2025's local government elections feel flat...
Something seems to be missing from this year’s local government elections. They’re feeling flat. The major mayoral contests in Auckland and Wellington are presented largely as faits accomplis for Wayne Brown and Andrew Little respectively. There’s a little more zing in places like Christchurch and Hamilton, but on the whole we’re less than four months away from election day and there’s a lack of any vibe around local government elections.
I’ve drafted up a few variations of this column since the start of the year and I’ve always shelved it in the hope that some event will kickstart things. I thought I’d been vindicated when Andrew Little entered Wellington’s mayoral race and crossed my fingers it would herald the election season getting started properly. However, Tory Whanau quickly withdrew from the mayoral contest and that was that. Elsewhere in the country I can’t really see things heating up either with Auckland in particular feeling like a complete non-event this time around.
Maybe this will change by the time the actual campaigning season kicks off in a couple of months time and people who are standing on the side lines have to put their money where their mouths are, but I’m sceptical.
On the surface there should be lots of issues to get people fired up. Despite talking up localism while in opposition the National-led Coalition Government is, rightly or wrongly, continuing the pattern of central government riding roughshod over the democratic mandates of local government. The ongoing steep rate increases across much of the motu should be politically unsustainable however necessary they might be. Given that, councils and communities should face hard choices about where increasingly tight financial resources need to be invested. Economic, social, and environmental pressures are showing no signs of relenting.
All the ingredients that would normally lend themselves to providing solid campaign platforms for candidates should be there. Yet there’s a sort of general malaise about it all and I can’t put my finger on why it is.
I have some working theories. Maybe the downfall of local media has played a role with so many local papers having been closed resulting in less scrutiny and awareness of what councils are up to? Maybe the state of local government, having been the whipping boy of central government for so long and now having numerous Swords of Damocles hovering over its head in the form of water and RMA reform, rates capping, and spending limits is putting people off from engaging? Maybe, despite all the rhetoric, people aren’t actually that concerned about how local government is performing or at least not enough to do something about it? Maybe we’re just politically fatigued after what’s felt like a never ending assault on our political bandwidth over the past five… or even 10 years?
I suspect, like all things, it’s a combination of the above and more.
I know I haven’t been as engaged as I would have liked to have been, though that’s not for a want of desire. I’ve just been busy retraining for a new career and that’s understandably been my priority. Whenever I’ve had a chance I’ve tried to keep writing about local government, but it does feel like I’m ending up writing about the same unresolved systemic issues from when I first stood for council six years ago.
Hopefully things will pick up in the coming months and I’ll be happy proven wrong about the state of local government electoral politics and engagement, but I sadly wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with even lower voter turnout.