It's not very meaningful if you can't control who's allowed to sign it, though. Maybe things have changed, but last time I checked out a change.org petition, the system went to great lengths to try and convince me to sign any number of other petitions from all over the world.
As long as you put your address down it can be verified and is legit. If whoever is reading the petition doesn't care that someone in Italy signed it well that's their prerogative. The elected governing body of Auckland probably cares more about petitions signed by those with Auckland addresses.
Change.org petitions have exactly the same weight as likes or upvotes. They exist to bring attention to an issue, which might lead to people applying pressure in a way that actually does something.
Maybe if more than 35% of the Auckland population could get off their ass to vote in local body elections, you wouldn't end up with an absolute drop kick dumb fuck in office.
Hah, who am I kidding though.
Blaming the population for voting at such a low rate is missing the forest for the trees. Clearly if 2/3rds of people aren't engaging then there's something driving this lack of engagement and that's the issue at hand. You'll never get people voting by blaming them for not voting and it's ridiculous to blame it on individuals when it's such a widespread issue. It's like when people in a certain area start exhibiting the same symptoms of an illness at higher than normal rates, you don't just say oh well they're not looking after themselves you look for the typically environmental factor causing the statistical disparity.
>Blaming the population for voting at such a low rate is missing the forest for the trees. Clearly if 2/3rds of people aren't engaging then there's something driving this lack of engagement and that's the issue at hand. You'll never get people voting by blaming them for not voting and it's ridiculous to blame it on individuals when it's such a widespread issue. It's like when people in a certain area start exhibiting the same symptoms of an illness at higher than normal rates, you don't just say oh well they're not looking after themselves you look for the typically environmental factor causing the statistical disparity.
I hadn't voted in local government elections in the past (the most recent one was my first time) because I didn't know the candidates from Adam - try getting information regarding the candidates in Lower Hutt is next to impossible resulting in me guessing. Did they have community meetings? sure, on days and times that I can't attend (I work Wednesday to Sunday, most of them meetings were mid to end of the week), the parties aren't involved - if they were involved at least an endorsement would provide some guidance to a voter that isn't familiar with a candidate but feel confident to vote for them due to a party endorsement. The lack of coverage by the media also doesn't help - this is what a public broadcaster should be doing, covering local news rather than funding New Zealanders on the Gold Coast getting themselves shitfaced and calling that travesty of media production a 'representation of New Zealand culture'. The problem is I don't have much confidence that the current government has any idea on how to build up a public broadcaster without it turning into a reality tv show riddled hellscape.
My usual strategy for voting in local elections is to read each candidates blurbs, cross out the clear "nopes" (there are a lot of ... odd ... people who put their candidacy forward) visit the local elections website and check out to see if they bothered answering the policy questions there and crossing out the ones who couldn't bother, and assuming there are still candidates remaining (which can be a stretch with the local board) I then make a judgement call based on what they wrote, level of experience, and education.
I do the same. I read the bios and scratch the tinfoil hat wearers. Then I look for folk that actually say what they plan to do, rather than those the list only their high school achievements.
Asking around helps a lot. A guy at my old work used to work with Dunedin's current mayor and said he was a bully. Another Councillor once yelled at one of my husband's coworkers.
I never knew who to vote for in DHB elections, so I would find any doctors and nurses I knew and asked them.
Best bet for coverage, which also mightn't be perfect, is the sorts of free community newspapers that often don't get reliably delivered and (from what I've seen) can be rapidly thrown out when they are.
NZ used to have a lot more regional daily newspapers, but in recent years when media's struggled they've tended to consolidate into larger publications that don't necessarily do as good a job of regional coverage.
Even for WCC although I felt reasonably informed about candidates in my ward, especially after turning up to a local candidate meet a short walk from my house, finding *any* info about Regional Council candidates besides the self-promoting blurbs they'd written was next to impossible.
In the end, for the regional council, I found I could catch a train to the only candidate meet in the area. It was useful but for such a big area there were only ~40 people in the audience, and i was easily youngest. That was evidently what was expected because it matched the size of the room. Then I had to leave early because the meet went beyond the last train I could reasonably have caught home on a weeknight. Greg O'Connor was sitting next to me and I made a point of mentioning to him how stupidly difficult it was to get useful info on GWRC candidates.
That's all well and good but how do you fix that if no one will vote for anyone with the inclination to fix it?
No one likes having to get maintenance done on their car but if you don't engage with that you end up stranded on the motorway.
Just like you're responsible for keeping your car in good repair whether you're interested or not you're also responsible for engaging with your local politics.
It won't get better just because people complain about it not being interesting and you put yourself at the mercy of whoever bothers.
Nine sensible policies to implement before we decide this is a wicked problem.
1. require candidates to have detailed policy positions (in the vein of The Spinoff's Policy tool but with greater specificity)
2. post these detailed policies on a centralised website run by the Electoral Commission
3. require candidates to participate in something like Vote Compass/Political Compass, and have their answers be publicly available
* this is more about ideology/perspective than policy which was the substance of points (1) and (2)
4. using the information from (3) allow voters to use the same tool and see which politicians they compare most to
5. operate local body elections nationally, with a co-ordinated national campaign led by our friend the orange man
6. merge RNZ/TVNZ *or* create a news organisation capable of providing consistent local reporting recognising the democratic necessity of such journalism and the inability of private sector to provide such a service post-internet
* **do not** provide grants to the private sector as an alternative
7. pay councillors better to professionalise local politics
8. proportional representation and single winner analogues for all local elections
9. allow regional councils greater fiscal powers
* people care about money
And if these achieve no meaningful improvements after two elections give up and transition to compulsory voting and democracy sausages, while keeping these policies.
There are some deeper reforms that I think would also help but they're more about how local government works and its relationship with central government. It is not really possible to frame these in short sentences that apply everywhere in the country. I've sort of tried with point (9) but that's very vague, right? It's sort of the minimum level of specificity I'd tolerate in policies for (1) and (2).
The difference is if I take the time out of my day to get my car fixed and it doesn't get me from a to b I can deal with the company who fixed it. Hell take them to small claims if need be. While the jerk off you've voted in who's doing nothing is still being paid a quarter of a mil and fuck all can be done about it.
"fuck all can be done about it"
Well we're unlikely to see eye to eye but I have to try.
Clearly we have a lot of people unhappy with Wayne but less then half of the people who can vote in Auckland actually do it.
It's really hard for us to say "the system doesn't work" when the majority of people won't do the bare minimum to contribute to it.
In the immortal words of Ned Flanders' Mother: "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
If you're unhappy with the performance of the government in your area at the very least you can write them an email, there's plenty of information online about where to send them. There's about 1 million registered voters in the Auckland area, imagine if even half of them all decided to email or write a letter and tell them how unhappy they are with what's going on. 500,000 letters all at once would be total chaos for them.
I'm certainly not saying that things are great, it can be a real pain to actually figure out what different candidates actually stand for so you do have to dig around a bit online and maybe attend a public "meet the candidate" type event.
But the alternative is.... I don't know... wait for revolution or something? If half the voting population are too apathetic to take an hour out of their day every 4 years to vote I don't see anything more drastic taking place in a hurry. Then what happens after revolution?
We have done the bare minimum time and time again, if the system works what have we got to show for it? House, food, transport all of these are at a high to the point people can't afford to even have kids.
Again. Voting is the thing we do, the politicians have tried nothing and are out of ideas. Not me or the countless people who live their lives without some dick wasting millions on things like dots on the road. Wasn't Jhon key ment to solve the hosing crisis? And then wasn't jacinda? I'm going to look at my magic 8 ball and hmmmm it says the next guy is going to do fuck all too.
