Community disillusionment over councils going off the rails was on full display last weekend as voters reshaped local government in the 2025 elections.
Across the country, high-spending councillors were booted out and replaced by those promising more responsible financial management, greater community engagement, and increased accountability.
With the cumulative average local body rate hike over the last three years a whopping 34.5 percent, compared to an overall inflation increase of just 13.7 percent, cost of living pressures clearly played a significant role in voting decisions.
In fact, of the 18 councils that imposed double-digit rates rises this year, at least 13 elected new mayors, with over half of the councillors in most big-spending councils losing their seats as voters sent the message that reckless money-wasting has to stop.
This loss of public support for spendthrift local authorities is one of the key trends to emerge from the 2025 election. Voters have swung many councils to the right by supporting candidates calling for rates reductions, line-by-line expenditure reviews, and a refocus back onto the basics.
It wasn’t just a wake-up call for councils that voters delivered – there’s also a strong message for the Coalition.
When New Zealanders voted for change at the 2023 General Election, they wanted Labour’s profligate spending to end: that meant axing their woke programmes and removing the army of activists they’d hired to drive their divisive agendas.
The frustration voters felt during the dying days of the Ardern administration is one of the main reasons National is languishing in the polls: their promised changes have not been delivered.
Instead of cutting poor quality spending, National decided to adopt the strategy Bill English had used during the global financial crisis and grow the economy out of the deficits. What that has meant is that instead of line-by-line reviews, the termination of Labour’s radical programmes, and the dismissing of agenda-driven staff, nothing much has changed.
This has contributed to public disillusionment and the perception that National is too weak to make the tough decisions needed to get the country back on track.
In contrast, in many parts of the country, local body voters had no trouble delivering austerity through the ballot box.
The big question is whether the Coalition recognises what’s going on!
Local body election turnout has continued to fall. In 2025, only a third of those who were eligible bothered to vote. With a provisional rating of 32 percent, down from 42 percent three years ago, this continues a trend that’s been evident ever since the nationwide restructuring of local government was undertaken in 1989, when 850 local bodies were amalgamated into 86.
Historically, the election turnout is higher in smaller councils, where voters know all of the candidates and feel much more involved with their council. This is reflected in the 1989 statistics, which showed the average turnout of 56 percent was made up of a 65 percent turnout for District Councils, 56 percent for Regional Councils, and 52 percent for City Councils.
Over 12 subsequent elections, the numbers have continued to decline so that by 2022, the turnout for District Councils was 45 percent, Regional Councils 43 percent, and City Councils just 39 percent.
In Auckland, the 2025 turnout was dismal: provisional data showed only 28.7 percent or 343,000 of the 1.2 million registered electors voted - down from 35.4 percent in 2022.
So, who’s to blame for low voter turnout? Is it our politicians for deciding bigger is better in local government, even though residents and ratepayers prefer smaller councils that are more aligned to their needs? Is it the postal voting system, which was introduced to help make voting easier, but is now so unreliable that some are saying it should no longer be used? Is it because of the demise of community newspapers and the absence of balanced reporting about local government? Are council ‘Codes of Conduct’ gagging councillors and stopping them from raising public alarm over irresponsible decision-making? Is it candidates and councillors themselves, for not making council matters and elections more interesting? Is it the fact that councils no longer prioritise community engagement – even to the point of deciding to change the voting system without bothering to consult their community? Is it council bureaucracy that’s become so impenetrable it turns people off?
These are the issues that will be debated in the weeks to come, with Auckland’s Mayor Wayne Brown taking the lead by saying he favours a return to all-day, in-person voting at booths.
While there will be many suggested solutions, the most obvious is to run Local Body Elections in conjunction with General Elections, where the turnout is usually over 80 percent.
While the majority of candidates standing for local election were independents, a number were politically aligned.
The Green Party, which proactively supported Maori wards, ran dozens of candidates for councils and local boards around the country. In return for campaign support, each contender was required to sign a ‘Green Party Contract’ which included swearing to uphold the radicalised Treaty of Waitangi, promote Green Party policies, and, if elected, pay a percentage of their council income to the Party as a tithe.
While former Green MP Nandor Tanzos is on the cusp of winning the Whakatane Mayoralty, former Green Party Mayor, Wellington’s Tory Whanau, has fallen from grace - after a disastrous three years of scandal and rate increases - to such an extent that she even failed to win a seat in a Maori ward.
The Labour Party, which vowed to support Maori Wards, also ran dozens of candidates including those associated with City Vision in Auckland and The People’s Choice in Christchurch. Former Labour leader Andrew Little decisively won the Wellington Mayoralty, with Labour and the Greens now holding 10 out of the 16 seats on that council, giving the left a clear majority.
For the first time, the ACT Party ran affiliated candidates committed to keeping rates low, focussing councils onto core services, and opposing ideological agendas like co-governance. Nine of their 46 candidates have been successfully elected at this stage.
While the Maori Party did not run an official ticket, it did endorse candidates, it supported the retention of the Maori wards, and it worked hard to mobilise voters through its national networks.
