Comment: A call for openness from council candidates

President Federated Farmers of NZ, Katie Milne. Photo / Supplied

Comment: Above all, our local councils and elected representatives should be transparent, writes Federated Farmers president Katie Milne.

As we move into local body election season, the mini avalanche of political flyers into our letterboxes, and the clogging of social media sites with candidate posturing begins.

We can all be forgiven for rolling our eyes, but much as the roadside political billboards can seem like a blight on the landscape, it's temporary and fundamentally it's all part of an important and precious democratic process.

Not everyone in the world gets to vote for who makes vital decisions on regulations, infrastructure, community services and spending from the public purse.

Federated Farmers – as it has for past local and central government elections – has just issued a guide designed to encourage farmers to consider standing for office, or at least to closely question those who do put their names forward.

Read more from Federated Farmers here.

A survey at the beginning of 2019 of nearly 1100 of our members showed that farmers on average pay $26,208 to their district and regional councils. A damning 97 per cent said they do not get value for money from their rates.

With the annual rates increases of many councils double or even triple inflation, and debt levels also mounting up, farmers – and many other constituents – are looking for councillors who know the difference between 'nice to haves' and 'need to haves'.

The Our Platform: Feds on Local Government guide, which has been emailed to all sitting councillors around the country, has sections on rating systems, fairness, freshwater management and plenty else.

In a section on accountability and consultation, we made the point that, above all, our local councils and elected representatives should be transparent.

Interesting then, to sight a recent article on local government in the Green Party magazine te awa (Issue 61, P10).

The theme was that local elections are a proven way to build awareness of the Greens and the party's solutions. One option, the article said, was to stand as a Green candidate to raise the profile of the party. Fine.

Disturbingly, the next part of the article read: "…It might be beneficial to go incognito – the famous 'little g' option where you are in fact a Green Party member, but for reasons of electoral inconvenience, you don't say anything about it.

"The 'don't ask, don't tell' approach is rife in local body politics, where the majority of candidates do not declare affiliations, but when you scratch the surface they are in fact affiliated often to political parties, or other major issues-based organisations with political clout.

"It would be unwise to lie if asked a direct question, but it doesn't mean you have to identify as Green in your relatively short profile in the voting documentation."

That doesn't sound like a transparent approach to dealing with voters and ratepayers to me.

If a candidate has affiliations – to the Greens, to National, to Labour, to an organisation like Federated Farmers, Greenpeace, Business NZ, Fish & Game for that matter – I think that's information that voters deserve to know, and that candidates should be totally upfront about.

We need honesty, openness, and decisions based on the merits of the arguments and affordability in our council chambers, not subterfuge, hidden agendas and voting that may owe allegiance to party or organisation dogma.