October 13, 2025 • 11 mins
FIRST WITH YESTERDAY'S NEWS (highlights from Monday on Newstalk ZB) The Mandate Is There to Change the System
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk Said B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on
iHeartRadio Used Talk Said Talk.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello, my beautiful benbies, and welcome to the Bean for Tuesday.
First with yesterday's news, I am Glen Hart, and we
are looking back at Monday and really today. All we're
going to do is just lament the appalling turnout at
the local body elections and the state of councils as
(00:44):
they are, and whether we should keep doing that. I
think I'm going to do a little bit of podcast
relette with this. I think we're going to go back
to front see if that works reverse chronological order. Start
with Marcus first.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I don't think the voting system is that difficult. I mean,
it gets delivered to your house. All you've got to
really do is just find someone to tick and then
drop it in one of the bins. It's pretty straightforward.
I suppose the next thing to get more people engaged
would be just have an app you download on your
phone and maybe voting from your phone to the answer
(01:18):
for that, I haven't got much more to say about that,
but people are disengaged. I think for me, what really
the disengagement about is well, certainly in the rural areas
or the smaller urban areas, is the decline of local
probably print media, but there's very few stories about candidates.
(01:41):
They don't really interview the candidates. I don't talk to
the candidates. There aren't stories about the candidates. That seems.
We've read a little reporterage on the ground level of
candidates and people that are running. So whether that affected
I don't know. That's what it feels like from my end,
but just a general death of local media and a
(02:05):
disengagement from local politics. I guess that's really what it's about.
And yeah, I mean every everyone's now exposed to media
all around the world, so there's probably we've got our
cell phones. There's probably more interesting things that we can
spend our time reading than squabbles between local body candidates.
(02:30):
You might want to comment on that. I don't really
know what you'd say though, but yeah, I'm just interested
to hear what you want to say about that. How
you rejuvenate local body elections, I don't think they will
get rejuvenated. I think this is probably a one way trend.
If you look at the graphs every year, it's set
where every three years, every trianeum there's less people voting,
and imagine that will continue or.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So far so good. Then we're studying at the end
of the day and working our way backwards. And already
Marcus is in complete agreement with me. I think news
talk been Yeah, if we can just keep not voting
for it, eventually, yeah, just ignore them and they'll go away.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Is that what we're having for Listen, I am more
and more convinced that we need to cut the number
of councils we have across the country. I mean that
voter turnout that we've seen at the weekend was abysmal.
Last count I've seen is that nationally only thirty eight
percent of us voted, worse in Auckland only around twenty
nine percent, so not even one in three of us. Now,
I think anyone who thinks that we can fix local
(03:31):
government by ditching the postal voting system and going hard
with the orange guy and his dog is dreaming. That
is not the problem. The problem is not how you vote.
The problem is who you vote for. I think we
have a complete breakdown in the trust between the voter
and the people that we are voting for, and the
authority in general. I mean, you've opened your booklet, right,
surely you had to look at who you had to
vote for. It's over populated by people you wouldn't trust
(03:53):
to mind your pet, never mind run the council. You
don't actually believe that these people are going to make
smart decisions, do you, or do what they say they're
going to do. You wouldn't even know if they do
what they say they're going to do because there's hardly
any media coverage nowadays and holding of and holding people
to account. I think it fundamentally comes down to us
simply having too many local body politicians in New Zealand right,
(04:14):
Auckland alone has one hundred and seventy of these people.
That is more than Parliament has for the entire country. Now,
run that one seventy in Auckland across the entire country,
it's like one thousand. We don't have enough media to
cover everything grill than when they break promises. We don't
have enough attention spans ourselves to absorb that much information
on top of everything we're already absorbing with central government.
(04:37):
And so what we do is we just tap out
and we give up, and only what forty percent of
us vote. I reckon, what we need to do is
we need to take our sixty seven territorial authorities and
just cut it down. Some commentators reckon we need to
go as low as thirteen.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
I don't mind.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
That's a good starting point, certainly a better starting point
than sixty seven, which equals a what thirty eight percent turnout?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You see, the thing that has got me so jaded
about this is just the double up. There's just so
much stuff that seems to be done by both central
government and local government, and they need to just divvy
that up because otherwise we're as taxpayers and ratepayers, we're
just paying for it twice, an't we? But why do
(05:19):
we need two lots of people who are making roads
in the country? You know, some roads seem to be
the government's responsibility and something to be the council's responsibility.