Many of the mayors associated with the left-leaning Local Government New Zealand, lost ground in the election. LGNZ had seriously undermined its credibility during the Three Waters debate by pro-actively advocating for Labour, instead of for councils.
LGNZ President, Sam Broughton, the Selwyn Mayor, was decisively ousted, along with half of his council. The chair of LGNZ's Rural Sector, Central Hawke's Bay’s Alex Walker, lost her mayoralty, as did LGNZ's Metro Sector chair, Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich.
Of the 11 Mayors on the LGNZ National Council, three retired and four lost their seats.
These results will no doubt force a major rethink for LGNZ. At the present time, Auckland, Christchurch, Kaipara, Grey, Westland, Western Bay of Plenty, and the West Coast Regional Council have all pulled out expressing concerns over the high cost of membership, and the organisation’s radical stance in supporting Maori wards and co-governance.
When it came to Maori wards, of the 42 councils that were required to hold a referendum - as a result of the Coalition repealing Labour’s law change that allowed the wards to be established without a public vote - only 25 councils voted to remove them, while 17 voted to retain them.
This is a disastrous outcome.
What it tells us, loud and clear, is that Labour’s radical and unmandated blueprint for tribal control by 2040 - He Puapua - is on track to becoming a reality.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator former local body councillor and political strategist Frank Newman has analysed the referendum result and raises serious concerns:
“There is no question Maori separatists have made gains in the last ten years.
“In 2015 a referendum challenged the creation of Maori wards in the Far North District Council. That was defeated with 67% of voters opposing the creation of a Maori ward.
“Last Saturday that had been reversed with 54% voting to keep the Maori wards and 46% voting to remove them.
“That trend is repeated in other regions. In 2018, five districts held polls – all rejecting Maori wards. Four of those five councils had since created Maori wards after Mahuta removed the petition right, so they were again required to hold a referendum.
“Two voted to keep their wards. They were Palmerston North, where support for the Maori ward rose from 31% in 2018 to 55% on Saturday, and Whakatane, where support rose from 44% to 60%.
“The councils where voters continued to oppose the wards both lost ground: Western Bay of Plenty from 78% to 60%, and Manawatu from 77% to 57%. In other words, one in five voters had changed their view on Maori wards within seven years.”
This election result should serve as a warning to Kiwis that radical separatism has become a very serious threat within New Zealand.
The Wellington results in particular, which shows that the areas where most government employees are based overwhelmingly support Maori wards, indicates the huge success of Labour’s He Puapua indoctrination project. Spearheaded by Iwi Leaders working in collaboration with the Office of Maori Crown Relations, all government staff were required to adopt a Maori World View, to learn the Maori language, and to swear their allegiance to Te Tiriti o Waitangi – the weaponised He Puapua version of the Treaty, which promotes partnerships and co-governance.
Through a web of departmental directives, funding incentives, and cultural compliance frameworks, government employees were expected to internalise a worldview that elevates iwi authority and reframes citizenship through the lens of the fabricated ‘partnership’. This created an institutional echo chamber where dissent was marginalised and critical scrutiny of co-governance was treated as heresy.
And it wasn’t just state employees who were captured. New Zealanders across the board have been radicalised as charities and the education sector were targeted alongside professional registration bodies - not to mention the 24,000 private sector organisations that are being pressured into embedding He Puapua-aligned Treaty clauses into new constitutions in order to comply with Labour’s changes to the Incorporated Societies Act that come into force in April next year.
Add to that Councils themselves promoting the retention of Maori wards through mobile voting campaigns, alongside the advocacy of taxpayer-funded Maori news outlets, tribal groups, and political parties – not to mention a literal army of Churches and charities including Common Grace Aotearoa, Te Tiriti Is Us, Decide Together-Thrive Together, Groundwork, Salvation Army, Action Station, and Toitu Te Tiriti that all pro-actively pushed the “Keep Maori Wards” message through websites, meetings, direct mail, adverts, flyers, and aggressive social media campaigns - and it is no wonder the pro-Maori ward vote succeeded in so many areas.
The 2025 Maori ward referenda were meant to restore democratic control over local representation. Instead, they have exposed how effectively He Puapua has penetrated our civic institutions and society at large. The fact that 17 councils voted to retain Maori wards — despite widespread public opposition when first proposed — suggests that the machinery of influence is far deeper than imagined.
If New Zealanders wish to preserve equal citizenship and democracy, we must confront the reality that sovereignty is being redefined, not through open debate but by bureaucratic entrenchment.
This is no longer a debate about culture or inclusion. It is about power — who holds it, how it is exercised, and whether the public retains the right to say no.
The time for complacency is over.
And that should be a wake-up call for the Coalition: they should see the retention of Maori wards as their failure to rid the country of the influence of He Puapua.
It is one of the main reasons they were elected. Yet one year out from the next election, the referendum results show they are failing to deliver on that crucial promise.
This does not bode well for the future of the Coalition – nor of New Zealand.
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