Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
Locke Keith: Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6366] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I want to talk a little bit about representation in Auckland and making any new body there much more representative of its total population. I think the Government has underestimated the feeling amongst Aucklanders that their very culturally diverse city is not being fully represented in all its aspects. That is particularly reflected in the debate over the refusal of the Government to allow specific Maori seats. There is also under-representation of other ethnic communities new migrant communities and Pasifika communities. If we look at the voting for council positions across the Auckland region we see that there has been very much a dominance of people with European names. 
One of the ways of overcoming that apart from the Government changing its mind and reinstating Maori seats as recommended by the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance is to introduce the single transferable vote (STV). I support my colleague Sue Bradford’s amendment to clause 23A to replace first-past-the-post voting with single transferable voting. What it means is that cultural minorities do not need to get say 50 percent of the vote to get in. If the new multi-member wards have say three representatives then the candidates need to reach a threshold of 25 percent; if they have four representatives the threshold is 20 percent and it is much easier for minorities to be represented. It is a very successful system that is used in Wellington and many other places in New Zealand. I think the citizens of Wellington really like the system. It is used successfully in the Australian Senate. It gives good representation to minority parties including the Green Party. 
It would also be valuable for the mayor of this Greater Auckland body. We already have two candidates for mayor—John Banks and Len Brown—and others may come into the race. If there were say five candidates then the winning candidate might gain the very important position—unfortunately it is too important in terms of its powers—of mayor with just 25 or 30 percent of the vote with the vote being split between the five candidates. However if we had STV then each successful candidate for a one-position vote such as the vote for mayor would have to get 50 percent or more of the vote after preferences are distributed from the losing candidates upwards. So it is very important. 
Sure people say that perhaps later on we can have STV but would it not be best to start out with the right system? It is much harder to change systems. In changing systems sometimes we have the problem of incumbents who are sitting there under the first-past-the-post voting system not wishing to change to STV because it might endanger their particular position even though a more representative system would be the result. We have tried in the past to have STV in Auckland through petitioning. A few years back the Greens and others were involved in a petition. We tried to get 10 percent of electors to sign it in order to force a referendum on STV. It is a hard struggle to get the right number of signatures for such a petition. It is a lot of work. It would be much better if we started off with the best system. 
The report of the Auckland Governance Legislation Committee acknowledged the popularity of the STV voting system. It was more popular amongst submitters than any other system. In a place like the North Shore for example if there were three or four representatives in a ward STV would allow minorities and people from different parts of the North Shore to be elected.