Matt McCarten’s column yesterday was his usual entertaining and provocative view from the left. One aspect deserves further discussion. (Not his assertion the Greens are doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to analysing the Government’s third super city bill.  Who me, sensitive?)

What was interesting was his suggestion Rodney Hide is perpetrating a new crime against democracy by allowing landlords (as ratepayers) to vote, effectively giving the property-owning rich multiple votes.

The bill before the House, if passed, will ensure many of the new city politicians are elected by property owners, not citizens. Anyone who owns a commercial or rental property in any of the 12 new wards gets to vote for the ward council. Theoretically, someone can get to vote in every ward.

Plausible though it is that Mr Hide would commit such an outrage, the picture does need some clarification.

Property owners in New Zealand do get to vote, in all local body elections, thanks to the Local Electoral Act.  Matt is right to suggest that could skew elections. If a landlord owns property in every district in New Zealand he or she could vote in every local election.

However the Act also specifies that no person can vote more than once in any election, no matter how many properties they own in the area. So an absentee landlord owning mulitiple properties across the new wards would still only get one vote for the mayoralty and one vote for the Council.

Clause 35 in Hide’s bill, which extends the vote to property owners in the election of local boards, is presumably there because the super city’s ‘local boards’ are a new creation, not anticipated in the Local Electoral Act. Its effect is a landlord with properties in each of the 19 local boards could vote in each one of them, just as the Local Electoral Act allows the same for community boards in any local government election.

I guess it will all come out in select committee but it is not clear the drafters needed to do this. The Local Electoral Act applies. To complicate matters further, as Idiot Savant points out, clause 35 omits a limit found in the Local Electoral Act which prevents a landlord nominating different people for different properties in the same election. If left in this will allow some major rorting.

Matt and Idiot Savant are right to question whether it is fair and democratic for property owners to vote in more than one local election.  Where is Hide’s one person one vote principle now?  Some will argue to deny the vote to someone who lives outside the district but pays rates on a property in the district would be taxation without representation, which as Matt points out is a false argument because the rates inevitably get passed on to the tenant via the rent.  It all begs the question of whether it is appropriate for local government, or indeed this new regional government in Auckland, to be funded by a property tax in the form of rates. Give me progressive taxation any day.