Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:663;Page:11544] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I will follow on from the previous speaker Dr Prasad and say that it is important to have ethnic diversity in the representational structure for local bodies in Auckland. The advisory boards inadequate though they are in terms of full voting representation of the different ethnic communities in Auckland are a step forward. I appreciate that Dr Prasad is trying to make them at least a permanent part of the structure. It is important through the overall elected structure of the Auckland Council and the boards to try to create systems that allow that diversity to be expressed. 
One thing I want to talk about in relation to that is the voting system. It is disappointing that the voting system cannot be changed from first past the post to the single transferable vote (STV) system for some time out and my colleague David Clendon has an amendment on his Supplementary Order Paper 130 to change that so that we could have STV by 2013. That is important because leading up to the election in Auckland in the absence of a proportional system we have a situation where it is going to be a competition between only two camps. There is the John Banks camp to elect him for mayor and various other people who support him are running for different council positions. Then there is the Len Brown camp and I admit straight off that the Green Party is in the Len Brown camp the way it is at the moment. 
One of the problems with that situation is that it does not necessarily allow diversity. People do not necessarily fit in either camp whereas the STV system allows us to get representation a bit like that in this Parliament where not only do we have several parties represented and able to compete against each other for the party vote but also the system brings in a greater range of ethnicities. 
One of the problems in Auckland with a first-past-the post-system particularly in an area that is predominantly one ethnicity is that there will not be much of a chance for a range of ethnicities. That is the way it has played out in first-past-the-post Auckland so far and the situation will be even worse under this much more distant form of representation. The distance of representation is a real problem. At the moment most Aucklanders are a bit alienated from local bodies; the voting rate at elections is not great. People do not know the names of the councillors and the community board members very much by and large and they lack the understanding and involvement to know how to address some of their problems. 
When we have fewer representatives the representatives are even further away from them. As my colleague Sue Kedgley said in an earlier speech there will be fewer representatives at a council level in effect than there are MPs in Auckland. So it will be hard for people to access democracy and that is made worse by the mayor being further up the ladder and in charge of appointing the deputy mayor and the committee chairs. The more centralised mayoral system will make people feel even more powerless and more distant from the structure. The council-controlled organisations particularly the transport council-controlled organisation will take up a lot of the transport issues that have engaged people often at the local level of community boards. Footpaths that are getting a bit rough or whether there should be speed bumps might seem relatively little things to us but that is the level at which people have traditionally got involved. To have all those types of issues taken over to this Auckland Transport Agency and away from people’s real control will reduce the level of participation in democracy in Auckland. It is one of the most difficult things about this bill. 
We still need to push strongly for Maori representation. The idea that people can vote for it in the future is not good enough; it should be there structurally. The Green Party is strongly for direct Maori representation. We can see how it plays out in some co-management systems that are developing in the Auckland region over the volcanoes. People like Ngarimu Blair of Ngati Whatua are getting very involved in working on things like the management of the volcanoes.