Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
Twyford Phil: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6438] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 I want to make some comments about representation— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Is no National Party person taking a call? 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: It seems that the members on the other side of the Chamber are not interested in this debate and do not place a very high priority on it. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: No Auckland MPs. 
PHIL TWYFORD 
: Very few Auckland MPs; they seem to have given up entirely on this debate. But we will press on because issues of representation are fundamental to the super-city project and fundamental to democracy. If the rules are not fair if they are not seen to be balanced transparent and fair and if every person in Auckland every neighbourhood every community does not have an equal say in the affairs of the city then that is not democratic. It will certainly mean that the overriding objective of increasing participation in civic engagement will not be met. 
The Government got off to a bad start in this area with its proposal for at-large councillors. It is absurd to expect individual candidates for the Auckland Council to stand in an electorate of 1.4 million people and 5000 square kilometres. The public reaction to that proposal which presumably came from the Minister of Local Government was overwhelmingly negative. The Government has claimed that it is listening that it has backed down and done a U-turn on that idea but it is clear from the bill it is clear from the commentary that it is attempting to achieve the same objectives through the back door with its idea of multi-member wards that are almost 2.5 times bigger than a parliamentary electorate. It is at-large elections through the back door. It is clear that the wards will be so big that they will undermine fair representation and many communities in Auckland simply will not be represented. One ward will be the size of some of the existing cities and will likely have three representatives. That is an unacceptable local government ratio of representatives to citizens. The submitters to the select committee process were strongly against at-large councillors. I think if we re-opened the select committee hearings now we would find that the submitters would be equally against multi-member wards which create very very large electorates. People wanted fair representation and they wanted their councillors to be directly accountable to local communities. 
In the same vein Labour believes that the number of councillors proposed for the Auckland Council is too small. Twenty councillors for a city of 1.4 million people is inadequate. It is just not enough. It means that there will be approximately one councillor for 49000 Auckland voters. To remedy that Labour has tabled an amendment that would push up the number of councillors to 25. That is one of a number of measures Labour is proposing in this debate in order to create a more representative fairer and more balanced model for the new super-city. 
As well as introducing more councillors the best thing this bill could do is to implement the single transferable vote (STV) system of voting for the Auckland Council at all levels—for the mayoralty for the council and for the local boards. It is just one of a number of flaws in this bill that the Government has chosen to adopt the first-past-the-post voting system. One of my colleagues mentioned earlier that there is a pattern in Auckland City of mayors being elected on around 20 percent of the vote under first past the post. This Government is proposing to use the same voting system in the Auckland super-city to elect the mayor of the new structure for one-third of our country’s population. It is proposing to load up the super-mayor with extra powers under a voting system that will probably deliver a mayor who attains only 20 percent of the vote. What kind of legitimacy what kind of popular mandate will that mayor have under the new system? Not very good I suggest. The STV voting system is clearly fairer. By definition under STV every vote counts. Therefore it is likely to increase the level of civic engagement with the political process. STV has a track record of delivering greater diversity in terms of minority representation.