LGNZ Calls For End Of 'Tug Of War' On Local Government's Purpose
This follows the introduction of the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill to Parliament yesterday, which is part of Government's System Improvements programme to reform local government.
LGNZ President Sam Broughton says it is frustrating to see each successive government change local government's purpose every few years, especially when councils' main focus remains delivering critical services to their communities.
'This tug of war wastes time and energy that local government could invest in delivery. The fundamental challenge that councils face is not their purpose, but their lack of funding and financing tools,' says Sam Broughton.
'New funding tools for councils are about sharing the costs more fairly between local and central government, rather than just giving councils more money.
'We need to move past the political sound bites and focus on better partnership to deliver the right outcomes. The wider issue is the need to ensure the right levers are in place for councils."
Sam Broughton says that LGNZ welcomes the elements of the Bill that take a commonsense approach.
'We welcome the proposal that councils should have a standard set of standing orders. This just makes sense and will increase consistency around the country.
'We also support introducing councils' ability to able to extend Chief Executive contracts for another five years without advertising.
'However, there are issues in the Bill that need to be ironed out through the select committee process. That includes that 'core services' don't adequately describe regional council functions, missing out things like flood management and biosecurity.
'At our SuperLocal conference in Christchurch this week, we will release research that shows councils already prioritise 'core' work.'
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"Reinstating the ban on prisoner voters makes the consequences for crime clearer." Attorney-General Judith Collins. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER Some have said the new bill will disenfranchise voters, while others are applauding it. "This is a significant, but necessary change," Goldsmith said. "The Electoral Commission will have plenty of time to run an education campaign to ensure people understand the new requirements." In a Regulatory Impact Statement prepared earlier this year , the Ministry of Justice did not support closing enrolment earlier. "Its impact on reducing special votes is uncertain, while its impact on democratic participation could be significant," officials said. And the government's Attorney-General, Judith Collins, has also said the legislation could breach the Bill of Rights. 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Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
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On National's Bid To Steal Future Elections
Other countries are expanding the ability of their citizens to vote. In Britain (from which New Zealand has long taken its constitutional cues) the franchise is being extended to 16-year-olds. In this country, we're headed in the opposite direction. The Luxon government is taking steps to make it significantly more difficult for people to cast a vote, and prisoners will lose their right to vote altogether. No valid reasons are being given for these changes. Formerly, we were world leaders in the ease of voting. People could register and vote on Election Day. But once the new legislation is passed, voters will need to have enrolled some 13 days prior to Election Day. At the 2023 election, 110,000 people registered and voted on Election Day. This was a 46% increase of same-day turnout at the prior election. During the two weeks before election day, 454,000 people registered to vote. Given those numbers, the changes being made by the coalition government will inevitably have a significant impact on the election result. No doubt, same day registration has put added pressure on the Electoral Commission to process the votes accurately, and on time. Any human error is one too many. Yet as the Auditor General's report on the 2023 election noted, 'The relatively small number of errors did not affect the overall outcome.' In the one electorate where a journalist had queried the calculations, the Auditor-General further noted, the subsequent Electoral Commission revision 'did not change the candidate or party vote outcomes.' So, at the last election, despite the sharply increased influx of votes close to election day, only minor errors occurred and these had no impact on any of the results. Yet rather than fund the Commission to be better able to process this welcome late rush of ballots, the Luxon government is choosing instead to stop latecomers from being able to vote at all. It is hard to see this as anything other than a bid by the coalition parties to skew the 2026 election results to their own benefit. When more hurdles are put in front of voters, the young and Māori stand to be disproportionately affected. No doubt it is a sheer co-incidence that those groups are statistically more likely to vote for the centre-left and/or for Te Pāti Māori. Voting in prison In addition, a National-led government will once again deny all prisoners the right to vote. Under successive Labour governments, prisoners could vote if they were serving sentences of less than three years. In 2010, the Key government abolished that right, after ignoring a critical report by the-then Attorney General Chris Finlayson on the steps being proposed. Finlayson indicated that a blanket ban on prisoner voting would be inconsistent with section 12 of our Bill of Rights legislation. In fact, [Finlayson] argued, the supposed objective of the Bill – to deter serious offending – was 'not rationally