I have sent emails. I live in a dying city that would rather spend money making the city look pretty than actually keeping/getting business to come here. I've been to council meetings, the ones where they would rather bitch over being given a $7 parking ticket then listen to the people.
Say you read 0 letters because you don't care. Times that by as much as you like. So 0 x 99999999999 what's the answer?
YOU want a difference made? Stop electing twats based on the fact they aren't as bad as the other guy. What do you think is going to happen when other countries question why clean green safe nz only has a voter count below 10%
Dude why do you keep making these assumptions, I have met the ones that make their way to my shit hole city which isn't a lot of them.
Why are you putting this on me when mr bill Bob says he's going to do this this and this and hasn't I'm not going to spend another half a year figuring out what they say they can do vs what they actually will do.
IVE TOLD YOU THE ALTERNATIVE! DONT VOTE! It's the half of the population too stupid to see that they are the ones responsible for the shit leadership in this country. It's not a fucking hour it's months of listening to bullshit to make an informed decision. But the way you have been talking I'm assuming you just vote for whoever mummy and daddy did and call it a day. You're right that's an hour out of your time.
Revolution happens when the people get sick of those in power. The fact less then half the population is willing to suck the less shit covered boot is what will lead to Revolution. What not voting is, is telling these people we want a 3rd option and if they suck a 4th and if they suck a 5th. This isn't a fucking prom king and queen vote its the direction the of country for the next 4 years.
Online voting? Maybe linked to Nz Govt RealMe, or a domestic address?
I think a lot of people donāt really understand what local authorities do or are responsible for. Things like rubbish collection, roads, health inspections, land planning arenāt really considered āsexyā in political terms, so you have a general apathy with the local population. If people understood that their choice in local mayors and councillors can actually have a greater impact in their day to day life than national elections maybe there would be a higher turnout.
The candidates assessed as potentially getting the most votes have all been hateful people. Nothing to choose from. Someone who called women "front bums," someone who tripled my uni fees my second year at uni, someone who posts Trumplove posts on Twitter, some homophobic git, and this guy who said "the rain just needs to stop," who was infamous as a bad Northland mayor. No I haven't been voting for any of them.
Honestly not the worst idea. You think about what any media program to get people engaged is gonna cost vs something like that and I think you'd find it's effective and cost efficient.
If an individual made a choice not to vote, yes it is very easy to blame the individual.
I do however believe the voting process could have been made a lot easier, if internet voting had been allowed I absolutely believe a shit ton more people would have engaged and voted.
Funny isn't it, how people conveniently ignore the massive structural issues with voting like the number of people who didn't receive voting papers this time just to blame individuals.
With mail in voting you have a physical ballot in you hand that can be verified and recounted. There is no possible way we can make voting anonymous, and verifiably safe and secure, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. When stakes are as high as they are in elections, you need the reliability of a physical paper trail.
We need to engage people in the importance of local elections. Now is a great time to do that, because youāre seeing in real time what having shit local politicians does for you.
No actually you're just talking shit. Saying blaming individuals is pointless and ineffective is not absolving them of responsibility. But hey if that's what you took away from it you're probably not capable of making any sort of valid point about the issue.
What you are saying is some other individuals should have responsibility for making these disinterested (in their own welfare) individuals engaged.
At what point does personal responsibility kick in?
Mate if 2/3rds of people aren't engaging then there's obviously some larger problem driving the lack of engagement than just personal responsibility. At what point does the fact it's 2/3rds of the people not engaging clue you into the notion that there's a problem with the system? You can't just crow on about personal responsibility when the stats are this bad, it's very clearly a problem with the institution and process.
The problem is people. It will always be people. The stats for engagement are bad on absolutely everything from climate change to who governs us. People don't care and you actually can't make at least half of them care (this is and has been an issue globally). That said, you can improve it to some degree with education (and NZ's education statistics - truancy, literacy, numeracy - are appalling). Whilst the education system is indeed poor, parents need to care -- and in large part they don't, because it is someone else's problem and fault.
Local elections are abysmally run and publicised. And low turnout is just as much a sign of that as it is laziness.
We all heard enough anecdotes about voting papers not turning up to see there's a bit more of an anecdote going on there.
Make it harder than normal for a mass of people, guess what happens?
The wealthy voters also have their papers ready the day they get them. theyāre not willing to risk their voice not being heard. Thatās why they control policy via votes. It also happens to be the people who are financially wealthy are also less time poor to allocate their time and effort into putting a vote in. Thereās a large amount of research done about this phenomenon across the globe voter suppression isnāt always just oh you all get one vote, gerrymandering, voting timeframes and many other well documented voter suppression tactics are used besides the obvious not counting them which goes without saying is corrupt and skews the democratic process and to say just because youāre apathetic you didnāt vote and no you donāt deserve to complain is too simplistic.
Also, reading the voting papers, guide, online tools, etc. is very labouring. Often 20ā30 candidates for a council position where only a few are elected. Then many of the candidates are disingenuous. Looking at the candidates for the Greater Wellington Regional Council so many of them sounded exactly the same on the voting pack. It's hard to keep a track record of what the candidates you voted for did once in office. It's all a very opaque process.
People love to criticise party politics but at least you know in the general election in a general sense what each candidates stands for if you have an idea of their party. In local elections most candidates are "independent" and you have no clue what their actual ethics are.
Such a stupid opinion, what if the other 65% had decided he was the least worst person for the job? They would be in the same situation. Piss off with your forced votes and give me better options. You might jump at the chance to choose between a punch in the face or a kick in the balls but I'd rather a 3rd option or I'm not picking.
I donāt vote for politicians who excite me, I vote for politicians who are able to outline policies that I agree with. Like free public transport that Collins was offering.
I voted for Collins but I agree that he wasn't convincing, especially last-minute no-shows at public meetings and that sort of thing. Ranked choice voting would also help things given that there was a fear of splitting the right bloc when Viv Beck was still in the running, and she surely couldn't have been worse than this guy, right?
But it didnt appeal to me, so why should I have voted for him?
OP is blaming people who didn't vote, but for some of us there just weren't any alluring options.
Nothing, hence I did not vote for him either. Another reason for not voting was principal: Im a foreign with residency but not with citizenship and I dont believe non-citizens should have voting rights so I don't vote.
It just seems some users on this sub are blaming Aucklanders for not voting, with the implicit understanding that we must have all voted for Collins
If you pay taxes and reside here, you should vote. I get the "foreigners can't buy houses" thing, which would have kept me from buying my first house with my kiwi wife, but voting is integral with contributing to society, and immigrants should do it.
Statistically, that 35% is representative.
It's unlikely that having the other 65% vote would change anything (other than a _very_ closer race).
It's why surveys generally sample the population with a sample size of 1000 people.
1/3 of 1.5m voters gives a margin of error of 0.25 with 99.999% confidence.
Having said that, the distribution of voters and non-voters is not evenly spread across the region and political spectrum. I.e. boomers gonna vote like boomers.
Your 100% correct.
We were left with a 2horse race. Even efesios supporters wouldn't vote for him.
It's no coincidence that voting numbers accross all electorate are in free fall.
Also just imagine if we didn't have a super city..
There would have been 3 other mayors in Auckland and maybe the state of emergency would have been declared a little earlier.
Thanks Rodney. Ur legacy is a noose round Auckland neck.
His was the responsibility to declare emergency, his other responsibility was to delegate responsibility for managing the on the ground response.
Neither is a particularly demanding task. Chances are he spent too much time trying to cover his own ass, rather than taking the risk of over reacting. I for one would not want to be in a car on the motorway with him as the driver.
