95bFM The key to building community engagement in local elections
25 September, 2025
Interview by Sanat Singh, adapted by Sara Mckoy
With ballots currently open in local elections across Aotearoa, lead organiser of Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga, Marlon Drake, says the most effective strategies for engaging communities on local issues are “face-to-face conversations”.
Last week, Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga Tāmaki Makaurau — a community alliance made up of unions, community, and faith-based organisations — hosted their Wages and Houses Mayoral Forum in Auckland Central, drawing in nearly 300 participants.
The forum, which featured mayoral candidates Wayne Brown and Kerrin Leoni, centred on an agenda of numerous housing and living wage ‘asks’ generated through community conversations.
Te Ohu lead organiser Marlon Drake told 95bFM’s, The Wire, that the kaupapa of the alliance seeks both to build relationships across a diverse range of communities and mobilise people to take action on local issues.
To gauge what matters most across a variety of groups, he says the main strategy Te Ohu employs is what they call “listening campaigns”.
“We don't just do surveys, we go out, we have community meetings, we sit there, listen to people share their stories, and then from that, we let the community and the community leaders decide what the focus will be.”
In Tāmaki Makaurau, the main campaigns over the last few years, as determined through this engagement, have been on housing and wages.
The mayoral forum, dedicated to representing community perspectives around these two issues, put forward seven commitments for the mayoral candidates to support including the restoration of the Affordable Housing Work programme, an increase in the city’s annual homelessness budget, and maintenance of the living wage as the minimum rate for council employed workers.
With voter turnout in local elections often sitting at around 40% of the population, Drake says that the most effective and proven strategy for improving local democratic participation centres on relationship building.
“Its a process that takes time, it's not flashy…
“It requires patience and understanding… but that’s the thing that works when it comes to community organising and people-power and long-lasting systemic change.”
He attributes low voter turnout in both local and general elections to the neglect of “old-school” methods of community engagement like door-knocking, canvassing, and direct voter contact.
However, given the mahi driven by the community organisations within Te Ohu Whakawhanaungna to strengthen engagement on local issues, Drake says he is optimistic that communities will have a good working relationship with Auckland Council in the coming years.
“We’re looking forward to it… we will make a plan to work with them, to have an alliance and develop a strategy [with] not just the mayor, but also the 20 other councillors and the independent Māori statutory board members as well.”