It's ridiculous talk. So yesterday afternoon, of course, it was
a good chance for you guys, we're going to say
(05:42):
what you think about it.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
Well, if you want to put a blame peppercrip, selfishness, yep,
what else.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Along those laziness, it's got to be into it. Disorganization.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
Yeah, Well, there's no excuse. We're all busy people don't
matter what I you are.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Well, it's it's and it's the importance you put on something,
isn't it, Pam. So you say you're too busy to
do this, but that would suggest that you don't think
democracy is that important. If you because because you had
enough time to feed yourself. I'm sure you had. We
you know, not not you, Pam. I'm talking about the
royal youth.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
Yeah, but you're the first to criticize if you are
a homeowner, how much rights are yeah? Or oh, if
I'm a rubbish didn't? Well? Sorry, stuck it up.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Now now the Pam. The pushback that is always on
the compulsory voting thing is do we want a bunch
of people voting that know absolutely nothing about what's going
on and are only voting because they have to?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
See? I still maintain that if the options presented to me,
if if none of them are any good, why should
I have to vote? And also why can I not
have the option to say I don't want any of
these people, don't put any of them in and we
(07:17):
move on from there. So we keep journeying backward journeying
backwards through the day where we're up to carry Now.
Speaker 7 (07:25):
How do we get more people to take an interest?
The good counselors and you know the ones in your area,
I know the ones in mine do their level best
to get out there and show you what they're doing,
show you how they're spending your money, exhorting you to
take an interest in what they're doing, exhorting you to
(07:47):
critique their performance. I don't know how it can be
too hard. You know, maybe maybe reading up on the
backgrounds of the candidates, maybe reading what they want to
(08:10):
spend your money on, is hard, But so too is
finding out that something you're vehemently opposed to, or that
your rates are going up and you've got no idea why.
That's hard to choose your heart. Maybe having polling booths,
maybe not having so long because otherwise they go on
(08:33):
that draw where everything goes the one earring and you
can't find the partner for it. The voting papers and
the spacarchy. I don't know. I would love to hear
your ideas, because it matters. It really does matter. Two
hundred and seventeen billion dollars worth of assets and a
(08:53):
collective spending power of twenty billion dollars and two thirds
of New Zealand goes eh, whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Okay, Glenn, if you're so smart, what's your solution, because
this obviously isn't working. My solution is, so, you know,
how an EMMP. We have elector at the MPs, and
then we have listed the MPs. I say, those electoral
MPs just become the mayors of whatever region they're in.
(09:22):
Why do we need two lots of people speaking up
for each region? Like I say, there is so much
doubling up of stuff. I just don't understand it.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
News talk ze Bean.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
All right, let's finish up with Ryan. Maybe he loves it.
Speaker 8 (09:42):
The results speak for themselves. But the problem of courses
that these results are a very small sample size. Seventy
percent of us roughly didn't bother voting, and you can
ask ten pundits why and you will get ten different answers.
But I think the problem is pretty simple. The size
and scope of local government is completely out of control.
(10:04):
In a small Pacific island nation at the bottom of
the world, we just elected f fifteen hundred people to
sit around on seventy eight different councils. Mayors are one
vote at the table, so they aren't really that special.
Low turnout is not a rejection of the candidates. I
don't think it's a rejection of the whole system. It's
(10:26):
too big, there's too much compromise. It's all who know, Dewey.
If the coalition listens to the thirty percent who did
vote and caps rates, which they are going to do,
they ought to listen to the overwhelming silent majority who didn't,
and that means throwing entire councils I think in the bin,
Chuck them in the rubbish. Have the number of councilors
(10:49):
that remain and give the mayor a veto power vote
so there's actually accountability and there's a vision and something
worth voting for. The lowest voter turnout in thirty six
years is a mandate for change, and change looks like
a giant local government Bombfie.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Well, I think that worked out really well actually, and
it seems like Ryan summed up there exactly what I've
been trying to say the whole time. The low turnout
is a mandate for change. Let's change it. I am
Glenn Hart. That has been news to its it been.
