After this year’s local government elections, the recently released draft report of the Future of Local Government, it is timely to look at how representative our Local Government really is?

The Draft Review Report into the Future of Local Government makes a bunch of recommendations, and some are very positive in relation to implementing Te Tiriti and a Te Ao Māori world view.

The glaring omission in that document is the same glaring omission if you look around almost All of our Council tables. There is no reference to or mention of disability or disabled people. We make up 24% of the population, pay rates, vote and yet we receive no representation or discussion in terms of reform to make local government more representative.

The process for disabled people to stand as candidates is filled with structural barriers from beginning to end. Here are just a few. As a candidate to register to run, the cost is $200 in my area, now for many that seems nothing but the median weekly earnings (2022) before costs for a disabled person is $962. The process of meeting the public during an election is filled with barriers, there is no requirement to hold public meetings in Accessible venues so many meetings are held in inaccessible venues, which exclude both the disabled candidate and disabled voters. Traditional voter engagement methods such as door knocking and street corner meetings also exclude disabled candidates, particularly candidates who may be Deaf, also candidates who may need to manage their energy levels throughout the day, and candidates who are wheelchair users are particularly excluded from door knocking due to inaccessible physical environments.

All of these factors combine to present a situation where at the local government level there are no people elected to Council who identify as disabled and the only way for the voices of disabled people to get through to elected members is through the ad hoc Advisory group system, which not all Councils have adopted.

There are some prominent examples of good practice where Advisory groups are working well within Councils, Auckland, Wellington, New Plymouth, Tauranga, however this belies the fact that ultimately nondisabled elected Councillors are making the final decisions, many of which relate to funding allocation choices.

Local government matters, what happens in local government really impacts all of our lives on a day-to-day basis, and when the Councillors that are making those funding decisions are not fully representative of the society that we live in we as a society have some work to do to improve the conditions that shape our democracy.

I would like to see the Review into the Future of Local Government widen its scope and investigate how more disabled people can be supported into elected positions at Councils and how the process of elections can be made more Accessible and inclusive to disabled people.

Nick Ruane is a long-time disability advocate and Co-Chair of the Wellington City Council Accessibility Advisory Group.

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