Tomorrow at noon, nominations close to stand as a candidate in this year’s local government elections. Concerns remain about a shortage of candidates, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.
Nominations starting to flow in some areas
Yesterday I included an item about Local Government NZ (LGNZ) issuing an “SOS for local democracy” prompted by concern about a shortage of candidates to stand in the local government elections. As Toby Manhire outlined yesterday, just over 17% of all seats in the 2019 local election were uncontested. Tracking this story yesterday and this morning, there are some heartening headlines about “nominations starting to flow”. Despite no connection to the Riviera of the South, I confess to being strangely interested in the Timaru mayoral race, and we at least now have two candidates standing. Last night, Marcus Lush threw his hat in the ring for the Invercargill mayoralty, bringing that field to nine candidates.
Many seats still look like they’ll be uncontested
Unfortunately there are still headlines about not needing to be voted in to be a councillor in many areas. In the Hawkes Bay, less than a fifth of the wards have enough nominations to force votes this year. Stuff journalist Charlie Mitchell posted the list of nominations for Hutt City council and the Queenstown Lakes and Waimakariri district councils on Twitter, as they stood at 8.33am yesterday, and described the situation as “bleak”. In Northland, 17 out of 63 council or community board positions remain empty. Perhaps, like many of us with filing deadlines, everyone is just leaving it to the last minute, although Waipa District Council had a warning for the procrastinators.
Numbers of younger politicians growing but not representative of population
LGNZ’s vision is “for Aotearoa to be the most active and inclusive local democracy in the world”. People need candidates that represent them, voters need choice and the prospect of running for local government and public service perhaps needs to feel less daunting. Irra Lee at 1 News has looked at how well local government politicians reflect the population. Lee reports that while there has been growth in representatives aged between 18 and 40 years old, it still isn’t proportionate to the population. As the government acknowledges in the introduction to its review of the future local government, New Zealand is going to change a great deal over the next 30 years. Tuning into the elections this year, and engaging with the challenges and opportunities of local government is especially important ahead of the formal submission period for the review in October.
Spinoff editor-at-large Toby Manhire introduces the local government coverage you can expect from The Spinoff
Like daffodils at the break of spring, billboards are sprouting up everywhere as local body election season blooms. The first big deadline is this Friday, which is both the last day to ensure you’re sorted on the roll to postal-vote and the last day to get nominated to contest one of the hundreds of elections around the country, too. With the support of the Public Journalism Investment Fund, The Spinoff is working on a big slate of coverage, including reporting, data visualisation, podcasts and a different way of doing debates. The magnificent Policy Local will return, enhanced and upgraded. Let us know which interesting contests or pressing issues you’d like to see covered and alert us to events to add to our bumper campaign diary. And, of course, do send in pics of colourful or conspicuous billboards: info@thespinoff.co.nz