The Government will change the law so that only elected councillors can vote on council committees, removing voting rights from the iwi representatives, independent experts and other appointees that some councils have brought to the table in recent years.
Local Government Minister Simon Watts announced the move on 2 June, framing it as a tidy-up of democratic accountability rather than a swipe at any particular group. He said councils and members of the public around the country had raised concerns about people who were never elected holding voting power, which in his view weakens the influence of the councillors that ratepayers actually chose.
“Councillors are directly accountable to voters for their decisions,” Watts said. He argued that letting unelected appointees vote alongside them cuts across that line of accountability. “That’s not democratic, so we’re fixing it.”
The change will be folded into the Local Government (System Improvements) Bill, which is already before Parliament, and it amends the Local Government Act 2002. Once the bill passes, councils will have six months to review their committee delegations and appointments before the new rules take effect. Unelected members can still be appointed in advisory roles, but they will not be able to vote and will not count towards a quorum.
There are some carve-outs. Statutory committees, appointments agreed as part of a Treaty settlement, and committee places created under other Acts that sit outside the Local Government Act will keep their voting rights. So the change is narrower than it first sounds, but it still reaches into arrangements that several councils have built deliberately.
The Government pointed to the Far North, Tauranga and Hastings as places where iwi representatives, and in some cases people under the age of 18, have been given full voting rights on committees without standing for election. In April the Far North District Council expanded its Te Kuaka Māori Strategic Relationships Committee to include representatives from the iwi grouping Te Kahu o Taonui and eight hapū, or sub-tribal, representatives sitting alongside six elected councillors. Arrangements like that are exactly what the new rules are aimed at.
ACT, the coalition partner that has pushed hardest on this, welcomed the decision. Local government spokesperson Cameron Luxton called it “a massive win for ratepayers and local democracy” and said his party had been pressing the minister to act.
The reaction from the councils on the receiving end has been a good deal cooler. Hastings Mayor Wendy Schollum questioned both the substance and the timing. She said her council’s unelected committee members sit on bodies that only make recommendations back to the elected council, which still casts the binding votes. “That is hardly a massive dilution of democracy, those two extra voices,” she said.
Schollum was most worried about losing independent members from audit and risk committees, who bring financial, legal and accounting skills that elected councillors often do not have. Overseeing billions of dollars of community assets, she argued, “it’s a really sensible thing to have independent financial, legal, and risk expertise” with a vote at the table. She also asked whether this was really the most pressing problem facing local government. “I really want to understand whether this is really the issue that is most urgent and needs nationwide legislative response,” she said.
Labour’s local government spokesperson Tangi Utikere made a similar point, arguing that councils should be free to fill gaps in their own skills and representation. When a council brings in a voice it lacks, he said, “that’s democracy in action” rather than a threat to it.
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi went further, calling the change a “gut punch” and accusing the Government of stripping away hard-won Māori participation in local decisions. He also took aim at the way it is being done, noting that the measure is being attached to a bill already in train. “They have the cheek to call iwi representation ‘undemocratic’ while they are pushing through these changes without a select committee process,” he said, in comments reported by RNZ.
Underneath the argument is a real tension that has been building in local government for years. On one side is a simple principle that the people who hold the vote should be the people who faced the voters. On the other is the practical reality that modern councils manage enormous budgets and complex assets, and many have decided they make better calls when iwi partners and outside specialists can vote rather than just talk. Both arguments are about better decisions. They just disagree about what gets you there.
The detail of how councils currently use these appointments was set out in RNZ’s coverage of the announcement. With local body elections due in October and a general election to follow in 2026, the shape of who gets a say around the council table is shaping up as a live campaign issue.
If you want to see where the parties sit on questions like this before you cast your ballot, our voting tool lays out the main parties’ positions side by side.
What do you think, is this a sensible defence of the ballot box or the loss of useful voices that councils chose for good reasons? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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