Kate Hawkesby: I'd love to see more people vote in local elections, particularly Auckland

Someone messaged me yesterday and said I feel sorry for you Aucklanders with your mayoral candidates being so lame – you have the choice of two frontrunners – neither of whom sound up to much. And it’s true. It’s a pretty average line up. I think I’ve rationalized it in terms of viewing it as voting for a direction not a person. I care about my city, like many of us, and it breaks my heart what’s happened to Auckland over the past few years. It’s a shambles. Violence, crime, ram raids, burglaries, homelessness, vandalism, it’s not the vibrant city it once felt like. It doesn’t feel safe, the suburbs feel under constant threat from rampant feral bored teenagers, the CBD is a mess, the roads are clogged, the public transport doesn’t move as efficiently as it should, once a city of sails, it’s turned into a city of fails.   So given that, I would’ve thought more and more Aucklanders would be more exercised to get out vote at local body elections. I’d have thought we’d be paying more attention to the race and know a bit more about the candidates, but we don’t. The latest poll showed 44 percent still don’t even know who they’re voting for. That’s more people than either frontrunner has supporting them. Wayne Brown’s nudged past Efeso Collins, but neither light up a room. Or sound competent and enthusiastic enough to run our largest city. We vaguely know what they stand for – centre-right Wayne Brown wants to trim costs and council wages and get things fixed an finished. Labour and Greens candidate Efeso Collins wants free public transport, but doesn't know how that would be paid for. Ultimately, it has to be paid for somewhere, so the reality is it would inevitably fall on ratepayers. So I’m not sure how you sell hiking up our rates so that more people have the opportunity to catch a bus as an exciting prospect for Aucklanders. But it remains to be seen. Left leaning mayors do usually win. Aucklanders seem to like them. We had Wayne Brown on the show yesterday; he said Aucklanders have a clear choice between “someone who wants to spend more and someone who wants to spend less.” But do Aucklanders even know that? Is anyone paying attention? There’s the argument councils don’t do much and a mayor is just another councillor but I like to think they fight for a city, they symbolise the vision and direction of that city, they offer up hope to improve a city. At the moment both seem a bit underwhelming. And I'm not sure what's going on with Efeso but he pulled out of a debate last night hours before it began - his fifth no-show at a scheduled event this week apparently. So it's hard to know what people stand for when they don't stand up. Brown characterised the race as one between a fiscal conservative but social liberal, (him), against an economic liberal who is a social conservative (Efeso). So I’m not sure how much voters care about that, how much they know about it, how likely they are to get their mail, check a box on a piece of paper, seal it an envelope and send it back through the post. I mean that in and of itself is antiquated and problematic, surely. I know we say this every time local body elections roll round, but I’d love to see more people get out and vote, more people pay attention, just some love and care for the woeful state of our once awesome city.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.