Viewpoint – Time to shake up the joint

Firstly a big thank you for the support in the recent election. The Albany Ward is large – it takes in three parliamentary electorates and has the biggest population of any in Auckland – 185,800 people with the Hibiscus Coast making up 34 percent of that figure.

As usual, the Coast had one of the highest voter turnouts, as did the Bays this time around. That’s great. Generally speaking it’s the smaller, more cohesive communities that have the best turnouts, and those with local media that give a more in-depth, untrammelled coverage of council affairs.

Likewise those bureaucrats and politicians in council responsible for closing down civic centres and consistently ignoring concerns important to local communities in-between elections. Their hand-wringing at the low turnout also rings hollow. Similarly, the council removal of local election programmes for schools which in the past saw places like Silverdale Primary hosting real meetings and their well-informed students grilling candidates.

During this election though two questions predominated – one was who to vote for as Mayor and secondly, how does Auckland combat the party-political influence from Wellington. 

Those who vote, as always, decide the first while a response to the second will only become clearer over time.

In the meantime, I’m all for shaking the joint up and in particular those parts of the council corporate far removed from the public that they too are meant to serve – as opposed to the many hardworking council employees on the frontline in libraries, community centres and out in the field doing the work.

Certainly the ‘rate, borrow and sell’ regime of the last six years has well and truly run its course – there is now little room for manoeuvre and some tough decisions will have to be made to try and balance the books.

For the Hibiscus Coast, however, the outlook is a lot rosier as we are already the beneficiary of over $2 billion worth of committed NZTA/Waka Kotahi infrastructure funding, either underway or about to start.

What’s more, a number of significant additional community improvements can be leveraged from this historically unprecedented investment in our area.

Finally then, good on all those who participated in the election – either as candidates or voters. At this point in our country’s history, democratic participation is important. It’s a right previous generations had to fight to defend, a right perhaps too easily taken for granted but one still denied to many elsewhere in the world today.