David Farrar asks why I am complaining about the draft boundaries for the Auckland super city when Banks and Brown both say they are good boundaries. How about because they are blatantly unfair?
The Local Government Commission, an independent body whose job it is to set council boundaries, announced the draft boundaries for the super city yesterday. To me the most striking thing about their report was the wide variation in the population per councillor for each of the twelve wards.
Eight of the twelve wards (electing 12 of the 20 councillors) are either too big or too small population-wise compared to the guidelines in the Local Government Act which specify that any ward should not be more or less than the average by 10% in order to achieve fair representation.
Wards like rural Rodney and Franklin, Hibiscus-Albany-East Coast Bays, and Howick-Pakuranga-Botany are all under populated by more than the benchmark 10%…meaning each of their votes counts for more than the average. On the other hand Waitakere, Whau (Avondale-New Lynn), Maungawhau-Hauraki Gulf, and Orakei-Maungakiekie are all over populated, meaning their votes count for less. For more on this see jarbury’s excellent post.
What this means is that the vote of a Rodney resident is worth a third more than a central Auckland resident. And a vote in Waitakere is worth almost 3/4 of one Hibiscus-Albany-East Coast Bays vote.
Now this doesn’t necessarily constitute some kind of rort designed to keep the left from fairly winning a majority on the Council. The drawing of the boundaries to reflect communities of interest is arguably as important as the population ratios.
But ensuring everyone’s vote is worth about the same is an issue of fairness and goes to the fundamental democratic principle of one person one vote. That is why the Local Government Act lays down the 10% guideline.
See Wikipedia for a fascinating explanation of gerrymandering (drawing the boundaries to advantage a particular political group), and malapportionment (over or under-populating constituencies to achieve the same thing). The term gerrymander derives from ”Gerry” and “salamander”, and is named after Elbridge Gerry the governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812, and a supposedly salamander-shaped constituency that he created.
My point is not to blame the Local Government Commission for this. They were handed a near impossible task by the Government which legislated that Rodney and Franklin would have one councillor each, and there would be 20 councillors in total – patently too few for a city of 1.4 million. If the Government had allowed 25 or more councillors as Labour argued that would have given the Commission a lot more flexibility.
My other concern is that the 8 two-councillor wards will further disenfranchise some voters, especially in particularly diverse communities. In the Orakei/Maungakiekie ward there are extremely wealthy communities and others with entrenched poverty. Labour’s concern is that the voices of the more vulnerable might be shut out of local democracy as a result – and that the smaller single-councillor wards we argued for would have avoided this.
The unfairness of the boundaries will be nothing compared to the unfairness of trying to fit a FFP system in multiple member electorates.
Under this system it is quite likely that the most unpopular candidates will win election to council. Name recognition will be important of course but the key factor will be to be least alike the other candidates, especially the other councillor elected. This would allow all the votes to be split between other similar candidates. What you need hard core support base (regardless of how unpopular you might be) This is especially so for local elections given that turnout is always low.
Not sure what the rationale for having some wards 2 councillors(all with varying numbers of Local Boards within) and others one- maybe somebody can tell me.
It looks like Auckland is doomed.
Phil,
Do you have a link to a map of the proposed boundaries?
Thx
Ah, the old gerrymander. A favourite of those that don’t like democracy.
Why give David Farrar the time of day?
dave rutherford – You’ll find them here http://www.lgc.govt.nz/lgcwebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/Auckland-Governance-Proposals-for-Wards-Local-Boards-and-Boundaries-for-Auckland
Topcat – The government argued multi member wards would deliver better diversity. Labour argued that would be the case if there were multi member wards with STV (our preference). But what we ended up with was worst of both worlds: unfair FPP, and multi member wards that will see some communities effectively unrepresented (especially in the very diverse ones like Orakei-Maungakiekie).
Draco T Bastard – But who knew it came from a salamander!
Plus the Citrats have Councillors who dont even live in their wards.
For Roskill Avondale under the current system , only 2 councillors of the 4 citrats lives there.
“…Why give David Farrar the time of day?”
Because last week on NatRad both Jim Mora (no surprise there, he’s a lazy small “t” tory) and Kathryn Ryan (I was surprised) quoted Kiwiblog to the effect “But they are saying on Kiwiblog…”
This is despite the fact that in my view 90%+ of the regular posters on that site seem to be ACToids or hard right social conservatives, a group that barely commands the loyalty of 3-4% of the electorate.
Kiwiblog, then, is clearly part of (in my opinion) ongoing and quite deliberate integrated communications strategy to influence elite opinionmakers by dogwhistling an extremist support base. This then makes the electorate look more conservative than it actually is. Given that the over worked polytech graduates who largely compose our journalist corps these days increasingly interview nothing more challenging than their browser, the credulous right wing dupes of Kiwiblog are a more than useful free tool for National.
Thanks for the link Phil.
Wasn’t the local government commission required to have all the wards within 10% of what would be even? By my count 7 out of the 12 wards are beyond that 10% threshold – with a few being greater than 20% over-represented and 20% under-represented.
