The Cluster That Is Kaipara Local Politics

They might be clowns, but there are clowns everywhere.

There are places where local politics is a patient craft. Then there is Kaipara, where meetings resemble amateur theatre, audience participation is compulsory and the script keeps getting scribbled over by people who think volume is a substitute for virtue. It would be funnier if it were not ours.

The week began with the sort of civic moment that should be boring, which is exactly how democracy likes it. Instead, we got an emergency meeting, a camera pointed at the public gallery and a mayor trying to hold back the tide like a man with a sieve. The official reason was to question the independence of vote counters and the handling of special votes.

The unofficial reason looked a lot like arithmetic. When the preliminary margin is single digits and hundreds of specials are still to be tallied, people who fear the verdict often develop sudden process allergies. That allergy flared so brightly that the attempt was made to rope in Internal Affairs, never mind that the department has no power to referee local election conduct. The law, as it turns out, is inconveniently clear.

Before we even reached the substance, the performance art kicked in. A 76-year-old turned up in his father’s WWII air force uniform to protest what he called an assault on democracy. The mayor bristled, told him to sit down, then pulled the plug on the meeting for the evening.

The show resumed the next morning and quickly slid from farce to self-own, as the chief returning officer and council lawyer dismantled the grand theory of irregularity piece by piece. The cherry on top was a motion to seek an investigation from an agency that cannot legally provide it. If you listen very closely, you can hear the nation’s collective facepalm.

There is a tragic familiarity to all of this. Kaipara has history. A bungled wastewater project once sank a council and brought in commissioners. You would think the district, of all places, might cultivate a taste for steadiness. Instead, we got a culture war on loop. Ban karakia, then unban it after the backlash.

Scrap the Māori ward, then wonder why older Māori voters are energised enough to queue for special votes. Call yourself the Trump of the North, then act surprised when people draw the obvious comparisons about shouting at the refs when the scoreboard turns. None of this is normal stewardship. It is theatre that mistakes applause from the front row for a mandate.

Let us talk about the shouting. It is not just rude. It is deeply unserious. The louder someone gets about their own rights, the quieter they tend to be about their obligations. Self-importance arrives wearing a cloak of “the people,” yet somehow the people who do not agree are always invisible, or suspect, or both.

Then there are the bullies who circle any contested space, drunk on the thrill of intimidation. They are not guardians of free speech. They are bouncers at the door of belonging. If your politics requires others to shut up to feel safe, it is not politics, it is policing.

Democracy has rituals that protect us from our worst days. One of them is to accept the result, or, if you must, seek a recount within the rules, then accept that result. Another is to let public servants do their jobs without naming and shaming them because you dislike the likely outcome.

When a mayor demands the names of temporary voting officials and is refused on safety grounds, we do not have to squint to see why. People who volunteer to help count envelopes should not require security plans.

There was also a quieter story running beside the circus. Residents turned up. People watched the livestream. Some who had never voted before made the effort to cast a special vote. That is not a community losing faith. That is a community reasserting it. In other words, the very antics that were meant to narrow the franchise helped widen it. A perverse civic education, but an education nonetheless.

So where does that leave Kaipara now that the results have tipped and tempers have cooled by a degree or two? With a simple test. Can those who lost behave like citizens rather than contestants who have been robbed by fate. Can those who won behave like custodians rather than victors in a brawl.

The district does not need another season of angry men auditioning for talkback radio. It needs councillors who can read a report, listen to a submission and vote with both head and heart. It needs a mayor who knows that calling an emergency meeting does not make it one.

There is an ache in all this. It should not be necessary to plead for ordinary decency. We should not have to point out that calling people “sweetheart” in a council chamber is not banter, it is belittling. We should not have to keep explaining that tikanga in public life is not a threat to anyone’s identity, it is a recognition that identity is plural. Yet here we are, watching adults act like schoolboys playing prefect, hands up for rules when the rules help them, hands off when they do not.

If you are reading this from elsewhere in Aotearoa, resist the urge to giggle and move on. Kaipara is not an outlier, it is a mirror. Every district has its own version of the bloke who thinks his grievance is a constitutional principle and the chorus that mistakes theatre for leadership.

The fix is not a commissioner at the ready, though history tells us that option exists for a reason. The fix is to grow up, collectively. Vote like adults. Serve like adults. Argue like adults who can count and who can countenance losing.

Here is a small wish list for next term. Less emergency, more agenda. Less performance, more paperwork. Less slogan, more sentence. Start meetings on time, end them with decisions and treat the public gallery as a trust rather than a threat. Celebrate the boring wins.

Approve the unglamorous pipe that does not burst, the budget that balances without fireworks, the policy that treats people as neighbours rather than demographics. That is what civic pride looks like. It is quiet on purpose.

If you are one of the shouters, you can stop now. If you are one of the bullies, take a long walk and consider retiring from public life. If you are one of the many who watched, sighed and voted anyway, thank you. Democracy cannot be rescued by the loudest person in the room. It is preserved by the most patient.

Kaipara will be fine if enough of us choose to be grownups. It will be a laughing stock if we keep rewarding those who mistake conflict for courage. The dustbin of history is roomy. It does not have to be our council chamber.

If this struck a chord, you will find more hard truths, sharp edges and the occasional laugh at www.regenerationhq.co.nz/satire. We can do better and we should expect better, starting today.