The doyen of Auckland reporting on dismal turnouts across the country, and in the super city especially.

The decline in voter turnout at local body elections across the country, and in Auckland especially, sends a message that “something has got to change”. That’s the assessment of Todd Niall, senior Auckland reporter for Stuff, speaking on a bonus episode of Spinoff politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime.

Since the last major restructure of local body government in 1989, turnout has fallen from 57% to 42.2% in 2019. New Zealand’s biggest city was in particularly dire straits, coming in at just over 35% turnout among eligible voters in the last local elections. “I would hope that Auckland can’t fall below 35% but it is possible,” said Niall. “And if it is, that’s a real sign that something needs to change, if in a city so big, with all the issues that Auckland faces, that maybe less than a third of people can be bothered to vote.”

Follow Gone By Lunchtime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

Disappointing turnout figures were mirrored in low numbers of nominations for elections around the country, prompting Local Government NZ to issue an “SOS” earlier this week.

“The last numbers I saw for Auckland … I think there were 87 nominations versus 137 [at the same point] three years ago,” said Niall. It was concerning “particularly at the entry level, that community board or as we call it in Auckland, local board level”, he said.

“Is it that people are wary of putting themselves into that environment where there is hostility about issues that they’re going to be dealing with? Is it just that coming out of Covid people have other things that they’re focusing on? It’s an interesting discussion point.”

Among the questions that needed addressing on low turnout, said Niall, was whether postal voting was fit for purpose at at a time when mailing letters was a foreign concept to so many people, the potential to centralise more functions under the Electoral Commission, and “the debate over whether big party labels should be used by candidates”.

Also on the podcast: a run-through of the frontrunners in the Auckland mayoralty, their platforms and approaches, the debates so far, how this campaign compares to the four previous super city contests, and what a mayor can realistically hope to achieve.

Follow Gone By Lunchtime on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.