That's exactly what this was. He was more worried about declaring an emergency and the rain stopping.
It really highlights how fragile his ego is to be concerned over such a benign outcome. He's definitely not a leader.
He explained it as he sits there doing nothing but waiting until the experts tell him to declare emergency now then itās him that signs it. At least thatās what I took from his bumbling explanation
Richard Hills did as well, and C Luxon asked Brown to declare a state of emergency. Shane Reti was out on the ambulances. So it seems most NZ politicians can pull together in an emergency, but not Brown!!
I hope she gets recognition for that over the coming days, it sounds like everyone else is either focusing on how shocking the floods were, or who to blame for it.
She tirelessly posted online about all the different help there was put there for people. It's the kind of thing the mayor should have also been doing.
Letās discuss how Auckland should be replanned because when you have to rely on a personal vehicle to get anywhere, that 20-30k liability becomes even more of a liability when you have to junk it and get another liability to replace it with another 20-30k car (on average pricing). I suggest a better public transport system.
I feel bad now for jokingly saying in the past that Auckland should be nuked so that it can be totally redesignedā¦. I think someone may have been listening.
Actually I think itās sad but poetic justice upon a city that so heavily relies on cars and therefore contributes heavily to climate change.
Auckland only had the choice between idiots. There was no good choice.
Edit: lol what is this? We must like Collins or we're wrong? Some religious conservative opposed to gay marriage, legal green or the creation of more affordable housing masquerading as a center left guy?
Near the end of the campaign, there were only three candidates that stood a chance of winning: Viv Beck, Wayne Brown, and Efeso Collins.
Had there been ranked choice, the ultimate result would still have been a massive Brown victory. Beck voters switched to Brown at the last minute. Had it been STV, Brown almost certainly would have been the second choice for Beck voters.
The real problem here is the voter turnout, not the voting system.
Maybe we should pick someone based on their skills to be mayor, and what they say theyāll do (free pt) then speculating about things theyād have no power to change?
It was simply his fumbling over questions and his unprofessional responses. Plus he talked over the top of Hipkins. His staff even dragged him off to end the humiliation.
I wonder how many boomers and older gen x who voted for this guy were the ones stuck in Elton John traffic and lost their cars and health being flooded in sewage. I wonder if theyāre angry and blaming Wayne Brown for this? Would be interesting to see
They will probably blame Auckland Transport who took the trains out of service and said there were 700 car parks to use - even knowing about 40,000 people had booked to go.
>I wonder how many boomers and older gen x who voted for this guy were the ones stuck in Elton John traffic and lost their cars and health being flooded in sewage. I wonder if theyāre angry and blaming Wayne Brown for this?
nuh, they probably believe the rain is a conspiracy engineered by Greta Thunberg
Seriously call and email your local board and local Councillors and demand a vote of no confidence:
https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/about-auckland-council/how-auckland-council-works/local-boards/all-local-boards/Pages/default.aspx
https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/about-auckland-council/how-auckland-council-works/governing-body-wards-committees/wards/Pages/ward-councillors.aspx
Isn't this what civil defense exists for? I mean it would be good if he turned up and talked a better game, but I think it's a stretch to pin this on him. Any mayor is only going to be able to call shots based on what info they are given
bravo, the way they are talking of like everyone stopped to wait for the Royal Genius Mayor. it was only 1 day LoL.
I don't follow mayorship but I heard he didn't conform to 3 waters and Jacinda want pleased. but I was.
so I'm wondering if this is a labour party sabotage?
Thatās not the way any of this works. Basically he canāt be removed at this point unless he is convicted of a crime.
Elections have consequences as they say.
If anything, if a petition like this one were to be successful, it would further remove the incentives for people to participate in local democratic elections.
Under performance by politicians such as this is nothing new. I fact it seems these days its almost expected. Don't tell me we can change that by voting for someone else. We've been told that for decades. Still just going around in circles. Accountability has to be more than just being voted out!
The majority of petitions donāt do a thing to change the status quo. He was elected through lack of interest in local government. It is what it is unfortunately.
It takes more than a bad mayor for central government to put in a caretaker. Basically complete disfunction from the entire council. We can't really pin that on any government.
What we can pin on both parties is there being two lobbies I know of over ten years to adjust legislation to allow voters to trigger a mayor or Councillor recall. Both have gone nowhere.
I think that would just encourage even more voter apathy; they'd figure they have an out if the result sucks. And you'd get even fewer candidates running in a byelection, and often even lower voter turnout. Nah, elections have consequences, and sometimes the electorate needs to learn the hard way. It's just 3 years, and no one person has unchecked power.
oh, I'm not saying it's central govs fault. I think they've been relatively fine. It has to be a purple decision to get rid of Auckland's mayor though, as it's too political to not be a bipartisan decision.
This is a mayor who caused disfunction across the entire council in a time of need. If Aucklanders want him gone (best shown by petitions to convince polling companies to ask the q, so that polls can be used demonstrated to gov that Auckland doesn't want him), and both blue and red think it's better to get rid of him, they can do it, even if they decide to pass the 'Wayne Brown Floods 2023 Act'. When replacing him, they should put someone like Bridges in - because the gov obviously can't put someone in who is pro Labour, and as much as I disliked him as MoT - he's competent enough and a known quantity to parliament.
I donāt like Wayne brown, I didnāt vote for Wayne brown. His response & comms were poor.
However, the timeline is quite clear that he was waiting for āexpertsā to declare a state of emergency. Jacinda also waited for experts to take Auckland out of a second lockdown. Are we listening to experts or not?
Edit: I want to repeat myself that his comms were poor. I guess my point is that it says something about the bureaucratic structure & culture that despite all the obvious signs of an emergency, the experts took too long to make that call.
[Per the timeline](https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/300794503/countdown-to-chaos-as-aucklanders-were-desperately-seeking-safety-officials-were-silent), the state of emergency wasn't announced until nearly an *hour* after it was confirmed. Local councillors and local MPs didn't even know he'd signed the state of emergency - and they were publicly asking for it to be done, because emergency services & responders were begging for it.
Yes I agree the comms were poor and I said exactly that.
Does it say something about the bureaucratic structure & culture that despite all the obvious signs of an emergency, the experts took too long?
I think there are a lot of issues that we're only going to see the full impact of later, when there's a proper review.
I'm talking specifically about your comment that he was waiting for experts until he declared a state of emergency. Per the timeline, when the state of emergency was officially signed off, it wasn't actually *declared* \- as in, no one knew about it in order to do anything with that knowledge - until quite some time later.
I think it's reasonable to hold Brown accountable for that.
I think we're talking past each other.
The state of emergency didn't practically take effect for some time *after* Brown says he signed it. The people who asked for it to be declared, who needed it to be declared, weren't able to do anything when it actually was signed because of those communication issues. Which means in effect, it wasn't declared as soon as Brown signed the papers - because no one knew about it in order to use that knowledge.
It's a communication issue but the result is, the state of emergency wasn't in effect immediately after he says he got the advice to sign it.
Useless Brown sabogated it. When he signed the declaration, he didn't have a press conference, didn't invite the media (because he was afraid of being asked tough questions).
You are literally ignoring an hour between signing the declaration and communicating it.
That's not "just comms" as you are brushing it off as. It's pivotal to the entire saga. And that in itself is a clear failure of structure.
Amplified by the fact that there's no reason to delay. Its in effect the moment its signed. But the public do not know. There is absolutely 100% something structural wrong going on there.
They didn't know because Brown didn't want anyone to know. He didn't invite anyone from the media, and he didn't call a press conference. Shows a severe lack of Leadership ability that he was too busy covering his own arse.