linked' to the Bill's own provisions to impose a blanket ban on prisoner voting. Reason being, serious offenders are already banned from voting by the existing law. As for everyone else : ' It is questionable that every person sentenced to any period of punishment is a serious offender. People who are not serious offenders will be disenfranchised…' The blanket ban, Finlayson concluded, cannot be justified. Having pointed out the irrationality of denying all prisoners the vote, Finlayson then went further, to show how unjust even the existing provisions could play out in practice: The avowed purpose of the Bill is to deter serious offending. Yet as Finlayson pointed out, under its provisions someone sentenced to home detention would still be able to vote, but someone sentenced to jail for the very same offence would be disenfranchised. Moreover, a serious violent offender sentenced to two and half years in jail would not lose their right to vote if their sentence fell – purely by chance – into the period between elections. Yet by the same token, someone sentenced to a week in jail for not paying their parking fines would lose their right to vote, if they were unlucky enough to be sentenced at the wrong point in the electoral cycle. 'Justice, to state the obvious, should not be reduced to such games of chance.' This shabby episode is about to be played out again. This time around, a critical report by the current Attorney-General, Judith Collins is also being ignored. Similar violations of human rights will recur. To be clear: for people in jail, the sentence they are serving is the punishment for their offence. Tacking on punitive extras like losing their right to vote is petty and vengeful, and will do nothing to aid the re-integration of prisoners back into society on their release. In other respects, the Bill being proposed by Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith repeats some of the same anomalies identified 15 years ago by Chris Finlayson. People on home detention will still be able to vote but those in jail will not, even if they have committed the same offence. Thankfully, those on remand will still be allowed to vote. Not many people in prison do vote. Only 84 prisoners nationwide voted in the 2023 general election, out of circa 5,000 who were eligible to vote, and 41% of those voters identified as Maori. (Part of the overall low turnout can be attributed to the cumbersome process of enrolling and casting a special vote.) Although it is a very small cohort, the high proportion of Māori among the bloc of imprisoned voters merits further research into the rehabilitative role - for some offenders at least - of cultural identity and voter participation. To repeat: the changes being proposed look highly dubious. Instead of expanding the franchise and encouraging more people to vote, steps are being taken to limit participation, and by measures likely to penalise the current government's political opponents. Footnote One: Should 16-year-olds get the vote? Of course. They will inherit the effects of government actions and inactions, especially on climate change. There is a myth about young people not being interested in politics. In reality, the deeper problem is that politicians routinely fail to engage with the problems – climate change, high rents, too few jobs etc – that matter to them. As a percentage of those aged 18-24 eligible to vote, just over two thirds do so. Yet that participation rate has been improving, arguably as a result of last minute, Election Day registration. That conclusion is backed up by this chart – which shows that 74% of enrolled 18 to 24-year-olds voted in 2023. That turnout was higher than for every age band of enrolled voters between 30 and 45. Meaning : young people turned up on polling day, enrolled, and voted right then and there. National now wants to stop them from being able to do so. Surely, we should be trying to make it easier for the young to get enrolled, and vote. Instead, those in power are doing the reverse. As for the obvious fairness issues involved in allowing 16-year-olds to doubt, having civics lessons while 16 to 18-year-olds are still in school could be a significant help in fostering the habit of voting. Yet on those statistics cited above, the problem of non-voting by enrolled voters only really begins to kick in between 25-29, and gets worse thereafter until advanced middle age. This suggests that 20-somethings learn pretty quickly that their voices are being habitually ignored by those in power, so why bother keeping up the charade? Now.. and thanks entirely to this government, any initially disinterested/disillusioned voters who have second thoughts and engage with party politics only at the very last minute will no longer be able to enrol on Election Day. Smoking is a habit The tax break for Big Tobacco (now being extended from one to three years by New Zealand First Minister Casey Costello) is being estimated to cost about $300 million. Initially, NZF had promised that this tax break would be for only a one year trial, and be subject to research as to whether more people were actually switching from harmful nicotine to the monopoly line of heated tobacco products being sold by Philip Morris. This ' trial' and related tax giveaway has now been extended until 2027 at least. Meanwhile, as Labour's Ayesha Verrall has pointed out, the public health system – which could have made far better use of that $300 million giveaway– staggers on while under-funded, under-staffed, and under-paid. When it suits, changes get fast tracked. Not this time. For Big Tobacco, exceptions and foot dragging are the rule. Rastafarians at least, are upfront about the addictive nature of their herb of choice. Here's King Still, deejaying on top of a rhythm laid down by Clancy Eccles and the Dynamites:
