Des Ratima: Unification at a community level the way to go

Des Ratima

The voter turnout nationwide has been recognised as being the worst.

It has encouraged the comment that we should be using web-based voting because we are in the IT age. Postal voting, seen at the time as innovative, has now been labelled archaic and postal systems as being slow and still not meeting the aspirations of the voting public.

Let's get honest about the apathy of democracy. It used to be the common response to blame the younger generation and Maori as being apathetic and the prime reason for poor turnout. Well, not this time - the problem is a lot wider. Across the nation, voter turnout has dropped from 50 per cent in 2010, to 47 per cent in 2013 and 44.3 per cent in 2016. (Source: LGNZ website)

Our local government election results have delivered those whose numbers beat out their competitors. However, due to the low turnout nationally of less than 50 per cent how can it be seen as a true mandate.

It is a mockery. This is not an attack on those successful candidates, rather the system that is used to select who should be our local governance authorities who then have the legislated responsibility to set rates, make decisions which affect our lives permanently, commit massive amounts of funds to build or create things like dams.

Democracy is a legal feel good process that determines who are the most popular. It is a popularity contest. Not a skills-based, experience-based, business-based selection process. Anyone can run for council if you fulfil some minimal requirements.

The central issue with our democracy today is that of trust. Trusting the system, or the process or the candidates who with one-line statements on their billboards expect communities to understand them and what they are about. What an utter waste of visual pollution.

To trust requires that they are able to demonstrate high levels of sacrifice, commitment, loyalty, and service beyond the call of office. I can imagine the voting public having little problem in trusting Willie Apiata VC to be their mayor, or Jerry Mataparae as prime minister.

Until we have a process we trust, leaders we trust, and until these representatives demonstrate their ability to sacrifice, commit and serve our communities, we will continue to tinker with an inadequate system.

There are many examples of people working with enormous sacrifice and on the smell of an oily rag delivering extraordinary results at community and family levels. Remember how we feel when the ABs win or our Olympic team prevail against the odds.

Imagine leadership of our regions and nation inspiring us all in the same way.

Hastings District Council has some new faces that are both youthful and experienced. The young guns like HBPHO chairman Bayden Barber, businessman Damon Harvey, Jason Whaitiri or Ann Redstone (at the time of writing the result was too close to call), businesswoman Adrienne Pierce, HBDHB board member Jacoby Poulain, and of course the tried and true like Henare O'Keefe. That has to hint at a change in the wind.

On the Hawke's Bay Regional Council the famous four now have their five (or maybe six with Neil Kirton) majority to bring the changes they have advocated without success. So again there is a hint of change in the wind.

Communities must share the responsibility for the manner in which our local government representatives act. Communities must hold them all to account against their community aspirations.

Communities must never abrogate their responsibilities to others believing they had completed their part. Communities must never accept being disempowered. Inclusion of communities will lift the cancer of complacency and apathy from voting communities.

Honesty, transparency, communication, collaboration and consultation must be the drivers for our future. Communities naturally come together during times of crisis or hardship.

Let's try doing that more often without either, and just enjoy the relationship we foster with each other. Unification at a community level is a powerful tool for morale, hope and change.

It can be argued that this is the Bay Way and a solution for the failing democratic model of representation.

• Des Ratima is a community leader in Whakatu and a Maori environmentalist.