I agree with Chris Barnes, NZ should look at making voting compulsory in local and national elections. With just over 30% of people voting in local elections, not only in Upper Hutt but across the Wellington region, it means that the region’s councils have no mandate to make decision on behalf of the 70% of electors who didn’t vote. This is true of all councils as well as the regional council. A more worrying issue is only two councils had a vote on discussing merits of Amalgamation and of that just over 15% thought a discussion was warranted. The Mayor of Wellington recently said he thought the Wellington region should consider Amalgamation. He too was only elected by a small number of voters. Adding to the concern is Upper Hutt residents were not even allowed a vote on a Māori ward and the last council voted for our water assets and delivery to be turned over to Metro water corporation with little community wide consultation, another decision, by a non-representative council. Council and governments are supposed to represent all views of the people they are elected to represent. We currently have elected representatives that have not been elected by a majority of those eligible to vote, compulsory voting would change that as representatives would need to be able to represent wider views or they would not be elected. Currently we have the tyranny of the few making decision for all.

Teresa Homan

Upper Hutt

A “thank you” to Teresa Homan for sending this letter to The Upper Hutt Connection.

05/11/25