By Jean Drage.
Reflecting on my contribution to LG magazine following the 2022 Local Elections, I am struck by my bleak analysis of the low voter turnout, the lengthy debate on the major reasons for this and the ongoing refusal to address clearly identified solutions – it’s a tedious debate that generally goes nowhere.
While I stand by my writing at the time and the assumption that the outcome will be similar this year, I intend to begin this year’s local election on a more positive note because there is so much more to our council elections than why people vote.
To do this, it is worth stepping back and looking at change over time to both the electoral process and political representation, because it is here that we find the reforms, the new initiatives and the exciting, new and innovative voices leading the way forward. In particular, the legislation that currently frames our local elections has changed significantly over time, as have those elected to council seats.
Triennial elections have been held for our local councillors and mayors since 1920 following an expansion of suffrage (in 1910) to all residents, be they ratepayers or not. This residential qualification also ensured the right to stand for council seats within cities and towns although it took until 1944 for this to apply to county councils.
The 100 years since has seen much change introduced to the way local elections are run, change that reflects the substantially increased role of councils in the ongoing development of their communities.
Today’s councils have a choice of electoral systems, the way in which communities are represented (ward, at-large or a mixture of both), and Maori wards – all measures introduced or strengthened in 2001 with the intent of increasing participation. And as we know, postal voting has been a mainstay of these elections since 1989, an initiative that contributed to voting statistics increasing by almost 20 percent at that time.
While these legislative changes have not had the long-term outcomes intended, they do nevertheless demonstrate the intent behind empowering the political process within communities. But, our political environment is now different, as seen in the demise of postal services in the interests of online connections and the weakening of democracy world-wide. All of which points to an urgent need for a reset of the electoral framework for local government. It is positive to see the recently released report on LGNZ’s current review looking at the way forward here, and I encourage readers to have a say on what needs to change.
The most radical change evident today, however, is in those elected as councillors and mayors, a revolution that reflects, to a certain extent, the changes in both public and private lives over this lengthy period of time.
The electoral success of women is the most glaring example of this. In the 1920s with almost 600 local authority and ad hoc board seats on offer, only three women were elected. Thirty years later, women elected as councillors still only reached two percent.
The tide turned, however, in the 1970s and 1980s with major local government reform and a huge reduction in the number of local authorities, alongside a determined effort to get more women on councils. The result being almost a quarter of those elected in 1989 being women. At the last local election in 2022 almost 45 percent of elected councillors were women; a new and exciting high for local government.
This slow, but gradual, rise in the number of women elected to local councils is also mirrored in the number elected to be mayor during this period – reaching a peak of 19 in 1998 and then 21 in 2022. Today, a third of our councils are led by women and we are now well used to women mayors fronting local achievements as well as natural disasters, strongly advocating for their communities and also leading regular debates on local needs and concerns in the face of this country’s inequitable local/central government relationship.
The gradual increase in the number of Maori representatives elected to local government is also a feature of this significant change in political representation. This was an outcome that was strengthened by the Local Electoral Amendment Act 2021, introduced by Nanaia Mahuta, which resulted in 66 new Maori ward seats. As outlined in LGNZ’s Elected Members Census 2022, the number of those elected who now identify as ‘Maori’ jumped to almost 22 percent.
Further, the traditional impression of our local councils being the mainstay of the older and the retired is well gone with the increased electoral success of younger people. While there have been a few notable examples of younger councillors being elected in the last couple of decades, in the 2022 local election, almost 15 percent of those elected were under the age of 40 years.
Yes, these elected representatives must have a mandate to govern (which brings us back to those voters), but the fact is that the face of local government has changed in a way that has largely gone unnoticed.
So let’s celebrate this fact and work towards increasing these numbers in 2025.