It's time to understand who will represent your interests.

Grant Mountjoy, Rock The Vote NZ

With the Council elections coming up, Rock The Vote N.Z. wants people to understand how important it will be to know where the momentum behind the transformations we’re witnessing in the city and suburbs originate, and equip voters with essential knowledge.

You have your chance coming up soon to elect candidates onto your Local Board and City Council who represent your preference of how the city and your neighbourhood should evolve over the next three years. It's time to consider the changes that have been implemented on your behalf so far by your elected Local Board and Council members since the last election three years ago.

If you drive a car, how are those speed bumps and raised pedestrian crossings working out for you? Are narrowed streets to accommodate cycle lanes aiding or hindering your commute times mornings and evenings? Do those cycleways justify their existence? Has the removal of indented bus stops on main arterial routes facilitated smoother traffic flows? Have lower speed limits improved safety?

More “transformations” are planned for your suburb. They include approval for developers to construct tower-block apartment buildings across the expanses of Mount Albert within a radius of one or two kilometres of each of the new City Rail Link stations. It will be interesting to learn whether any of these apartment buildings will include car parking given the Council rationale for these plans is promote public transportation over private vehicles.

If you wish to side-step local Council elections, don’t be surprised if you end up losing something you didn’t want to lose. Agendas are at play and council will not necessarily come clean about the extent of them. Some plans are reasonable home-grown initiatives, but the really big projects that are arguably unnecessary, implemented slowly over decades, and “transformational” by design, serve international ideologies that you might not agree with.

You'll find when you travel abroad, western countries all over the globe have been drawn into the same, identical “war” against private vehicle mobility. Cycleways, speed bumps, narrowed streets, streets converted to pedestrian precincts etc, all mirror-images of the same vehicle obstructions we find covering our own landscape. Why? Because a global theme can easily travel across borders and effect profound, unsolicited change on a population and country. Over time, the ideas become entrenched, but essentially represent the vision of a small group of unelected individuals who have been successful in getting everyone else to follow their plans. The most well-known, and arguably the most influential of these organisations operating outside of the democratic system, is called the World Economic Forum (WEF). Since 1971, the WEF has subscribed almost every single western government and their Civil Services to its membership base under the guise of, “It's a big club” and if you're not in it, you'll be treated an outlier. The WEF, based in Switzerland, started inviting world leaders to what they originally called “think-tank” conferences back in 1971 in order to shape the views of world leaders which would, in turn facilitate the “shaping of a new world” that would ultimately resemble a eventual transition from capitalism to socialism with a one world global government. More recently, the WEF has made no secret of its "utopian" view of a world with centralised global power via a “one-world governing organisation”, operating beyond borders and beyond the individual sovereignty of nations. Already existing examples of central power are the European Parliament, The U.N. and the W.H.O.

The ideology of sacrifice for "climate" has been the main mechanism on which the transformation of the West has obtained licence from voters. More than 50 years on, the ideology is visibly entrenched and people’s opinions and views have been solidly influenced to welcome the transformations.

“Climate Change” has been used to slowly shift the West to less reliable energy sources than fossil fuels, ruin the effective viability of farming (therefore negatively impacting the food supply), all of which have culminated in higher energy and food prices.

Most independent thinkers have been able to recognise the slow-creep of this decades-long attempt to slowly transition Western countries to a new economic model – a model that resembles socialism.

With all this in mind, the great “transformation” of your NZ city and neighbourhood is far from over. Plans include projects to be completed by 2030, 2040 and 2050. The main Council plan was apparently given the thumbs up by residents after exhaustive Council consultation back in 2011. We use the word “exhaustive” rather sarcastically, given the relatively low percentage of public participation in consultations, likely due to selective consultation tactics - the Council allowing feedback from interest-groups such as the cycle lobby to give the impression of general support.

Sadly, Auckland Council appears well-rooted in the ideologies of the WEF, whether Council employees or elected Council-representatives are aware of it or not. As such, the great council machine moves forward with a preordained plan most of the public is pretty much in the dark about.

Last election, the balance of political influence of the two opposite-leaning factions on the Waitemata Local Board was undemocratically engineered, post-election, from Communities and Residents (C&R), the winning majority, back into the hands of the heavily ideologically-driven City Vision party by a rogue member who crossed the floor at the opening ceremony, handing a voting advantage to the other team and making a mockery of the election in the process. It was effectively a coup d'état which altered the outcome of the voter’s choice. City Vision have continued to carry the unethical advantage in decision-making in the chamber and the ideologies they prefer have strangled retail business in the CBD, annoy everyday motorists, and result in costs of lost time to the economy because of longer commute times.

Pavements have become racetracks for scooters, and bus passengers step off busses directly into the path of cycleways. Not much about the so-called city transformation has improved safety, although “safety” is always included in the sales-pitch.

Last election, we remember how City Vision candidates insisted that the goal was to have the Central Business District of the city be referred to only as the City Centre. What message does this give you about their intent to save the businesses they policies are choking?

What will remain of Auckland CBD in just a few years? Will any shops survive? What will your suburb look like? Will you find your home in the shadow of some high-density tower block? And what really has turned out to be “sustainable” in practice?

Time to take Council and Local Board elections seriously and vote to save the way of life you prefer.