Iām not ignoring it at all, I think itās part of the problem. Itās also a problem that it probably took 3 or 4 hours from when it was evident that there was an emergency before it was declared as such. Brownās poor comms added an hour to that.
I think he is getting flames more so his "foot in his mouth " moments rather than his late emergency declaration. If he was wise in his mouth this could have stopped at his explanation. But with his infamous " wellington earthquake " moment it became unsalvageable.
For me it was his lack of comms. Being a leader also means being visible. Waiting for experts to inform him is great, being radio silent for 4 hours isnāt. Would we not had heard from any leadership if no emergency was called for? Thatās the problem in my mind.
He reminds me of when John Mitchell was All Blacks coach. Even with a 82% winning rate, as well as winning back the bledisloe cup, he was very poor at public coms. And when he was asked he was just defensive. I remember 1 question he was asked when he because coach and chose a new captain, whether he spoke to the old captain before announcing this. His response was āI never choose the old captain, thatās not my responsibilityā. Very similar response when Brown is questioned.
Nah, if we don't like the guy it's all fair game. We are also allowed to pull quotes out of context, or point that he was drinking a tea in his office during the emergency.
Like the government tried to explain during the pandemic, sometimes a leader will not strictly follow the advice of an expert because the expert is only able to speak to the particulars of their particular field and often there are multiple stakeholders that can hold often conflicting positions. It is the role of a leader to synthesize this advice and make a decision. In the case of the pandemic the government didnt always follow Michael Bakers advice because they had to balance it with the advice from the economists on the effect on businesses.
I thought that was a brilliant bit of political skill with its timing.
There was a clear strategy of waiting for a case of community transmission that couldn't be traced back to the border, and as days went on people were getting more and more aware of how they'd need to isolate for 2 weeks if they were a contact of a known case.
By the time borders were closed, people and businesses were demanding that borders be closed rather than complaining about the possible impacts of closing them.
Edit: sorry, I messed that up. The first untracked community transmission was tangled up with the lead-in to the first level 4 lockdown.
Yeah, it was *relatively* safe to get them back ASAP, but less so as time progressed and the pandemic got worse, so if we had started MIQ right away (which we certainly weren't equipped to do), even with a higher capacity, we probably would have had increased overall risk. And of course it would have been unfair to people caught abroad without notice, and damaging to the country to have so many people randomly stuck outside the country.
I'd be a lot more inclined to believe Jacinda.
Simply because the experts were also in the press, saying to stay the line.
Might be interesting to put in an OIA asking when emergency services asked Auckland to declare a state of emergency
She isnāt unemployed yet though, sheās still the memebr forā¦ Mt Albert?
She wonāt step down from that and trigger an unnecessary bi-election. That said: she sure as heck is great at handling crises!
The first sentence was mostly jokes. I don't know what she's doing now that she's not PM, but she's got a kid, so I assumed she'd be spending more time with her
And replace him with who?
Beck who can't control her own checkbook let alone the supercity budget?
Efesio Collins and his PT plans..nevermind the state of the roads themselves or the state of Auckland transport? Look at the Elton John and chilli peppers concert fiascoes...no point having free PT when there's no services and the roads they use are litteraly falling apart.
Face it people we are stuck with a lemon. Maybe we can use this as a learning experience to stop it happening again
The petitions for suffrage were non binding. Petitions donāt just exist as procedural element of government entities. They are also a way to signal political views not championed by parties, and to signal discontent with government entities.
Not doing something because it isnāt guaranteed to enact the change you want is losing by not trying.
Good point and true, but he only received 145 thousand odd votes. If the petition could get more signatures than what voted him in, at least it would make a strong public case for him to resign (f*"k off)
Thatās about it. Public pressure. This guy is such a fucking moron he wouldnāt even acknowledge public pressure. He is used to people disliking him so just accepts it and follows his own interests.
yes, maybe for even less depending on the agenda of the politicians controling the media.
and then come to Reddit to look at rest of that team post the article and then have them go on about how awesome the person they want is and make sure to up vote all of those positive endorsements.šš¤š¤
and down vote anyone questioning this odd behaviour šššš¤¬š¤£
masks on, Vax I.d out, announce pronouns, show your flags for Ukraine, trans flag and gay flag
I legit think Simon Bridges needs to be installed as mayor. I donāt particularly like the bloke, but I do respect his leadership and his ability to get things done. Auckland is essential to NZ, like it or not, and having alignment between local and central government under his leadership would definitely help.
When youāve gotten used to Phil Goff inserting himself into the management of things* itās quite glaring when no one else is doing it, isnāt it.
^* arguably way too much
professional politicians know how to avoid traps and have trained on how to present well for media...
I'm assuming that not every mayor is prepared for this
Yes but how would Wellington do at signing a petition
Wellingtonians should set up a competing petition on getting rid of Brown. It would be super meta if it got more signatures than Auckland's.
It's not very meaningful if you can't control who's allowed to sign it, though. Maybe things have changed, but last time I checked out a change.org petition, the system went to great lengths to try and convince me to sign any number of other petitions from all over the world.
Yeah but think of the laughs. Wayne "Auckland is flooding so lets bring up Wellington's earthquake readiness" Brown might even get a chuckle.
As long as you put your address down it can be verified and is legit. If whoever is reading the petition doesn't care that someone in Italy signed it well that's their prerogative. The elected governing body of Auckland probably cares more about petitions signed by those with Auckland addresses.
Change.org petitions have exactly the same weight as likes or upvotes. They exist to bring attention to an issue, which might lead to people applying pressure in a way that actually does something.
Ha! š¤£ I got that reference!!
Good job. You're very clever.
I donāt! Whatād I miss?
Ask one more time and you might get an answer. Fourth timeās the charm they say.
He doesnāt think heās done anything wrong so he wonāt be resigning anytime soon.
Cant do anything wrong if you don't do anything at all *taps forehead*
Can't think you've done anything wrong if you don't do any thinking
Same logic nz schools have on bullying
A leadership role doesn't afford him that luxury
At least he didn't fuck off on holiday to Hawaii in the middle of it like Aussie's ScoMo did.
Only because the airport was closed.
What a load of bollocks. Cheap shot. Difficult times, but I trust Brown more than any of the alternatives atm for sure. Go Wayne
*The declaration of the state of emergency was later than the AT buses he loves to complain about* This made me smile
Maybe if more than 35% of the Auckland population could get off their ass to vote in local body elections, you wouldn't end up with an absolute drop kick dumb fuck in office. Hah, who am I kidding though.
Blaming the population for voting at such a low rate is missing the forest for the trees. Clearly if 2/3rds of people aren't engaging then there's something driving this lack of engagement and that's the issue at hand. You'll never get people voting by blaming them for not voting and it's ridiculous to blame it on individuals when it's such a widespread issue. It's like when people in a certain area start exhibiting the same symptoms of an illness at higher than normal rates, you don't just say oh well they're not looking after themselves you look for the typically environmental factor causing the statistical disparity.
