Matt Cowley: Tauranga Business Chamber chief executive says voting process is still struggling to engage people amid low turnout

Concern in Tauranga about the city election's low voter turnout.  

Olympic rower Mahe Drysdale has an almost 6000 vote lead in the mayoral race, with just the specials left to count.  

Voter turnout's shaping up to be one of the city's lowest in a decade, with around 30 percent of residents casting their vote.  

Tauranga Business Chamber chief executive Matt Cowley told Ryan Bridge the process is struggling to engage people. 

“Raises questions around is this really the full democracy that our so-called community has wanted.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Totonger has elected a new mayor and councilors. According to
preliminary results, the former Olympic rower Mahe Drysdale will be
the first person to take the mayoral chains after the
last council was replaced by commissioners. You remember that back
in early twenty twenty one. Local government elections for the
rest of us will take place next year, making this
the first council that will serve a four year term.

(00:22):
They're telling Business Chamber Chief executive Matt Cowley is with
me this morning. Matt was, mahey, the best of the bunch,
do you reckon?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Look? He was a moderate that obviously managed to appeal
to as many people and from a business perspective, gave
a bit of certainty in terms of not wanting to
be too radical in terms of going forward. And it
looks like the team around him might be in a
similar position. So nothing too crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
And there's only one guy on there who was from
the Sax Council, the guy called Steve Morris. What's he like?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, oh, look right, he's a really good champion atma
I think he was the obvious person full pat noma,
but really, look, it's more around how well they get
along in between meetings. I think it was an absolute
pressure cooker situation last time with COVID and a whole
bunch of other things. But that's beyond that's our history.

(01:21):
That's all portionship paper now and hopefully we can remove
those embarrassing days from us.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah. I so what about the turnout? Speaking of embarrassing,
I mean, it's around thirty percent.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Gad. Hopefully with specials we get somewhere close to twenty nineteen,
so it's not going to be It's be our usual trend,
which is still low but not embarrassingly low. But it
sort of raises questions around is this really the full
democracy that the so called community had wanted?

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well? Do you think it is? I mean, do you
think there's something fundamentally broken here when they didn't have
the to vote at the last one, they haven't been
represented democratically for a couple of years because of these commissioners,
and then here's your chance and only thirty percent turn up.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah. I think the whole sect is a little bit
broken in terms of engaging communities, being relevant, and a
little bit of sentences and fatigue out there as well,
and just apathy Mike Hoskin said some comments last Friday
which I kind of agree with in terms of maybe
a bit of balance with some skills and some elected members.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Who knows, Yeah, have you got any concerns or does
it talk in the town about the fact that Marheede
lives one hundred k's away from the White Kato. Does
anyone care about that?

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Well, some people do, But it sounds like he'll be
considering coming over when as kid finishes his year of school,
so he will be part of it very very soon.
So that's not a major not a big deal.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
It's probably yeah, what's the big what's the one big
thing that they need to start fixing?

Speaker 2 (03:02):
For you, Matt, Well, before they can fix anything, they
need to know how local government works and know how
to work together as a team. But then there's a
risk that they might be a little bit too scared
of not wanting to disagree and wanting to get along
so well that they might get a bit of group
thinking and rubber stamp some recommendations that come through from staff.

(03:26):
So somewhere in between some constructive discussion and robust opportunities,
the commission is pushed back on staff. A couple of times,
which is good. It's healthy and governance and they shouldn't
be too scared to do that either.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Matt, thanks for your time this morning. Good luck with
a new council. It sounds like just a bare minimum
functioning council is what mattter is after. There for more
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Speaker 2 (03:52):
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