Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I rise to speak in the second reading debate of the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill and the Electoral Amendment Bill which are as the Minister has said cognated. Labour supports these bills. We commend the Justice and Electoral Committee for the work that has been done. We also commend the Minister for her efforts in reforming and modernising various pieces of legislation over the last few years with a small plea: please can the Privacy Act be next in terms of introducing mandatory reporting for privacy breaches and providing more teeth to the Privacy Commissioner?With regard to this legislation these two bills follow a fairly substantial piece of work following the last general election in 2014—a report from the Justice and Electoral Committee from which there were 28 recommendations. That committee did do a substantial piece of work. These two bills include 12 of those recommendations in the second part of this legislation.The substance with regard to the first bill—the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill—as the Minister said modernises and updates the format of election broadcasts in time for the 2017 election this year. It removes the requirement for the political parties' opening and closing election broadcasts which are seen—and I think there is fairly substantial evidence for them being seen—as an anachronism in today's world. It also removes the requirement for TVNZ and Radio New Zealand to provide free time for those broadcasts. Instead this legislation allocates the equivalent of this time into an increase in the broadcast funding allocation.For a large part of the New Zealand population those television opening and closing statements are outdated. People's viewing habits are changing—fewer people are watching those set-piece broadcasts. This legislation increases the flexibility that political parties have to use their allocation for election programmes.I just want to reference the submission by the Labour Party to the inquiry that the select committee conducted which went into some depth about the limitations of the existing regime that result in increasingly inefficient use of public funds by all parties. And this is not just relating to the Labour Party; this basically relates to the inefficiency generally of the system which is why we are changing it. It noted that Media consumption habits and marketing tools have changed hugely over the past 10 years. The public no longer embrace and 'consume' generic marketing messages. New Zealanders expect interactivity and personal relevance from all the brands they choose to engage with including political parties. Although this is [especially true] of younger voters the changes [are really being viewed] across all demographics."—and I think that is probably pretty evident by the rise of Facebook and the demographics of the people who are using that. "The Broadcasting Allocation rules restrict the budget to the purchase of media and production costs for TV radio and press only. These channels although relevant and able to provide reasonable reach provide decreasing cut-through as the public use modern tools (such as My Sky [video on demand]) to filter out broadcast adverts."So essentially this is sensible and it actually is going to enable there to be a much greater reachability and flexibility for there to be communication and engagement during our important 3-yearly event that is an election campaign which is when we engage with voters and is a really important part of what we do.Jono Naylor: Man we do it all the time; we don't do it every 3 years.CLARE CURRAN: Of course we do but this is the prescribed funded part of that process and it is important that we get it right and that we are up with the times. The Electoral Amendment Bill implements as I think I said the unanimous select committee report recommendations from the Justice and Electoral Committee Inquiry into the 2014 General Election. It implements 12 of those 28 recommendations.The select committee stated that only those changes that could be realistically implemented in time for the September 2017 election would be included. The Government suggested or indicated that it will consider some other recommendations—that require as it said more time—for 2020. I want to touch on this because there are some particular issues around those recommendations that have not been included which is a bit disappointing in the sense that they have disenfranchised the thousands of voters who have not completed the enrolment activity that they could have done before the election. Although there is some capacity there for them to have their votes counted there is also that disenfranchising that means that many of them are unlikely to and that really does matter. If this Government is really serious about the recommendations that are included in this report then these really should have been taken more seriously and given a higher weighting a higher priority.In the last election almost 10 percent of the population who were eligible to be on the electoral roll did not sign up before election day. Numbers suggest that the failure to enrol does not always mean that a voter does not want to participate. For the 2014 election more than 27000 voters made the effort to vote but had their vote disallowed because they were not on the electoral roll. That is the population of a town and that matters. That should be something that is taken really very seriously and should not be pushed out to 2020; it should have been addressed now and I am looking forward to asking some questions about that at the Committee stage because we do not make the process of enrolling and voting as easy as we could especially for those who change address and therefore fail to enrol or those who are enrolling for the first time before the official roll is printed. So we have some concerns about that. The integrity of the voting system has been well maintained with the significant increase in early voting and we do not accept that the risk outweighs the benefit of ensuring that next time possibly 27000 votes will be counted.Finally I just want to make a couple of remarks about the fact that one of these cognate bills is a broadcasting bill and makes changes to the Broadcasting Act—section 6 of the Broadcasting Act—yet in the recent reshuffle just before Christmas the new unelected Prime Minister disestablished the broadcasting ministership portfolio and that has gone floating into the ether—Chris Bishop: What do you mean "unelected Prime Minister"?CLARE CURRAN: He has not been elected by the voters which relates to the bills that we are actually discussing. This broadcasting portfolio has been disestablished. It has been divided between communications on the one hand; arts culture and heritage on the other. During the 1990s this portfolio under a National Government was folded into the communications portfolio and one of the first things Labour did in 1999 when it became Government was to separate it out and give it the status that it needed. This is a really worrying development. There is no indication as to how those functions are actually going to be performed under this Government."