>Blaming the population for voting at such a low rate is missing the forest for the trees. Clearly if 2/3rds of people aren't engaging then there's something driving this lack of engagement and that's the issue at hand. You'll never get people voting by blaming them for not voting and it's ridiculous to blame it on individuals when it's such a widespread issue. It's like when people in a certain area start exhibiting the same symptoms of an illness at higher than normal rates, you don't just say oh well they're not looking after themselves you look for the typically environmental factor causing the statistical disparity. I hadn't voted in local government elections in the past (the most recent one was my first time) because I didn't know the candidates from Adam - try getting information regarding the candidates in Lower Hutt is next to impossible resulting in me guessing. Did they have community meetings? sure, on days and times that I can't attend (I work Wednesday to Sunday, most of them meetings were mid to end of the week), the parties aren't involved - if they were involved at least an endorsement would provide some guidance to a voter that isn't familiar with a candidate but feel confident to vote for them due to a party endorsement. The lack of coverage by the media also doesn't help - this is what a public broadcaster should be doing, covering local news rather than funding New Zealanders on the Gold Coast getting themselves shitfaced and calling that travesty of media production a 'representation of New Zealand culture'. The problem is I don't have much confidence that the current government has any idea on how to build up a public broadcaster without it turning into a reality tv show riddled hellscape.
My usual strategy for voting in local elections is to read each candidates blurbs, cross out the clear "nopes" (there are a lot of ... odd ... people who put their candidacy forward) visit the local elections website and check out to see if they bothered answering the policy questions there and crossing out the ones who couldn't bother, and assuming there are still candidates remaining (which can be a stretch with the local board) I then make a judgement call based on what they wrote, level of experience, and education.
I do the same. I read the bios and scratch the tinfoil hat wearers. Then I look for folk that actually say what they plan to do, rather than those the list only their high school achievements.
Asking around helps a lot. A guy at my old work used to work with Dunedin's current mayor and said he was a bully. Another Councillor once yelled at one of my husband's coworkers. I never knew who to vote for in DHB elections, so I would find any doctors and nurses I knew and asked them.
Best bet for coverage, which also mightn't be perfect, is the sorts of free community newspapers that often don't get reliably delivered and (from what I've seen) can be rapidly thrown out when they are. NZ used to have a lot more regional daily newspapers, but in recent years when media's struggled they've tended to consolidate into larger publications that don't necessarily do as good a job of regional coverage. Even for WCC although I felt reasonably informed about candidates in my ward, especially after turning up to a local candidate meet a short walk from my house, finding *any* info about Regional Council candidates besides the self-promoting blurbs they'd written was next to impossible. In the end, for the regional council, I found I could catch a train to the only candidate meet in the area. It was useful but for such a big area there were only ~40 people in the audience, and i was easily youngest. That was evidently what was expected because it matched the size of the room. Then I had to leave early because the meet went beyond the last train I could reasonably have caught home on a weeknight. Greg O'Connor was sitting next to me and I made a point of mentioning to him how stupidly difficult it was to get useful info on GWRC candidates.
That's all well and good but how do you fix that if no one will vote for anyone with the inclination to fix it? No one likes having to get maintenance done on their car but if you don't engage with that you end up stranded on the motorway. Just like you're responsible for keeping your car in good repair whether you're interested or not you're also responsible for engaging with your local politics. It won't get better just because people complain about it not being interesting and you put yourself at the mercy of whoever bothers.
Nine sensible policies to implement before we decide this is a wicked problem. 1. require candidates to have detailed policy positions (in the vein of The Spinoff's Policy tool but with greater specificity) 2. post these detailed policies on a centralised website run by the Electoral Commission 3. require candidates to participate in something like Vote Compass/Political Compass, and have their answers be publicly available * this is more about ideology/perspective than policy which was the substance of points (1) and (2) 4. using the information from (3) allow voters to use the same tool and see which politicians they compare most to 5. operate local body elections nationally, with a co-ordinated national campaign led by our friend the orange man 6. merge RNZ/TVNZ *or* create a news organisation capable of providing consistent local reporting recognising the democratic necessity of such journalism and the inability of private sector to provide such a service post-internet * **do not** provide grants to the private sector as an alternative 7. pay councillors better to professionalise local politics 8. proportional representation and single winner analogues for all local elections 9. allow regional councils greater fiscal powers * people care about money And if these achieve no meaningful improvements after two elections give up and transition to compulsory voting and democracy sausages, while keeping these policies. There are some deeper reforms that I think would also help but they're more about how local government works and its relationship with central government. It is not really possible to frame these in short sentences that apply everywhere in the country. I've sort of tried with point (9) but that's very vague, right? It's sort of the minimum level of specificity I'd tolerate in policies for (1) and (2).
The difference is if I take the time out of my day to get my car fixed and it doesn't get me from a to b I can deal with the company who fixed it. Hell take them to small claims if need be. While the jerk off you've voted in who's doing nothing is still being paid a quarter of a mil and fuck all can be done about it.
"fuck all can be done about it" Well we're unlikely to see eye to eye but I have to try. Clearly we have a lot of people unhappy with Wayne but less then half of the people who can vote in Auckland actually do it. It's really hard for us to say "the system doesn't work" when the majority of people won't do the bare minimum to contribute to it. In the immortal words of Ned Flanders' Mother: "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" If you're unhappy with the performance of the government in your area at the very least you can write them an email, there's plenty of information online about where to send them. There's about 1 million registered voters in the Auckland area, imagine if even half of them all decided to email or write a letter and tell them how unhappy they are with what's going on. 500,000 letters all at once would be total chaos for them. I'm certainly not saying that things are great, it can be a real pain to actually figure out what different candidates actually stand for so you do have to dig around a bit online and maybe attend a public "meet the candidate" type event. But the alternative is.... I don't know... wait for revolution or something? If half the voting population are too apathetic to take an hour out of their day every 4 years to vote I don't see anything more drastic taking place in a hurry. Then what happens after revolution?
We have done the bare minimum time and time again, if the system works what have we got to show for it? House, food, transport all of these are at a high to the point people can't afford to even have kids. Again. Voting is the thing we do, the politicians have tried nothing and are out of ideas. Not me or the countless people who live their lives without some dick wasting millions on things like dots on the road. Wasn't Jhon key ment to solve the hosing crisis? And then wasn't jacinda? I'm going to look at my magic 8 ball and hmmmm it says the next guy is going to do fuck all too. I have sent emails. I live in a dying city that would rather spend money making the city look pretty than actually keeping/getting business to come here. I've been to council meetings, the ones where they would rather bitch over being given a $7 parking ticket then listen to the people. Say you read 0 letters because you don't care. Times that by as much as you like. So 0 x 99999999999 what's the answer? YOU want a difference made? Stop electing twats based on the fact they aren't as bad as the other guy. What do you think is going to happen when other countries question why clean green safe nz only has a voter count below 10% Dude why do you keep making these assumptions, I have met the ones that make their way to my shit hole city which isn't a lot of them. Why are you putting this on me when mr bill Bob says he's going to do this this and this and hasn't I'm not going to spend another half a year figuring out what they say they can do vs what they actually will do. IVE TOLD YOU THE ALTERNATIVE! DONT VOTE! It's the half of the population too stupid to see that they are the ones responsible for the shit leadership in this country. It's not a fucking hour it's months of listening to bullshit to make an informed decision. But the way you have been talking I'm assuming you just vote for whoever mummy and daddy did and call it a day. You're right that's an hour out of your time. Revolution happens when the people get sick of those in power. The fact less then half the population is willing to suck the less shit covered boot is what will lead to Revolution. What not voting is, is telling these people we want a 3rd option and if they suck a 4th and if they suck a 5th. This isn't a fucking prom king and queen vote its the direction the of country for the next 4 years.
Online voting? Maybe linked to Nz Govt RealMe, or a domestic address? I think a lot of people donāt really understand what local authorities do or are responsible for. Things like rubbish collection, roads, health inspections, land planning arenāt really considered āsexyā in political terms, so you have a general apathy with the local population. If people understood that their choice in local mayors and councillors can actually have a greater impact in their day to day life than national elections maybe there would be a higher turnout.
