather than getting into government with all the additional staff and resources to allocate.

In our country most councillors are part-time and to manage a bigger portfolio would be difficult and to do it properly, very expensive. I have come to the conclusion that we have the right model for the geography and population spread. We just have to do it better.

In the end, democracy is a funny beast.

The behaviour, good or bad - raises name recognition and we have people rewarded for not being able to get along, by re-election. That encourages people to grab the headlines, but so does taking the responsibility of public office seriously.

A politician who raises a good argument and is prepared to voice it, and knows how to work the media, will often be castigated for saying publicly what others may not have the stomach for, even though they crow about transparency in government.

Identifying those who are passionate about the issues, have personal standards and are not afraid to stand up for what they believe in, as opposed to those who can't share the sandpit with the other kids, is the real poser for electors in any election, and particularly at local government level.