We'll be back for another one tomorrow. Hopefully we won't
(11:28):
talk about local body politics at all.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
There used Talk is Talking Said Been. For more from
News Talk Said B, listen live on air or online,
and keep our shows with you wherever you go with
our podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk Said B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on
iHeartRadio Used Talk Said Talk.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello, my beautiful benbies, and welcome to the Bean for Tuesday.
First with yesterday's news, I am Glen Hart, and we
are looking back at Monday and really today. All we're
going to do is just lament the appalling turnout at
the local body elections and the state of councils as
(00:44):
they are, and whether we should keep doing that. I
think I'm going to do a little bit of podcast
relette with this. I think we're going to go back
to front see if that works reverse chronological order. Start
with Marcus first.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I don't think the voting system is that difficult. I mean,
it gets delivered to your house. All you've got to
really do is just find someone to tick and then
drop it in one of the bins. It's pretty straightforward.
I suppose the next thing to get more people engaged
would be just have an app you download on your
phone and maybe voting from your phone to the answer
(01:18):
for that, I haven't got much more to say about that,
but people are disengaged. I think for me, what really
the disengagement about is well, certainly in the rural areas
or the smaller urban areas, is the decline of local
probably print media, but there's very few stories about candidates.
(01:41):
They don't really interview the candidates. I don't talk to
the candidates. There aren't stories about the candidates. That seems.
We've read a little reporterage on the ground level of
candidates and people that are running. So whether that affected
I don't know. That's what it feels like from my end,
but just a general death of local media and a
(02:05):
disengagement from local politics. I guess that's really what it's about.
And yeah, I mean every everyone's now exposed to media
all around the world, so there's probably we've got our
cell phones. There's probably more interesting things that we can
spend our time reading than squabbles between local body candidates.
(02:30):
You might want to comment on that. I don't really
know what you'd say though, but yeah, I'm just interested
to hear what you want to say about that. How
you rejuvenate local body elections, I don't think they will
get rejuvenated. I think this is probably a one way trend.
If you look at the graphs every year, it's set
where every three years, every trianeum there's less people voting,
and imagine that will continue or.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So far so good. Then we're studying at the end
of the day and working our way backwards. And already
Marcus is in complete agreement with me. I think news
talk been Yeah, if we can just keep not voting
for it, eventually, yeah, just ignore them and they'll go away.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Is that what we're having for Listen, I am more
and more convinced that we need to cut the number
of councils we have across the country. I mean that
voter turnout that we've seen at the weekend was abysmal.
Last count I've seen is that nationally only thirty eight
percent of us voted, worse in Auckland only around twenty
nine percent, so not even one in three of us. Now,
I think anyone who thinks that we can fix local
(03:31):
government by ditching the postal voting system and going hard
with the orange guy and his dog is dreaming. That
is not the problem. The problem is not how you vote.
The problem is who you vote for. I think we
have a complete breakdown in the trust between the voter
and the people that we are voting for, and the
authority in general. I mean, you've opened your booklet, right,
surely you had to look at who you had to
vote for. It's over populated by people you wouldn't trust
(03:53):
to mind your pet, never mind run the council. You
don't actually believe that these people are going to make
smart decisions, do you, or do what they say they're
going to do. You wouldn't even know if they do
what they say they're going to do because there's hardly
any media coverage nowadays and holding of and holding people
to account. I think it fundamentally comes down to us
simply having too many local body politicians in New Zealand right,
(04:14):
Auckland alone has one hundred and seventy of these people.
That is more than Parliament has for the entire country. Now,
run that one seventy in Auckland across the entire country,
it's like one thousand. We don't have enough media to
cover everything grill than when they break promises. We don't
have enough attention spans ourselves to absorb that much information
on top of everything we're already absorbing with central government.
(04:37):
And so what we do is we just tap out
and we give up, and only what forty percent of
us vote. I reckon, what we need to do is
we need to take our sixty seven territorial authorities and
just cut it down. Some commentators reckon we need to
go as low as thirteen.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
I don't mind.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
That's a good starting point, certainly a better starting point
than sixty seven, which equals a what thirty eight percent turnout?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You see, the thing that has got me so jaded
about this is just the double up. There's just so
much stuff that seems to be done by both central
government and local government, and they need to just divvy
that up because otherwise we're as taxpayers and ratepayers, we're
just paying for it twice, an't we? But why do
(05:19):
we need two lots of people who are making roads
in the country? You know, some roads seem to be
the government's responsibility and something to be the council's responsibility.
