Opposition to Auckland's newly elected mayor and city council has a whiff of a wider political agenda. The shouting, placard-waving crew who have disrupted one council meeting and were met by heavy security at another this week are running a campaign they call "Wake up Auckland".
Wake up to what? That the centre-right has captured the council? These people seem to think that the election last October was some sort of nasty accident that happened because not enough people knew an election was going on. Certainly the voting turnouts in the local body elections were low and many of the contests were too dull to attract much attention. But that cannot be said of the Auckland City campaign.
Whatever may be said of Mr Banks, he is never dull. And he was running against another combative candidate on the left, Alliance president Matt McCarten. Their debates with Mayor Christine Fletcher were well covered, and few Auckland voters could have been unaware of that campaign. It is hard to remember when a local election last featured three such well-known national political figures.
Aucklanders, whether they were moved to vote or not, had no illusions about Mr Banks, or Mrs Fletcher, or Mr McCarten. They knew what there would get from each. If less than half the electorate returned the postal votes, the fact remains that more were moved to vote for Mr Banks than the others. End of story, you would think.
The strength of any democracy depends upon the defeated accepting the result. The Wake Up Auckland campaign seems not to accept it. This group, unelected by anybody, claims that the new council is not properly representative of the diversity of Auckland. The group seems to believe it understands the needs and preferences of people better than those who received people's votes.
In that belief, the group assumes the right to carry placards into the council chamber, address the meetings and kick up a fuss when the mayor has them ejected. Mr Banks, too, is an excitable, uncompromising personality who never shrinks from a confrontation. Patient consultation is not his strong suit. He wants to get things done, and when opponents ask for justification he borrows the reply of Finance Minister Michael Cullen after the last parliamentary elections: "Because we won and you lost."
Like Dr Cullen, Mr Banks will come to realise that his role requires a little more magnanimity if he is to make a success of it. Mayors, more than cabinet ministers or council members, need to be even-handed, inclusive figures, somewhat above partisan politics. But the placard-bearers, too, should realise that no council is obliged to tolerate their intrusion on its proceedings.
Certainly, they have a right to oppose the decisions the mayor and council have made since their election. The change of emphasis from public transport to roads, the question mark over continued pensioner housing and the engagement of former Finance Minister Sir William Birch to run the razor over council spending commitments must have doubly dismayed the losers.
But the tenor of their protests has been out of all proportion to anything the council has done. It is as though the mere suggestion of asset sales, cost-cutting, contracting - all the behaviour of businesslike governments - is too much like a spectre from the recent past. Perhaps that is what fuels this campaign - a sense that the Auckland city election was the first setback for the left since Labour came to power nationally.
It is hard to escape the suspicion this campaign is really motivated by another election coming this year. In the meantime, neither side is doing much for civic decorum and democracy.
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.