Next month we have Council elections to choose the Councillors who will sit until 2028.
As the corflutes go up, meet the candidates forums are organised, and the local media email out three questions to each of the candidates, the independent candidates have to find a way to differentiate themselves to an electorate who for the most part have no interest in the outcome.
Those who vote along party lines don’t have to concern themselves with decisions because that was all taken care of during party pre-selections.
Most of the remaining voters will turn up on the day and either vote for the group in “Column A (the Donkey Vote)”, or look for a name that looks vaguely familiar to them, grab a sausage sandwich and get on with their lives.
At the end of the day, those who haven’t already won their spot on Council during pre-selections will be elected through preference deals among the parties and independents, so right now their pitch is to the other candidates more so than it is to electors.
Today I read a blog post by local candidate Richard Graham, in which he tried to make a reasoned argument against people voting along party lines, and it got me thinking, “What rational argument could anybody make to be elected to a local Council?”
Our local Council is dead broke from year of mismanagement, corruption and neglect.
Wages are currently being paid from borrowings, and Council has already voted to increase rates by 50+ percent over 3 years, based on a model where the existing levels of service need to be slashed.
Yet not a single candidate is talking about what services need to be reduced; they are only talking about what needs to be increased.
Our local Council is like a locomotive where the CEO is shovelling money into a furnace to stop the train from rolling backwards as it climbs the mountains.
Those residents who are upset their development approval won’t be processed in time for the arrival of their new baby just want the train to go faster, and the only way anybody knows to make the train go faster is to shovel more cash into the furnace.
Given all of that, if one was to make a rational decision on who to vote for what are the considerations?
If you elect candidates committed to anything other than burning cash to keep the train moving it is inevitable that the austerity measures will be foisted onto the people at the fringes, while the people in the core will continue to enjoy the privileges that they enjoy today.
Tragedy of the Commons
So as crazy as it sounds, the best decision is the irrational decision.
Those who currently get the rough end of the pineapple want austerity, but would suffer the worst of that austerity, and those who want the spending to continue will continue paying the highest levels of rates even though they would be unharmed by any austerity.
Ideally people would vote for a mix of candidates with business success and an existing record of community involvement, but in the real world of local politics the former have better things to do, and latter gave up years ago.
There is no rational way to vote because Council elections are inevitably a Tragedy of the Commons; there is no incentive for a candidate to run on a platform of austerity because there is no incentive for the majority of people to support austerity when they ultimately control the Council.
Ultimately, whoever gets elected will only be arguing over who gets what resources the Council can beg, borrow or steal, because when resources are scarce everything is a zero-sum game; the end-game of the Tragedy of the Commons.
