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Credit to Simon Watts.
Some time ago he told me he was going to do something to stop councils like the Far North District Council.
They put ten iwi representatives, not elected by ratepayers, on a committee with six councillors who were elected, with full voting rights, thereby outnumbering the elected folk.
I sent him a text two weeks ago asking him when I should check back in with him to see what he was going to do.
He responded. Asked me to give him two weeks.
Two weeks ran out yesterday.
Yesterday is when he announced that he would be changing the law to take those voting rights away from unelected representatives on councils.
This has become something of a race relations issue because the greatest number of unelected members that get attention are Māori, iwi reps, and mana whenua reps.
But it’s actually more than that.
It also involves youth representatives, under 18's who haven’t even learned to live in their own houses and pay their own power bills, who are given permission by councils to vote on council issues without being elected.
And yes, it is about race relations and trying to stop the spread of this strangely fashionable idea that one ethnicity gets special treatment.
But it is also about a fundamental of democracy – you choose who governs you.
Ratepayers are being bled for money at rates none of us would’ve thought were possible ten years ago.
For our entire lives that has come with the right to then also vote for the people who we best trust to spend that money, even if that is a low bar.
Somehow in the last few years that has started to change, and councils have told us how much to pay and then also who will govern.
That needed to stop.
Yesterday’s decision is welcome. But I’d like it to go further.
I’d like all unelected representatives now removed from councils because, in many cases, they are a cost.
They are paid, sometimes, the same as elected representatives and they are unnecessary in an age where advice and input is easier to find than ever.
But given the likely kickback this will get from the handwringers, good on Simon Watts for making the right call.
And on deadline too.
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