Independent Electoral Review – have your say by 14 November

Rosemary has just made a submission to this review, mainly making the following points:

1. Democracy starts at the bottom, not at the top. It is very important to do this review, but it should be looking at electoral review at national and
   regional local level. They belong together. We need to refashion democracy from the ground up, not top down. This is key to preparing strong and
   resilient communities for climate change, earthquake and whatever the future brings us.
2. Support VOTE16 integrated with civics education. If you are old enough to vote, you can stand. Although this seems young rights and responsibilities go
   together. Let the electorate decide.
3. Strongly support a four year term at all levels of government with Local government half way through this term. To much time is wasted in
   ‘Campaigning’ rather than productive work in a three year term.
4. Strongly support STV as the voting system, across all levels of government. We can keep MMP, but voting at electoral level should be via stv, not FFP
5. Support 4% as threshold as long as there is no coat tailing and bringing in more candidates if an electorate seat is won.
6. no political donations over $1,000 should be private

Garry’s comments

I had some interesting responses to the report from the local government review. Here is one:

It will be interesting to see what general coverage the report gets, and what views people come to. For the moment though my thinking is that local government needs something of a Plan B for councils to come together to develop their own approach on local governance, community voice, empowering communities, working with iwi and so forth.

The sector simply can’t afford to wait the several years it will take for the panel’s approach to fizzle and die in the legislative abyss. If it wasn’t for the fact that regional councils in relation to TLAs look a bit like orcas in relation to stingrays I would be jubilant at the opportunity which I think is now opening up…..

They now need to start moving swiftly to put in place an arrangement in which the regional Council (or perhaps the mayoral forum in conjunction with the regional Council) becomes the Umbrella for a centre of excellence for enabling community governance including intelligent use of various participatory initiatives (the panel should have put its primary emphasis on participatory processes on participatory budgeting using the Scottish approach) and building on the relationship with RPSCs to embed the role of TLAs as intermediaries/advocates between communities and central government agencies in shaping the delivery of public services.

It may be though that this is a different discussion involving a wider cast of characters going back to talking about public wealth, (by) starting that discussion outside local government itself. (by) highlighting the potential for much greater collaboration and better outcomes in alignment with change in local government including change in thinking about public wealth, and an emphasis on empowering communities.