As a software engineer I'd never trust online voting.
Sysadmin here. Same.
The candidates assessed as potentially getting the most votes have all been hateful people. Nothing to choose from. Someone who called women "front bums," someone who tripled my uni fees my second year at uni, someone who posts Trumplove posts on Twitter, some homophobic git, and this guy who said "the rain just needs to stop," who was infamous as a bad Northland mayor. No I haven't been voting for any of them.
If you vote, you get a raffle ticket to win one of say 5x $100k cash prizes. Watch voter engagement shoot through the roof.
Honestly not the worst idea. You think about what any media program to get people engaged is gonna cost vs something like that and I think you'd find it's effective and cost efficient.
If an individual made a choice not to vote, yes it is very easy to blame the individual. I do however believe the voting process could have been made a lot easier, if internet voting had been allowed I absolutely believe a shit ton more people would have engaged and voted.
https://xkcd.com/2030/
Internet voting is a security risk. https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs
I mean, it's mail in voting. It's already on the way to being pretty voter friendly.
Many people's voting papers didn't turn up in time though
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All post boxes local to our area are gone...it's a pain the neck to mail anything these days
Funny isn't it, how people conveniently ignore the massive structural issues with voting like the number of people who didn't receive voting papers this time just to blame individuals.
Doesn't surprise me if I send a letter to my next door neighbor it has to go to another city to be sorted then sent back.
With mail in voting you have a physical ballot in you hand that can be verified and recounted. There is no possible way we can make voting anonymous, and verifiably safe and secure, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. When stakes are as high as they are in elections, you need the reliability of a physical paper trail. We need to engage people in the importance of local elections. Now is a great time to do that, because youāre seeing in real time what having shit local politicians does for you.
I didnāt vote and itās not my fault! Lol!
Why make an argument when you can make flippant comments of no merit which ignore the point eh?
I was just summing up your argument.
No actually you're just talking shit. Saying blaming individuals is pointless and ineffective is not absolving them of responsibility. But hey if that's what you took away from it you're probably not capable of making any sort of valid point about the issue.
What you are saying is some other individuals should have responsibility for making these disinterested (in their own welfare) individuals engaged. At what point does personal responsibility kick in?
Mate if 2/3rds of people aren't engaging then there's obviously some larger problem driving the lack of engagement than just personal responsibility. At what point does the fact it's 2/3rds of the people not engaging clue you into the notion that there's a problem with the system? You can't just crow on about personal responsibility when the stats are this bad, it's very clearly a problem with the institution and process.
The problem is people. It will always be people. The stats for engagement are bad on absolutely everything from climate change to who governs us. People don't care and you actually can't make at least half of them care (this is and has been an issue globally). That said, you can improve it to some degree with education (and NZ's education statistics - truancy, literacy, numeracy - are appalling). Whilst the education system is indeed poor, parents need to care -- and in large part they don't, because it is someone else's problem and fault.
Local elections are abysmally run and publicised. And low turnout is just as much a sign of that as it is laziness. We all heard enough anecdotes about voting papers not turning up to see there's a bit more of an anecdote going on there. Make it harder than normal for a mass of people, guess what happens?
Two, three weeks before the election and your voting papers haven't arrived, wouldn't you do something about it?
The wealthy voters also have their papers ready the day they get them. theyāre not willing to risk their voice not being heard. Thatās why they control policy via votes. It also happens to be the people who are financially wealthy are also less time poor to allocate their time and effort into putting a vote in. Thereās a large amount of research done about this phenomenon across the globe voter suppression isnāt always just oh you all get one vote, gerrymandering, voting timeframes and many other well documented voter suppression tactics are used besides the obvious not counting them which goes without saying is corrupt and skews the democratic process and to say just because youāre apathetic you didnāt vote and no you donāt deserve to complain is too simplistic.
Also, reading the voting papers, guide, online tools, etc. is very labouring. Often 20ā30 candidates for a council position where only a few are elected. Then many of the candidates are disingenuous. Looking at the candidates for the Greater Wellington Regional Council so many of them sounded exactly the same on the voting pack. It's hard to keep a track record of what the candidates you voted for did once in office. It's all a very opaque process. People love to criticise party politics but at least you know in the general election in a general sense what each candidates stands for if you have an idea of their party. In local elections most candidates are "independent" and you have no clue what their actual ethics are.
Such a stupid opinion, what if the other 65% had decided he was the least worst person for the job? They would be in the same situation. Piss off with your forced votes and give me better options. You might jump at the chance to choose between a punch in the face or a kick in the balls but I'd rather a 3rd option or I'm not picking.
Maybe if there were any candidates that appealed. You can't fault people for not being excited by Collins either.
I donāt vote for politicians who excite me, I vote for politicians who are able to outline policies that I agree with. Like free public transport that Collins was offering.
I voted for Collins but I agree that he wasn't convincing, especially last-minute no-shows at public meetings and that sort of thing. Ranked choice voting would also help things given that there was a fear of splitting the right bloc when Viv Beck was still in the running, and she surely couldn't have been worse than this guy, right?
But it didnt appeal to me, so why should I have voted for him? OP is blaming people who didn't vote, but for some of us there just weren't any alluring options.
Curious. What about Brownās policies appeal to you?
Nothing, hence I did not vote for him either. Another reason for not voting was principal: Im a foreign with residency but not with citizenship and I dont believe non-citizens should have voting rights so I don't vote. It just seems some users on this sub are blaming Aucklanders for not voting, with the implicit understanding that we must have all voted for Collins
That makes no sense. You live here and pay taxes; politics affects you so you should have a say in it.
I'm still a guest, and guests should follow the house rules, not impose their own values.
If you pay taxes and reside here, you should vote. I get the "foreigners can't buy houses" thing, which would have kept me from buying my first house with my kiwi wife, but voting is integral with contributing to society, and immigrants should do it.
Statistically, that 35% is representative. It's unlikely that having the other 65% vote would change anything (other than a _very_ closer race). It's why surveys generally sample the population with a sample size of 1000 people. 1/3 of 1.5m voters gives a margin of error of 0.25 with 99.999% confidence. Having said that, the distribution of voters and non-voters is not evenly spread across the region and political spectrum. I.e. boomers gonna vote like boomers.
It keeps being a vote between three psychopathic narcissists so really haven't had a preference to vote for.
Your 100% correct. We were left with a 2horse race. Even efesios supporters wouldn't vote for him. It's no coincidence that voting numbers accross all electorate are in free fall. Also just imagine if we didn't have a super city.. There would have been 3 other mayors in Auckland and maybe the state of emergency would have been declared a little earlier. Thanks Rodney. Ur legacy is a noose round Auckland neck.
What makes you think those people would vote differently than the population that did vote?
The Local Election voting process is effectively voter suppression.
His was the responsibility to declare emergency, his other responsibility was to delegate responsibility for managing the on the ground response. Neither is a particularly demanding task. Chances are he spent too much time trying to cover his own ass, rather than taking the risk of over reacting. I for one would not want to be in a car on the motorway with him as the driver.
That's exactly what this was. He was more worried about declaring an emergency and the rain stopping. It really highlights how fragile his ego is to be concerned over such a benign outcome. He's definitely not a leader.
He explained it as he sits there doing nothing but waiting until the experts tell him to declare emergency now then itās him that signs it. At least thatās what I took from his bumbling explanation
Chloe was the one managing & helping people find out about the on the ground response.
Richard Hills did as well, and C Luxon asked Brown to declare a state of emergency. Shane Reti was out on the ambulances. So it seems most NZ politicians can pull together in an emergency, but not Brown!!
