In New Zealand it is primarily the extreme Christian Right who want to implement such a system that imposes such ridiculous restrictions on citizens. However, what happens when a binding referendum is passed which runs against the view of these extreme right wingers? Is that the point they stage a violent political uprising or some other form of so called direct democracy? As much as we dislike all politicians the current representative democracy system that we current have is the most fair to all views and opinions.

How is it that less representation is good?

Currently with 258 democratically elected representatives across the region there is one representative for every 5,426 people (from a population of 1,400,000 people). With only 147 elected representatives this drops to one representative for every 9,523 people.

However, what is worse is the drop in the number of councilors from 109 to 20. In other words from one councilor per 12,844 people to one per 70,000 people.

That is a massive drop in representation.

Community boards simply do not cut the mustard when it comes to representation. The reality is community boards are designed to feed a majority view into the council. However it is only a view, and only a majority one. They are essentially nothing more than people with good intentions who unfortunately will have the majority of their good views railroaded by the superiority of the much more powerful council. This is hardly good democracy.

The call for one united Auckland council was primarily focused around reducing bureaucracy rather than mucking about with the representative democracy. It is unfortunate that the National Government has overrun this process and turned it into a farce by playing politics with the biggest city in New Zealand. Pathetic.