Concern about increase in voting power

Press, 22 March 1986, Page 8

Concern about increase in voting power

Permanent residents of Akaroa could lose control of their council if a bill now before the Electoral Law Committee of Parliament becomes law, said Mr Lyn Graham, the Akaroa County Clerk. The Local Authorities (Elections, Polls, and Voting Rights) Bill was introduced in Parliament on March 13. Its effect as far as Akaroa was concerned would be to increase substantially the voting power of holiday-home owners, said Mr Graham. The bill would establish an Absentee Residential Electors’ List, which would allow holiday homes to have two votes. Mr Graham told the Akaroa County Council that at present about 66

per cent of the voters in Akaroa County lived outside the county, and only about 37 per cent of homes in Akaroa town belonged to permanent residents.

Cr Robyn Grigg said that the increased voting power of holiday owners could mean that expensive but necessary developments for permanent residents could be vetoed by people who spent only a few weeks a year in Akaroa.

Mr Graham said that the bill also established a single voting roll for both Parliamentary and local body elections. It would be necessary for holidayhome owners to apply to the council if they wished

to vote in the local body elections.

The council will ask the Canterbury United Council to consider some form of emergency budgeting this year. Cr Grigg said expenditure in the United Council’s proposed budget had been kept as low as possible, but because of “the impending economic crisis in the region” spending should be cut. Akaroa faces a 24.1 per cent increase in its contribution to the United Council, the largest of all the United Council’s constituent authorities.

The council will suggest that the United Council put some of its projects “on hold.” These projects could include forestry work at Akaroa, as this would show that the county was prepared to make sacrifices itself.