Opinion: Consultation is messy. That is exactly why we do it properly.

This week’s headlines about a New Zealand membership association and its submission on a piece of legislation raised a question that every membership organisation should be asked more often: when we say we speak for our members, how do we actually know we do?

It is not my place to comment on that particular submission, or on the Bill itself. But the debate around it, including Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour’s comments about organisations claiming to represent views they have not properly tested, has prompted us to reflect on our own process. At Property Council New Zealand, we take the same question seriously every time we put our name to a position.

Property Council represents more than 610 member companies and over 15,000 property professionals across New Zealand. That scale is our strength when we advocate for better cities and communities. It is also our biggest responsibility. Joining our organisation does not, on its own, give us a mandate to speak on a member’s behalf. Consultation earns that mandate. Membership alone does not.

Over 50 years of advocating for the property sector, we have refined a process for turning hundreds of individual views into one clear, credible position policymakers can actually act on. It starts with taking the time to properly understand an issue and what it means for our members, then simplifying and consolidating that information so it is easy to engage with, wherever our members sit in the property sector. We communicate directly with members through email, our regional committees and events, and we actively ask for feedback rather than waiting for it to arrive.

For anything substantial, we gather a member taskforce — often established prior to anticipated consultation — or bring in the relevant regional committee, particularly where an issue is local. We meet with that group, build an advocacy position based on their feedback and real-world examples, then draft a submission or campaign and share it with interested members again before anything is submitted, so there is a final chance to weigh in. Only then do we submit or campaign on our members’ behalf.

One rule sits underneath all of this: we do not submit on any consultation without at least one member actively supporting or feeding into that position. If we cannot get that engagement, whether because of time pressure, competing priorities or simply crowded inboxes, we do not submit, and we tell our members why. Transparency about when and why we hold back matters just as much as transparency about when we speak up.

None of this is as tidy as it sounds. You can offer a member every opportunity to engage and still hear nothing back. Inboxes are crowded places, and property professionals are busy running businesses, not sitting by their email waiting for our next call for feedback. So we offer, and offer again, through as many channels as we reasonably can, and we accept that some members will engage deeply while others will not engage at all. That is not a flaw in the system. It is simply how consultation works with a membership as broad as ours.

Timeframes make this harder still. In situations like that, formal workshops are not realistic, so we go straight to the people we know will have a view, calling and emailing directly rather than waiting for a scheduled forum. It is not the ideal process, but it still means real members shape the position we put forward, rather than a handful of people at head office guessing on their behalf.

We do not always get consultation perfect. No organisation representing thousands of people ever will. But we would rather be upfront about the limits of that process than claim a mandate we have not earned. If we cannot show real members stood behind a position, we should not be putting it forward as theirs.