Council wards are created for reasons of fairness Janine Hayward writes.
The coalition government has introduced the Local Government (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill.
The Bill requires councils to hold a binding poll at the 2025 local election if they have established Māori wards or Māori constituencies since 2020 and did not hold a poll to so do.
Public submissions on the Bill close at 11.59pm today.
This proposal reintroduces a provision removed by the Labour government in 2021 which had discriminated against Māori by creating a provision that did not exist for any other type of ward created by local government.
Māori have historically been chronically under-represented in local government. The statistics show that Māori over-nominate themselves for local government elections relative to non-Māori.
But Māori who campaign "with a Māori voice" (to paraphrase Prof Maria Bargh) and advocate for Māori interests, struggle to get elected because the majority of voters have different interests and perspectives.
By 2021, 24 councils had attempted to create Māori wards, but only three councils had achieved this because of the poll provision.
After the poll provision was removed, 35 of 78 councils had Māori wards and constituencies for the 2022 local elections.
In 2024, 49 councils either have Māori wards and constituencies or have approved them to be in place for the 2025 elections.
Councils have the right to establish and disestablish wards. They create wards to reflect the communities of interest in their region that need a seat at the table if the whole region is to be effectively represented.
In many regions, for example, rural wards are created to ensure that voters in more remote areas have representation at the council table.
Wards ensure that communities of interest with distinct perspectives on regional issues are represented at the council table, even though councillors ultimately govern in the interests of the whole region. If council elections are held "at large" (without ward boundaries), candidates who campaign specifically in the interests of their local community might struggle to be elected and the diversity of the council could suffer as a result.
Until the 2021 law change to remove the public poll, and only in the case of Māori wards and constituencies, voters in a district or region could petition the council for a poll and overturn a decision to create a Māori ward.
No such poll right exists for voters to overturn a council’s decision to establish any other wards.
Since 2021, without the obstacle of a public poll, councils have been reviewing their representation arrangements and providing representation for Māori with wards as they do for all other wards they create. These wards unite the communities they represent by ensuring a diversity of voices and interests at the council table.
Māori wards address the obstacle to Māori representation, just as all other wards address the balance of representation for communities across the country.
The current government Bill reinstates this discriminatory provision relating to Māori wards. The Waitangi Tribunal has said this proposal is a breach of Treaty principles and others have warned that it may run foul of the Bill of Rights Act.
Local governments across the country are appealing to the government not to force their communities to hold polls. The government has not consulted with Māori about this significant change.
If this law is passed, the outcome seems inevitable.
Polls will be held in local communities across the country. Well-resourced groups will take the opportunity to claim that Māori wards are "undemocratic" and create a "special privilege" for Māori, even that they are "separatist" and "a form of apartheid".
These objections are not true and they cause real harm and division in our communities, particularly for Māori. Māori wards are the same as all the other wards that councils can create. It makes no sense to argue that Māori wards are "undemocratic" and a "special privilege" unless all wards are undemocratic and a special privilege.
Nevertheless, few Māori wards are likely to survive this process and Māori will once again be chronically under-represented in local government.
The Bill to reintroduce the public polls is particularly egregious given that the Crown has a Treaty obligation to recognise and guarantee Māori Treaty rights that existed before the Treaty was signed in 1840 and still exist today.
That would seem a clear reason for ensuring that Māori have representation at the council table to serve alongside councillors elected from other wards and to govern in the interests of the whole region.
It even raises the question as to why Māori wards are not mandatory in local government.
- Janine Hayward is a professor of politics at Ōtakou Whakaihu Waka — University of Otago.