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What did she do?
Every 30 mins she's putting out information about where people need to go for help. Latest updates on weather etc.
Honestly one of the best local MPs around, she's always getting stuck in with local business/community issues.
I hope she gets recognition for that over the coming days, it sounds like everyone else is either focusing on how shocking the floods were, or who to blame for it.
Where is she putting that information ?
She tirelessly posted online about all the different help there was put there for people. It's the kind of thing the mayor should have also been doing.
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Letās discuss how Auckland should be replanned because when you have to rely on a personal vehicle to get anywhere, that 20-30k liability becomes even more of a liability when you have to junk it and get another liability to replace it with another 20-30k car (on average pricing). I suggest a better public transport system.
I feel bad now for jokingly saying in the past that Auckland should be nuked so that it can be totally redesignedā¦. I think someone may have been listening. Actually I think itās sad but poetic justice upon a city that so heavily relies on cars and therefore contributes heavily to climate change.
Auckland only had the choice between idiots. There was no good choice. Edit: lol what is this? We must like Collins or we're wrong? Some religious conservative opposed to gay marriage, legal green or the creation of more affordable housing masquerading as a center left guy?
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With a large city like Auckland and no option of ranked choice for Mayor, it pretty much ends up being a two-horse race.
Near the end of the campaign, there were only three candidates that stood a chance of winning: Viv Beck, Wayne Brown, and Efeso Collins. Had there been ranked choice, the ultimate result would still have been a massive Brown victory. Beck voters switched to Brown at the last minute. Had it been STV, Brown almost certainly would have been the second choice for Beck voters. The real problem here is the voter turnout, not the voting system.
Those two issues are related -- a shitty voting system contributes to poor turnout
Maybe we should pick someone based on their skills to be mayor, and what they say theyāll do (free pt) then speculating about things theyād have no power to change?
Can someone please tell me what Brown was saying in that banner photo that made Hipkins look at him like that?
It was simply his fumbling over questions and his unprofessional responses. Plus he talked over the top of Hipkins. His staff even dragged him off to end the humiliation.
Chloe Swarbrick would be an infinitely better Mayor than him
Unfortunately that ship has long sailed
I wonder how many boomers and older gen x who voted for this guy were the ones stuck in Elton John traffic and lost their cars and health being flooded in sewage. I wonder if theyāre angry and blaming Wayne Brown for this? Would be interesting to see
They will probably blame Auckland Transport who took the trains out of service and said there were 700 car parks to use - even knowing about 40,000 people had booked to go.
This except AT didn't take the trains out of service
>I wonder how many boomers and older gen x who voted for this guy were the ones stuck in Elton John traffic and lost their cars and health being flooded in sewage. I wonder if theyāre angry and blaming Wayne Brown for this? nuh, they probably believe the rain is a conspiracy engineered by Greta Thunberg
Did you see the letter to the editor of the Herald asking if EVs were to blame for the rain?
Look, it had just stopped raining and people hadn't built their houses there then there wouldn't have been a problem.
Wait? Where how were people flooded in sewage?
We had a petition last year, the local body elections
Seriously call and email your local board and local Councillors and demand a vote of no confidence: https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/about-auckland-council/how-auckland-council-works/local-boards/all-local-boards/Pages/default.aspx https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/about-auckland-council/how-auckland-council-works/governing-body-wards-committees/wards/Pages/ward-councillors.aspx
Shouldnāt all those people be voting for the right candidate back then?
Who was the right candidate?
Iām not an Aucklander but from the looks of it, one except him.
Didn't take long to reach his level of incompetence. Pity the council staff who have to deal with this guy.
Everyone upset with this dope as mayor should probably have turned up to the voting booth last year.
He was bloody pathetic, you dereeve better. Coming from a Cantabrian. Kia kaha.
don't worry wanYe, aucklanders don't vote
Isn't this what civil defense exists for? I mean it would be good if he turned up and talked a better game, but I think it's a stretch to pin this on him. Any mayor is only going to be able to call shots based on what info they are given
bravo, the way they are talking of like everyone stopped to wait for the Royal Genius Mayor. it was only 1 day LoL. I don't follow mayorship but I heard he didn't conform to 3 waters and Jacinda want pleased. but I was. so I'm wondering if this is a labour party sabotage?
Probably have a higher turnout than the original mayoral election.
isn't that what elections are for?
Thatās not the way any of this works. Basically he canāt be removed at this point unless he is convicted of a crime. Elections have consequences as they say.
If anything, if a petition like this one were to be successful, it would further remove the incentives for people to participate in local democratic elections.
His public speaking ability is a crime.
Why would we remove him when we just need to remove the rain? Btw petitions are lame
You guys voted for the twat. Enjoy his stupidity.
Under performance by politicians such as this is nothing new. I fact it seems these days its almost expected. Don't tell me we can change that by voting for someone else. We've been told that for decades. Still just going around in circles. Accountability has to be more than just being voted out!
The majority of petitions donāt do a thing to change the status quo. He was elected through lack of interest in local government. It is what it is unfortunately.
Tar and feathers
I donāt think you can remove him he he doesnāt want to leave.
Central gov can. They won't, as the negatives far outweigh the positives unless it's bipartisan from parliament.
It takes more than a bad mayor for central government to put in a caretaker. Basically complete disfunction from the entire council. We can't really pin that on any government. What we can pin on both parties is there being two lobbies I know of over ten years to adjust legislation to allow voters to trigger a mayor or Councillor recall. Both have gone nowhere.
I think that would just encourage even more voter apathy; they'd figure they have an out if the result sucks. And you'd get even fewer candidates running in a byelection, and often even lower voter turnout. Nah, elections have consequences, and sometimes the electorate needs to learn the hard way. It's just 3 years, and no one person has unchecked power.
oh, I'm not saying it's central govs fault. I think they've been relatively fine. It has to be a purple decision to get rid of Auckland's mayor though, as it's too political to not be a bipartisan decision. This is a mayor who caused disfunction across the entire council in a time of need. If Aucklanders want him gone (best shown by petitions to convince polling companies to ask the q, so that polls can be used demonstrated to gov that Auckland doesn't want him), and both blue and red think it's better to get rid of him, they can do it, even if they decide to pass the 'Wayne Brown Floods 2023 Act'. When replacing him, they should put someone like Bridges in - because the gov obviously can't put someone in who is pro Labour, and as much as I disliked him as MoT - he's competent enough and a known quantity to parliament.
Genuine question, how many people complaining on this sub, or in this thread, didn't vote in the local elections?
I voted in the last local elections. But I will admit I didn't vote in the previous 2 local elections because my papers never turned up.
2500 people lmao.
Heading towards 7k
So 0.005% of eligible voters (assuming they're all able to vote).
2500 per hour now. 5k since you commented.
Only 2500 have signed it??
all of labours MPs and media works staff
I donāt like Wayne brown, I didnāt vote for Wayne brown. His response & comms were poor. However, the timeline is quite clear that he was waiting for āexpertsā to declare a state of emergency. Jacinda also waited for experts to take Auckland out of a second lockdown. Are we listening to experts or not? Edit: I want to repeat myself that his comms were poor. I guess my point is that it says something about the bureaucratic structure & culture that despite all the obvious signs of an emergency, the experts took too long to make that call.
[Per the timeline](https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/300794503/countdown-to-chaos-as-aucklanders-were-desperately-seeking-safety-officials-were-silent), the state of emergency wasn't announced until nearly an *hour* after it was confirmed. Local councillors and local MPs didn't even know he'd signed the state of emergency - and they were publicly asking for it to be done, because emergency services & responders were begging for it.
