Andy Oakley
Author, podcaster, engineer, entrepreneur, and free speech advocate.
Well, today we have a real humdinger to discuss. In a July 6 article in Kāpiti News by Ashleigh Collis, Kāpiti Mayor Janet Holborow made what amounts to a public confession that she is a Marxist, or rather, she’s in charge, and she’s against democratic accountability.
This comes despite the government proposing legislation requiring Holborow and other mayors across the country to stop allowing unelected committee members to vote on council decisions.
Let’s be clear: As far as central government and the law are concerned, democracy in local councils means local people electing local people to make decisions on local issues.
Holborow and, presumably, the majority of the elected Kāpiti Coast District Council (KCDC) don’t agree with that principle. Instead, they have been allowing unelected local mana whenua (Māori) representatives to sit on council subcommittees. When it comes time to vote on various local issues, they allow these unelected people to vote as well.
Obviously, this means the councillors are not accountable to the local voters.
The central government has been aware that a number of councils around the country have been doing the same thing. In response to this out-of-control approach (call it wokeism or racism, take your pick), the National government and its coalition partners campaigned on ending the practice – and they won.
They therefore had a clear mandate to amend the Local Government Act. The provision preventing non-elected committee members from voting on formal decisions was added through a supplementary order paper after the bill had completed the select committee process.
In the article, Holborow accused the government of acting “completely undemocratically”. Yet she appears completely blind to the hypocrisy of what she and her councillors have been doing: allowing racially selected, unelected, people to exercise voting rights on council subcommittees.
This is not the first time Holborow and the KCDC have bypassed proper public participation processes, which is a legal requirement. In 2023, they asked the Kāpiti community for its views on adding a Māori ward for the 2025 elections.
Despite 69 per cent of submissions opposing the move, they went ahead anyway. So now the council has both elected Māori ward representatives and unelected Māori representatives voting on subcommittees.
Holborow said in the article: “What would be lost is the relationship that we have built up with mana whenua and them attending our committees with voting rights as part of that relationship.” She also said: “It’s hardly mana-enhancing when somebody is sitting at your committee table, and you have to say, ‘Sorry, I’ve been told you can’t have a vote any more.’”
I’m sorry, but I don’t want any person who thinks they have the right to vote on local issues because of their race anywhere near local decision-making.
What’s difficult to understand about Mayor Holborow is how she has no trouble ignoring the wishes of most of her community, yet she cannot bring herself to tell an unelected Māori person they can’t vote on formal council matters.
What’s even harder to understand is that whenever an issue involves Māori – whether it’s feedback from her own community or clear explanations of the law from central government – she sides with Māori.
Thankfully, local Ōtaki National MP Tim Costley rejected Holborow’s criticism, arguing that the proposal strengthens democratic accountability. He added: “It’s completely undemocratic to give voting rights to people nobody voted for in the first place.”
Unfortunately, as a member of the National government, he stopped short of calling it racism. However, the only conclusion I can draw is that Mayor Holborow and the majority of her council are racists.
Originally published on Andy’s Substack and republished by RCR Media.
