Bizarre LGC determination locks in one of the worst under-representation situations in the country for Kāpiti
The Local Government Commission has decided to lock in for another three years the gross under-representation of the Kāpiti constituency on Greater Wellington Regional Council.
It’s a bizarre determination that flies in the face of a previous determination where they addressed a much smaller under-representation issue for the residents of Waikanae during Kāpiti Coast District Council’s 2022 representation review. Amazingly, the Local Government Commission also somehow failed to address substantial points raised during appeals to the representation proposal and didn’t hold a public hearing, denying the two appellants (myself included) a fair opportunity to be heard.
As one of those two appellants to Greater Wellington Regional Council’s representation proposal, and having gone through the 2022 Kāpiti Coast District Council representation review process as a councillor, I’m at a loss to explain the glaring lack of consistency in the logic on display from the Commissioners, let alone the gaping holes in their analysis and their truly odd decision to not hold a hearing.
Apparently a nearly 25 percent under-representation for Waikanae on Kāpiti Coast District Council during the review for the 2022 election was unfair on electors and moved the Commissioners to take action to address it through a better balance of councillors across the district.
But somehow an even larger 37 percent under-representation for Kāpiti on Greater Wellington Regional Council - one of the worst such breaches of fairness provisions in the Local Government Electoral Act - doesn’t warrant action.
To quote former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: Make that make sense.
To put this in perspective, the net result of this is that the weighting of Kāpiti’s representation of its electors on Greater Wellington Regional Council is worth more than a third less than the average across all constituencies in the region. Compared to some constituencies - such as Lower Hutt, it’s worth nearly half as much.
To put it in even more perspective, a quick search of recent determinations from the Local Government Commission puts Kāpiti’s under-representation as one of the worst, if not the worst, such issue in the entire country. There’s some incredible examples of constituencies being over-represented by 50 percent, but from a quick search of the past few electoral cycles of determinations I didn’t noticed an under-representation situation that was worse than 37 percent.
Had the Commission engaged with the appeals in good faith, the alternative of having an 11 member regional council would have still allowed for effective governance while bringing nearly all constituencies into nearly equivalent weighting for their representation - bar a slight over-representation for Upper Hutt. That is, constituencies would have had nearly equivalent representation on Greater Wellington Regional Council.
In terms of some of what the Commission failed to engage with, at least from my appeal:
Kapiti’s population is growing much faster than Wellington City’s, meaning the already rapidly worsening under-representation (it’s gone from 33.31 percent in 2019 to 37.4 percent in 2025) is going to get much worse much faster.
The Commission set a precedent for significantly reworking a council’s final representation proposal to address substantial and persistent issues of under-representation when they reworked Kāpiti Coast District Council’s representation proposal for the 2022 election.
That Greater Wellington’s elected members used incorrect reasoning to justify persisting with the under-representation (for example, incorrectly claiming that communities in other constituencies in the region were more under-represented than Kāpiti even though a quick analysis of the scale of Kāpiti’s under-representation showed it was still bigger than any of the communities that councillors cited).
What further compounded the Commission’s failure to engage with these significant elements of my appeal was that they opted to not even hold a hearing that would’ve allowed me to speak to my appeal. That procedural unfairness meant I didn’t get any opportunity to address the shortfalls in their analysis of my appeal. The failure to provide for procedure fairness is, quite frankly, staggering.
The Commission’s decision to not hold a hearing looks even more like an error on their part when they admit in their conclusion that there’s not only public interest in the under-representation issue, but that they criticise Greater Wellington’s approach to community engagement on their representation proposal, noting the shortened engagement period and that it was only through their online “Have a say” platform.
It seems hypocritical for the Commission to scold Greater Wellington for their inadequacies when the Commission themselves has failed to allow appellants procedure fairness on a matter they admit has public interest - especially so when they’ve failed to engage with substantive parts of the appeals they received.
The only explanation I can find for this howler of a process from the Local Government Commission is that they’re under pressure to deliver decisions on a slew of representation proposals due to numerous councils opting to adopt Māori constituencies for the 2025 local government elections.
Given I don’t have the money to pursue a judicial review of their decision (because who does, honestly), I’ve made a formal complaint to the Commission over the demonstrable inadequacies of their handling of this. In the event that it goes nowhere, the only option I’ll have left is to go to the Ombudsman who can investigate the adequacy of their handling of things but that’s sadly little more than a slap across the knuckles with a wet bus ticket these days.
In the meantime, because of the Commission’s ineptitude Kāpiti is left with being subject to one of the, if not the most, egregious under-representation situation in all of Aotearoa. It’s little wonder people stop engaging with local government when the regional council and Local Government Commission are comfortable with letting such fundamentally unfair situations persist for so long.