Letters to the editor: Law stymies attempt to make council representation fairer

Potaua Biasiny-Tule walked out of a Rotorua Lakes Council committee meeting on Tuesday. Photo / Andrew Warner

Watching the council attempting in earnest to ensure representation matches the desires of our community while complying with the cumbersome Local Electoral Act is much like someone backing a trailer for the first time - every action ends up having an unintended and ultimately undesirable reaction (News, November 17).

Due to a byzantine calculation in the Act which determines how many Maori seats are allowed, the council have found themselves unable to follow the wishes of the community where an equitable representation framework in line with Te Tiriti is achieved.

The preferred model is three Māori ward seats, three general ward seats, and four at-large seats plus the mayor. This would ensure every voter gets the same number of votes, and is more in line with Te Tiriti - however, the law forbids it.

The byzantine calculation has meant the council have had to find creative solutions to fit within the antiquated confines of the law - which ultimately creates confusion and rightly, in my view, led to Te Tatau representative Potaua Biasiny-Tule abruptly leaving a council meeting in protest.

Any further confusion when it comes to the representation framework will only add more apathy to voter turnout, which is already pathetically low at 45 per cent.

The council trying to back its representation model into the tight spot defined by the Act is near on impossible.

It is clear electoral reform is needed so that local communities can determine representation based on their own needs instead of being stymied by Central Government overlords.

Ryan Gray
Rotorua

Nazi claims risible

I have no idea how many local people went down to Wellington to be part of the protests outside Parliament the other day but any claim that our Government is Nazi is risible.

In my view, such infantile name-calling and stupidly ill-informed allegations do not a reasoned argument make.

That these people were protesting freely and openly with a very low-key and good-humoured police presence is visible evidence that our Government is anything but Nazi; for if it were, those people would long since have been arrested by a secret police equivalent of the Gestapo and SS and locked away in concentration camps — or worse: they would now be dead.

Where is the evidence such crimes against humanity are being perpetrated by our Government?

So, to those big people behaving, in my view, like small, spoiled, bratty toddlers, and with too much time on their hands to make mischief, I make no apologies for repeating the cliché: "Get a life!"

T.J. Nelson
Mangakakahi

Deaths understated

On November 12 you published an important editorial on recent anti-Covid-vaccine demonstrations.

The title of the editorial was, "Comparing NZ to Nazi Germany off beam".

Most of the editorial is acceptable but an editorial writer must get the facts correct.

The Nazis killed a lot more than six million people in concentration and death camps.

Six million Jews were killed plus more than five million Gentiles.

Those figures are not estimates. The editorial writer should apologise to readers for these errors of fact.

John McCormick
Chairman of Hawke's Bay Friends of Israel
Waipukurau