This table shows the mis-match quite clearly. Funnily enough, all four of the areas with greater than 10% over-representation are “safe National areas” (Rodney, Franklin, Hibiscus Coast-Albany-East Coast Bays) while three of the four areas under-represented by more than 10% (Mangawhau-Hauraki, Whau, Waitakere – with Orakei Maungakiekie being the exception) have historically been more likely to vote centre-left.
That’s one pretty big fat coincidence.
Sorry, add Howick-Botany-Pakuranga to the list of safe National over-represented areas.
jarbury – The 10% fair representation rule in the Local Government Act is a guideline. Reading between the lines of the Local Govt Commission’s report I’d say they are feeling a bit sheepish about so many of the wards being out of whack. They point out that the Government required them to give Rodney and Franklin their own wards, and then with only 20 councillors in total, and bearing in mind the need to try and respect communities of interest, they were handed a near impossible task.
The Rodney situation is a bit strange in that they hive off Orewa – Whangaparaoa, which is part of Rodney now.
So it was a straight out gerrymander to give the rural area an over representation.
Including the population of these existing Rodney areas would probably bring the population to around the average for the other wards
The community of interest argument seems a little thin in this case. Orewa is not aligned to Whangaparoa but stays aligned to western Rodney (Helensvile, Kumeu) who shop, school and work in Waitakere and Auckland. If Whangaparoa shares interest with Albany, why doesn’t Orewa as well?
It’s a scam, there are plenty in north Rodney who want to split at the Hoteo River and join Kaipara.The meeting at the local community centre last month showed support was strongly for not joining the super-city.
The majority view was the community of interest for Auckland stops at Warkworth Matakana (due the motoerway soon to become assimilated in the the North Shore / Silverdale / Whangaparoa / Orewa Borg).
The so called consultation process was a farce.Pretty plain there was an agenda from day one.The process was about managing it to get the desired result, and nothing at all to do with democracy.
Don’t be so sure Rodney is safe national anymore, many many farms have been split into lifestyle blocks over the last decade, and a large percentage of the residents commute out to jobs in AK, or the Shore.There is a strong undercurrent of local anger about the way this has been handled, which could easily offer traction for Labour.
“…There is a strong undercurrent of local anger about the way this has been handled…”
The right is quick to dismiss SuperCity controversy as a “beltway issue” – something whose complexities are to hard for ordinary voters to really be bothered understanding. They are confident therefore that they can get away with a rampant Gerrymander.
Apart from betraying the basic contempt that most on the right have for ordinary New Zealanders, I think they are plain wrong. From my observations, the SuperCity is one of those stories people take the time to read carefully in the paper and hum thoughtfully to themselves over. It only stands to reason – these decisions will affect them at the most basic level. This is without doubt a major “sleeper” (and not so sleeper) issue in Auckland.
I agree Tom. It won’t be until next year and even 2011 that the reality of the Super City will really hit home. The “rural Auckland” areas are among the safest National seats in the country if you look at the 2008 election stats. Which means there are plenty of votes National could lose by pissing off their heartland areas.
More than that National won the 2008 election on the strength of it’s result in Auckland… This has been a dog’s breakfast from start to finish and if people get really pissed off in the lead up to the 2010 local election, the All Blacks lose the world cup and Labour runs one heck of a campaign, my National two-term minimum prediction may turn out wrong, Labour will still have the Key problem to deal with…
I wonder why National didn’t do this slowly with a 2013 intro, would have been far easier and cost them much less political capital..?
The Rodney people must be thinking what they must have done wrong to deserve having no democratic representation. An area nearly as large as the whole rest of the Auckland region and the population of Rotorua will have 1 elected democratic representative on their local council. As well as that they have a local member who is unable to get involved because he is a celebrity House Speaker.
Real power will devolve to the council staff in the city and to the appointed CCO board members, don’t worry about those show ponies who have to get elected.
TopCat, Rodney are the most over-represented place in the whole of Auckland.
This just shows what a joke it is having only 20 councillors representing the whole of the Auckland region. One person per 70,000 residents is pathetic.
Jarbury
Good point- but when the look at the their neighbours, Kaipara- full council representation for 8-10 thousand people most of whom they will likely be on first name terms with, they may not think so.
What about Franklin??? 90%+ of Franklin residents DO NOT want any part of the Auckland supershitty and yet we are still having it forced down our throats. Is this democracy ??? When a whole lot of the elderly National voters in Franklin start talking “civil disobedience” then the National government and Paul Hutchison should be getting VERY concerned at just what they have done by pissing off so many of their voters. Time will tell but it seems a strange way to try and be any more than a one term government. Just wait till that idiot Hutchison comes begging for his job in 2011. He may find its not his anymore.
The Government is governing. The previous system in Auckland was created by Labour to serve their political interests back in 1989. So it is a bit rich to whine about the system National is setting up, of course they are the government now and they have put together a system they agree with.
[...] allotting only 20 councillors and requiring Rodney and Franklin have their own wards. The result: unequal voting strength between wards, and a right wing gerrymander across the city. Why is it acceptable for the vote of someone who [...]