VZCZCXRO7541
RR RUEHNZ
DE RUEHNZ #0118/01 2850215
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 120215Z OCT 07
FM AMCONSUL AUCKLAND
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0483
INFO RUEHWL/AMEMBASSY WELLINGTON 0374
RUEHNZ/AMCONSUL AUCKLAND 0707

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 AUCKLAND 000118 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR EAP/ANP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV NZ
SUBJECT: LOCAL ELECTIONS IN AUCKLAND - LITTLE ADO ABOUT NOTHING 
 
This message is sensitive but unclassified, please protect 
accordingly. 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary.  Towns and cities across New Zealand are 
voting for new mayors and council members.  The vote - even that 
in New Zealand's biggest city - will have little impact on 
national politics.  The issues are pedestrian and the voters 
apathetic.  New Zealand's future leadership is not incubated in 
local politics but in the major parties' youth organizations and 
parliament's back benches.  Local politics is dominated by 
national figures who have stepped away from Wellington politics 
and by local civic boosters who, while often passionate about 
their home towns, have no national ambitions.  End summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) New Zealand's commercial center and largest 
metropolitan area (home to about 1.3 million of New Zealand's 
4.2 million people) is an awkward amalgam of four cities and 
portions of three neighboring districts plus an overarching 
regional council headed by an indirectly elected chair. 
Responsibilities overlap and officials compete; clashes are 
common among the four mayors, one chairman, and eight councils. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) While polls show that the residents of Auckland City 
(the largest of the four cities that makes up the metro area) 
strongly support the consolidation of all the above entities 
into a single city council, that is one issue that will not be 
addressed at the polls.  No significant candidate has come out 
clearly in favor of the proposal (no surprise, as consolidation 
would mean three of the four mayors lose their jobs), and there 
are no plans for a referendum.  Instead, Wellington has 
appointed a royal commission to tackle the problem, effectively 
postponing any changes until after next year's national 
elections. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) With the future structure of Auckland governance off 
the table, the campaigns have largely focused on the competence 
of incumbents, property taxes, transportation, and the growing 
cost of local government.  In Auckland City, for example, 
property taxes rose 21% over the last three years and are 
expected to rise another 37% over the next three.  The size of 
the staff of Manukau City, one of the four cities in the 
Auckland area, has grown 35% over six years.  Widespread public 
grumbling over these issues has not generated a voter revolt, 
however.  Two of the four incumbent mayors in the Auckland area 
look likely to be reelected comfortably.  A third has retired; 
the race to replace him is too close to call.  In general, local 
officials countrywide are coasting to easy reelection. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Only Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard, a breakfast 
cereal maker in his first term in office, looks likely to be 
ousted.  Hubbard pressed hard for the construction of a 
world-class stadium on the Auckland waterfront in time for the 
2011 Rugby World Cup, but lost.  He also was hurt by accusations 
that he and the rest of the city council arranged a stealth tax 
increase by raising the city-owned water company's rates and 
steering the profits into the treasury.  A controversial upgrade 
of Auckland's main street did not help.  Hubbard is expected to 
be ousted by John Banks, his predecessor and a former National 
Party MP and minister. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) There is strikingly little intersection between 
national and local politics on the party level.  Candidates for 
local office do not run under the banner of national parties. 
There are, strictly speaking, no Labour or National Party 
candidates for local office.  Rather, local candidates run under 
banners loosely affiliated with national parties.  (In Auckland, 
Labour Party candidates run under the "City Vision" ticket, 
while National Party affiliates run as "Citizens and Ratepayers" 
candidates.)  The national parties do not endorse candidates, 
and local elections are generally not taken as a bellwether of 
national politics.  One veteran of local politics explained that 
there is great resistance, not only in Auckland, but in cities 
around the country, to the idea of Wellington politics 
influencing local government.  Local politicians are expected to 
put local interests above all else, in a non-partisan way.  Were 
the prime minister, for example, to publicly endorse Dick 
Hubbard, it would be detrimental to both.  The PM would be 
perceived as interfering in local issues while Hubbard would be 
portrayed as accountable to the Labour Party rather than to 
Auckland's voters. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Comment.  All of the above means that voters in local 
elections cannot vote on the most important issue facing 
Auckland (the structure of government) nor can they make a 
statement about national politics in casting their local vote. 
Thus local elections are limited to issues like property taxes 
and public transport.  Perhaps not surprisingly, voter interest 
is low.  Some candidate fora have been attended by more 
candidates than voters.  Turnout so far (balloting is by mail, 
with a deadline of October 13), is much lower than elections at 
 
AUCKLAND 00000118  002 OF 002 
 
 
the national level and generally lower than during the last 
local elections in 2004.  National elections see close to 80% 
turnout, while turnout in the various districts of the current 
Auckland elections ranges from 24% to 37%.  It would probably 
take a substantial change in Auckland's structure of government 
- the creation of a single "super city" - to get the area's 
voters enthused about local elections. 
DESROCHER