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  "description": "The Local Government Act must be changed.",
  "path": "/the-fndc-debacle-why-democracy-matters/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-19T20:30:13.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Peter Williams",
    "check.radio",
    "Substack"
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  "textContent": "Peter Williams\n_Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality_ check.radio_three days a week._\n\nDemocracy, as Sir Winston Churchill once said in the House of Commons (quoting an unknown parliamentary predecessor) is the worst form of government, apart from all those other forms which have been tried from time to time.\n\nDemocracy, from the Greek words _demos_ , meaning people, and _kratos_ (rule, power or strength) in its purist form is government of the people, by the people and for the people.\n\nThousands of organisations, from the smallest membership-based incorporated societies to local authorities and central government vote for the people they wish to govern them.\n\nThe essential theme is this: one person, one vote and all votes are equal.\n\n(Ok, you pedants will say it’s one person, two votes at central government level and, if you’re in one of those local councils with that awful STV system, it’s one person and who knows how many votes or preferences.)\n\nBut you get my drift. An eligible person votes. The vote or votes of every elector carry equal value. The most popular candidate or candidates in the election take office, govern the organisation, appoint the senior staff, set the policies, approve the budgets – and so it goes.\n\nNot too difficult really. The enlightened world has operated this way successfully for centuries.\n\nSo why try and muddy the waters by appointing non-elected outsiders to governing roles?\n\nTo be fair, many incorporated societies – New Zealand Rugby is a good example – appoint some directors alongside those elected. But that’s because the society constitution allows for it.\n\nLocal government allows it too. And therein lies a major issue.\n\nSchedule 7, Clause 31 (1) of the Local Government Act 2002 says “The members of a committee or subcommittee may, but need not be, elected members of the local authority, and a local authority or committee may appoint to a committee or subcommittee a person who is not a member of the local authority or committee if, in the opinion of the local authority, that person has the skills, attributes or knowledge that will assist the work of the committee or subcommittee.”\n\nThe road to heaven is paved with good intentions.\n\nThe Far North District Council (FNDC) believe that the six elected councillors on its Te Kuaka Committee for Māori Strategic Relationships were just not capable of receiving advice and making appropriate decisions, so FNDC appointed not one, but 10 iwi and hapū representatives with “the skills, attributes or knowledge” to assist the work of the committee.\n\nAnd gave them voting powers for committee decisions.\n\nIt’s a nonsense.\n\nThe lone voice protesting this, Councillor Davina Smolders, called it “co-governance on steroids”.\n\nActually, it’s not even co-governance. It’s a takeover.\n\nDo not believe the council and media spin about how a committee only makes recommendations. The full council makes the final call.\n\nThat’s arrant nonsense. A full council meeting anywhere is effectively a rubber stamping exercise for work discussed and voted on in committees.\n\nA council vote to allow one of its committees to be taken over by outside appointees is an absolute insult to the people of the Far North District, Māori or non-Māori. The power has been taken from the people. That’s what happens in totalitarian societies, not enlightened ones – like New Zealand is supposed to be.\n\nYes the Local Government Act says a local authority must “establish and maintain processes to provide opportunities for Māori to contribute to the decision-making processes of the local authority; and consider ways in which it may foster the development of Māori capacity to contribute to the decision-making processes of the local authority”.\n\nBut is also says, much earlier in the act, that councils must “enable democratic local decision making and action by, and on behalf of, communities”.\n\nSadly in the act there is no definition of “democratic local decision making”.\n\nProbably because the legislation drafters of 2002 figured we all knew what it means. Silly them.\n\nDemocratic local decision making cannot, by any definition, be carried out by appointees with voting rights.\n\nWhile this is the most blatant use of Schedule 7, Clause 31 (1), it’s not the first. Hastings District gave committee voting rights to members of its Youth Council. Tasman District Council has iwi representatives with voting rights on its committees.\n\nBut in those cases, the appointed committee members are or were a minority. Not at the FNDC, where the elected members might as well have not existed.\n\nJust what calls this Te Kuaka Committee will take the full council meetings in future are unknown. But you can bet the whare on decisions that will be of advantage to Māori, possibly to the disadvantage of non-Māori.\n\nFor instance it’s already recommended that that the council continue with an amended Rating Relief Policy, following a review that brought forward changes regarding papakāinga and Treaty settlement lands to support Māori freehold land.\n\nPut that alongside a recommendation that council support environmental management plans submitted by local iwi and you get the drift of the way governance is headed in the FNDC area, an area with a majority population, according to the 2023 census, who claim Māori ancestry.\n\nDavina Smolders says Te Kuaka now has the power to decide what even makes it to the full council meeting. When elected representatives are outnumbered 10 to six, that’s a given.\n\nBut in such a strongly Māori area, why the need for such stacking of important committees? Democracy would say that if the majority of the population in the Far North supported such initiatives as outlined above they would vote in councillors to put those policies into effect.\n\nDemocracy is about giving all people a voice. Good democratic government, at all levels, takes into account the interests of all – political supporters and opponents alike.\n\nThe FNDC debacle has removed democratic process there and someone in central government should do something about it.\n\nThe simplest way would be to amend Clause 31 (1) of Schedule 7 in the Local Government Act. Instead of saying “members of a committee or sub-committee may, but not need be, elected members of the local authority”, it would read “members of a committee or sub-committee MUST be elected members of a local authority”.\n\nThe clause may include another paragraph about expert or appropriate advice being sought from suitably qualified people, but in the interests of democracy they must not be given voting rights.\n\nSimple isn’t it?\n\nACT’s Cameron Luxton is on the case with a bill similar to this. New Zealand First supports it. Why won’t the Minister for Local Government Simon Watts?\n\nBecause, like his prime minister, he lacks political courage.\n\nWhen you can’t defend democracy, you don’t deserve to be a politician.\n\nThis article was originally published on the author’s Substack.",
  "title": "The FNDC Debacle – Why Democracy Matters",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-19T20:30:14.299Z"
}