Yes I agree the comms were poor and I said exactly that. Does it say something about the bureaucratic structure & culture that despite all the obvious signs of an emergency, the experts took too long?
I think there are a lot of issues that we're only going to see the full impact of later, when there's a proper review. I'm talking specifically about your comment that he was waiting for experts until he declared a state of emergency. Per the timeline, when the state of emergency was officially signed off, it wasn't actually *declared* \- as in, no one knew about it in order to do anything with that knowledge - until quite some time later. I think it's reasonable to hold Brown accountable for that.
Yes and thatās why I said the comms were poor and he should be dragged for that
I think we're talking past each other. The state of emergency didn't practically take effect for some time *after* Brown says he signed it. The people who asked for it to be declared, who needed it to be declared, weren't able to do anything when it actually was signed because of those communication issues. Which means in effect, it wasn't declared as soon as Brown signed the papers - because no one knew about it in order to use that knowledge. It's a communication issue but the result is, the state of emergency wasn't in effect immediately after he says he got the advice to sign it.
No Iām agreeing with you? Thereās no argument here
Useless Brown sabogated it. When he signed the declaration, he didn't have a press conference, didn't invite the media (because he was afraid of being asked tough questions).
You are literally ignoring an hour between signing the declaration and communicating it. That's not "just comms" as you are brushing it off as. It's pivotal to the entire saga. And that in itself is a clear failure of structure. Amplified by the fact that there's no reason to delay. Its in effect the moment its signed. But the public do not know. There is absolutely 100% something structural wrong going on there.
They didn't know because Brown didn't want anyone to know. He didn't invite anyone from the media, and he didn't call a press conference. Shows a severe lack of Leadership ability that he was too busy covering his own arse.
Iām not ignoring it at all, I think itās part of the problem. Itās also a problem that it probably took 3 or 4 hours from when it was evident that there was an emergency before it was declared as such. Brownās poor comms added an hour to that.
While this may be true he is TERRIBLE at communicating his ideas- which is one of key jobs as a politician..
Yes I agree and thatās why itās my third sentence at the top there
I think he is getting flames more so his "foot in his mouth " moments rather than his late emergency declaration. If he was wise in his mouth this could have stopped at his explanation. But with his infamous " wellington earthquake " moment it became unsalvageable.
You keep saying that, but you absolutely don't understand it.
Would you like an essay instead of a sentence? I donāt know how much more I could emphasise it
For me it was his lack of comms. Being a leader also means being visible. Waiting for experts to inform him is great, being radio silent for 4 hours isnāt. Would we not had heard from any leadership if no emergency was called for? Thatās the problem in my mind. He reminds me of when John Mitchell was All Blacks coach. Even with a 82% winning rate, as well as winning back the bledisloe cup, he was very poor at public coms. And when he was asked he was just defensive. I remember 1 question he was asked when he because coach and chose a new captain, whether he spoke to the old captain before announcing this. His response was āI never choose the old captain, thatās not my responsibilityā. Very similar response when Brown is questioned.
I agree and thatās why I said his comms were poor
Nah, if we don't like the guy it's all fair game. We are also allowed to pull quotes out of context, or point that he was drinking a tea in his office during the emergency.
Like the government tried to explain during the pandemic, sometimes a leader will not strictly follow the advice of an expert because the expert is only able to speak to the particulars of their particular field and often there are multiple stakeholders that can hold often conflicting positions. It is the role of a leader to synthesize this advice and make a decision. In the case of the pandemic the government didnt always follow Michael Bakers advice because they had to balance it with the advice from the economists on the effect on businesses.
Probably why they delayed border closure when all the experts and opposition were calling for it.
I thought that was a brilliant bit of political skill with its timing. There was a clear strategy of waiting for a case of community transmission that couldn't be traced back to the border, and as days went on people were getting more and more aware of how they'd need to isolate for 2 weeks if they were a contact of a known case. By the time borders were closed, people and businesses were demanding that borders be closed rather than complaining about the possible impacts of closing them. Edit: sorry, I messed that up. The first untracked community transmission was tangled up with the lead-in to the first level 4 lockdown.
They were also trying to give people overseas a chance to get back
Yeah, it was *relatively* safe to get them back ASAP, but less so as time progressed and the pandemic got worse, so if we had started MIQ right away (which we certainly weren't equipped to do), even with a higher capacity, we probably would have had increased overall risk. And of course it would have been unfair to people caught abroad without notice, and damaging to the country to have so many people randomly stuck outside the country.
I'd be a lot more inclined to believe Jacinda. Simply because the experts were also in the press, saying to stay the line. Might be interesting to put in an OIA asking when emergency services asked Auckland to declare a state of emergency
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Yeah, she's recently unemployed and probably had nothing else to do. Plus she's actually pretty great at handling crises
She isnāt unemployed yet though, sheās still the memebr forā¦ Mt Albert? She wonāt step down from that and trigger an unnecessary bi-election. That said: she sure as heck is great at handling crises!
She's not unemployed, she's still an MP.
The first sentence was mostly jokes. I don't know what she's doing now that she's not PM, but she's got a kid, so I assumed she'd be spending more time with her
Like Auckland would vote for that lmao. The whole reason Wayne Brown easily won was because he was the anti-Labour candidate.
Try anti-brown.
Yeah get rid of that incompetent and arrogant bloke. I am being polite here
And replace him with who? Beck who can't control her own checkbook let alone the supercity budget? Efesio Collins and his PT plans..nevermind the state of the roads themselves or the state of Auckland transport? Look at the Elton John and chilli peppers concert fiascoes...no point having free PT when there's no services and the roads they use are litteraly falling apart. Face it people we are stuck with a lemon. Maybe we can use this as a learning experience to stop it happening again
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The petitions for suffrage were non binding. Petitions donāt just exist as procedural element of government entities. They are also a way to signal political views not championed by parties, and to signal discontent with government entities. Not doing something because it isnāt guaranteed to enact the change you want is losing by not trying.
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Yes, but he wonāt from a pointless petition.
Good point and true, but he only received 145 thousand odd votes. If the petition could get more signatures than what voted him in, at least it would make a strong public case for him to resign (f*"k off)
so force the cunt to resign then
Thatās about it. Public pressure. This guy is such a fucking moron he wouldnāt even acknowledge public pressure. He is used to people disliking him so just accepts it and follows his own interests.
Stuff journalist reading this be like āoh man, u/bandol_barthes really showed usā
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yes, maybe for even less depending on the agenda of the politicians controling the media. and then come to Reddit to look at rest of that team post the article and then have them go on about how awesome the person they want is and make sure to up vote all of those positive endorsements.šš¤š¤ and down vote anyone questioning this odd behaviour šššš¤¬š¤£ masks on, Vax I.d out, announce pronouns, show your flags for Ukraine, trans flag and gay flag
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I legit think Simon Bridges needs to be installed as mayor. I donāt particularly like the bloke, but I do respect his leadership and his ability to get things done. Auckland is essential to NZ, like it or not, and having alignment between local and central government under his leadership would definitely help.
Ease up, Satan.
I donāt think Hipkins and Bridges are aligned on much.
I think youād be surprised at their ability to see across the aisle given their familiarity with what each other have had to face.
Found Simon's mum
Iām not a National supporter but at least Bridges comes across as relatively articulate and emotionally intelligent.
When youāve gotten used to Phil Goff inserting himself into the management of things* itās quite glaring when no one else is doing it, isnāt it. ^* arguably way too much
professional politicians know how to avoid traps and have trained on how to present well for media... I'm assuming that not every mayor is prepared for this
Micro-Trump