It's ridiculous talk. So yesterday afternoon, of course, it was
a good chance for you guys, we're going to say
(05:42):
what you think about it.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
Well, if you want to put a blame peppercrip, selfishness, yep,
what else.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Along those laziness, it's got to be into it. Disorganization.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
Yeah, Well, there's no excuse. We're all busy people don't
matter what I you are.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Well, it's it's and it's the importance you put on something,
isn't it, Pam. So you say you're too busy to
do this, but that would suggest that you don't think
democracy is that important. If you because because you had
enough time to feed yourself. I'm sure you had. We
you know, not not you, Pam. I'm talking about the
royal youth.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
Yeah, but you're the first to criticize if you are
a homeowner, how much rights are yeah? Or oh, if
I'm a rubbish didn't? Well? Sorry, stuck it up.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
Now now the Pam. The pushback that is always on
the compulsory voting thing is do we want a bunch
of people voting that know absolutely nothing about what's going
on and are only voting because they have to?
Speaker 2 (06:56):
See? I still maintain that if the options presented to me,
if if none of them are any good, why should
I have to vote? And also why can I not
have the option to say I don't want any of
these people, don't put any of them in and we
(07:17):
move on from there. So we keep journeying backward journeying
backwards through the day where we're up to carry Now.
Speaker 7 (07:25):
How do we get more people to take an interest?
The good counselors and you know the ones in your area,
I know the ones in mine do their level best
to get out there and show you what they're doing,
show you how they're spending your money, exhorting you to
take an interest in what they're doing, exhorting you to
(07:47):
critique their performance. I don't know how it can be
too hard. You know, maybe maybe reading up on the
backgrounds of the candidates, maybe reading what they want to
(08:10):
spend your money on, is hard, But so too is
finding out that something you're vehemently opposed to, or that
your rates are going up and you've got no idea why.
That's hard to choose your heart. Maybe having polling booths,
maybe not having so long because otherwise they go on
(08:33):
that draw where everything goes the one earring and you
can't find the partner for it. The voting papers and
the spacarchy. I don't know. I would love to hear
your ideas, because it matters. It really does matter. Two
hundred and seventeen billion dollars worth of assets and a
(08:53):
collective spending power of twenty billion dollars and two thirds
of New Zealand goes eh, whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Okay, Glenn, if you're so smart, what's your solution, because
this obviously isn't working. My solution is, so, you know,
how an EMMP. We have elector at the MPs, and
then we have listed the MPs. I say, those electoral
MPs just become the mayors of whatever region they're in.
(09:22):
Why do we need two lots of people speaking up
for each region? Like I say, there is so much
doubling up of stuff. I just don't understand it.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
News talk ze Bean.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
All right, let's finish up with Ryan. Maybe he loves it.
Speaker 8 (09:42):
The results speak for themselves. But the problem of courses
that these results are a very small sample size. Seventy
percent of us roughly didn't bother voting, and you can
ask ten pundits why and you will get ten different answers.
But I think the problem is pretty simple. The size
and scope of local government is completely out of control.
(10:04):
In a small Pacific island nation at the bottom of
the world, we just elected f fifteen hundred people to
sit around on seventy eight different councils. Mayors are one
vote at the table, so they aren't really that special.
Low turnout is not a rejection of the candidates. I
don't think it's a rejection of the whole system. It's
(10:26):
too big, there's too much compromise. It's all who know, Dewey.
If the coalition listens to the thirty percent who did
vote and caps rates, which they are going to do,
they ought to listen to the overwhelming silent majority who didn't,
and that means throwing entire councils I think in the bin,
Chuck them in the rubbish. Have the number of councilors
(10:49):
that remain and give the mayor a veto power vote
so there's actually accountability and there's a vision and something
worth voting for. The lowest voter turnout in thirty six
years is a mandate for change, and change looks like
a giant local government Bombfie.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Well, I think that worked out really well actually, and
it seems like Ryan summed up there exactly what I've
been trying to say the whole time. The low turnout
is a mandate for change. Let's change it. I am
Glenn Hart. That has been news to its it been.
We'll be back for another one tomorrow. Hopefully we won't
(11:28):
talk about local body politics at all.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
There used Talk is Talking Said Been. For more from
News Talk Said B, listen live on air or online,
and keep our shows with you wherever you go with
our podcast on iHeartRadio
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