Gilmore Aaron: Electoral Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGilmore Aaron: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13440. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): In taking a brief call in this first reading debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill I would like to congratulate our very fine and very hard-working Minister of Justice the Hon Judith Collins and also Tim Macindoe the member for Hamilton West who chaired the Justice and Electoral Committee that undertook the review of the 2011 election.As the Minister and previous Government speakers have canvassed this bill implements 11 of the key recommendations from the Justice and Electoral Committee’s inquiry into the 2011 general election. These changes can be summarised in three main areas: they are updates to processes to both improve efficiency and take into account the possibilities offered by technological change they offer a tightening of rules to ensure fairness and integrity in our voting system and they offer minor technical fixes to our otherwise pretty robust existing electoral law—that is the law as implemented by the National-led Government in the last term prior to the 2011 election.Among the improvements that this bill introduces I particularly applaud the inclusion of a provision for full online enrolment using electronic identity verification through the Government’sRealMe system. It seems only sensible that in this era of the falling use of snail mail and increased uptake of online services enrolment to vote should be a process that can be completed electronically online. This will make it a much more convenient and efficient process for the end clients—that is the electors—and therefore we should see an increase in enrolment rates and the accuracy of the electoral roll. But it is also important that up-to-date safeguards and sureties against hacking data corruption identity theft and false registration should be deployed to protect the integrity of our electoral system. So it is good to see this as another practical implementation of theRealMe system.Provision for increased use ofEasyVote cards also seems pretty logical to me. These will now be able to be used as the official record for an ordinary vote having been issued and as evidence that a special voter is enrolled and eligible to vote. These changes make very good sense in terms of streamlining the voting process.Extensions to the time frame for filing party vote declarations to 90 days—as we know this can be a fairly time-consuming and bureaucratic process for our various party officials—also seems like a fair measure but this is balanced against tougher penalties for failing to meet the requirement to file expenses and donation returns within 15 days of the deadline. Late returns without reasonable excuse will now actually—contrary to what Mr Little said earlier—become a corrupt practice and therefore face much higher penalties than in the past. Treating loans to parties in a similar way to donations and making loans the subject of the same disclosure rules as donations also helps to strengthen the integrity of our already very sound system.As I learnt at the Transparency International New Zealand branch workshop yesterday at Te Papa which was also attended by the Hon Phil Goff our system is already perceived as being among the cleanest in the world. A high-integrity electoral system is one of the 13 key pillars that Transparency International identifies along withan uncorrupt Public Service impartial judiciary sound law enforcement authorities and an effective audit and review function among others that contribute to New Zealand being ranked as the No. 1 least corrupt country in the world in its survey.We are doing well but this legislation will help us stay ahead of the game and maintain our outstanding No. 1 ranking which is so important to our exporters because of the international reputation and high trust levels in our country our people and our products that this engenders. So for this reason among other reasons I happily commend this bill to the House.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.