LOCAL ELECTIONS IN AUCKLAND - LITTLE ADO ABOUT NOTHING

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AUCKLAND 000118 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS FOR EAP/ANP E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV NZ SUBJECT: LOCAL ELECTIONS IN AUCKLAND - LITTLE ADO ABOUT NOTHING This message is sensitive but unclassified, please protect accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) Summary. Towns and cities across New Zealand are voting for new mayors and council members. The vote - even that in New Zealand's biggest city - will have little impact on national politics. The issues are pedestrian and the voters apathetic. New Zealand's future leadership is not incubated in local politics but in the major parties' youth organizations and parliament's back benches. Local politics is dominated by national figures who have stepped away from Wellington politics and by local civic boosters who, while often passionate about their home towns, have no national ambitions. End summary. ¶2. (SBU) New Zealand's commercial center and largest metropolitan area (home to about 1.3 million of New Zealand's 4.2 million people) is an awkward amalgam of four cities and portions of three neighboring districts plus an overarching regional council headed by an indirectly elected chair. Responsibilities overlap and officials compete; clashes are common among the four mayors, one chairman, and eight councils. ¶3. (SBU) While polls show that the residents of Auckland City (the largest of the four cities that makes up the metro area) strongly support the consolidation of all the above entities into a single city council, that is one issue that will not be addressed at the polls. No significant candidate has come out clearly in favor of the proposal (no surprise, as consolidation would mean three of the four mayors lose their jobs),and there are no plans for a referendum. Instead, Wellington has appointed a royal commission to tackle the problem, effectively postponing any changes until after next year's national elections. ¶4. (SBU) With the future structure of Auckland governance off the table, the campaigns have largely focused on the competence of incumbents, property taxes, transportation, and the growing cost of local government. In Auckland City, for example, property taxes rose 21% over the last three years and are expected to rise another 37% over the next three. The size of the staff of Manukau City, one of the four cities in the Auckland area, has grown 35% over six years. Widespread public grumbling over these issues has not generated a voter revolt, however. Two of the four incumbent mayors in the Auckland area ;look likely to be reelected comfortably. A third has retired; the race to replace him is too close to call. In general, local officials countrywide are coasting to easy reelection. ¶5. (SBU) Only Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard, a breakfast cereal maker in his first term in office, looks likely to be ousted. Hubbard pressed hard for the construction of a world-class stadium on the Auckland waterfront in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, but lost. He also was hurt by accusations that he and the rest of the city council arranged a stealth tax increase by raising the city-owned water company's rates and steering the profits into the treasury. A controversial upgrade of Auckland's main street did not help. Hubbard is expected to be ousted by John Banks, his predecessor and a former National Party MP and minister. ¶6. (SBU) There is strikingly little intersection between national and local politics on the party level. Candidates for local office do not run under the banner of national parties. There are, strictly speaking, no Labour or National Party candidates for local office. Rather, local candidates run under banners loosely affiliated with national parties. (In Auckland, Labour Party candidates run under the "City Vision" ticket, while National Party affiliates run as "Citizens and Ratepayers" candidates.) The national parties do not endorse candidates, and local elections are generally not taken as a bellwether of national politics. One veteran of local politics explained that there is great resistance, not only in Auckland, but in cities around the country, to the idea of Wellington politics influencing local government. Local politicians are expected to put local interests above all else, in a non-partisan way. Were the prime minister, for example, to publicly endorse Dick Hubbard, it would be detrimental to both. The PM would be perceived as interfering in local issues while Hubbard would be portrayed as accountable to the Labour Party rather than to Auckland's voters. ¶7. (SBU) Comment. All of the above means that voters in local elections cannot vote on the most important issue facing Auckland (the structure of government) nor can they make a statement about national politics in casting their local vote. Thus local elections are limited to issues like property taxes and public transport. Perhaps not surprisingly, voter interest is low. Some candidate fora have been attended by more candidates than voters. Turnout so far (balloting is by mail, with a deadline of October 13),is much lower than elections at AUCKLAND 00000118 002 OF 002 the national level and generally lower than during the last local elections in 2004. National elections see close to 80% turnout, while turnout in the various districts of the current Auckland elections ranges from 24% to 37%. It would probably take a substantial change in Auckland's structure of government - the creation of a single "super city" - to get the area's voters enthused about local elections. DESROCHER