Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker and I would like to open by congratulating the Minister the Hon Kiritapu Allan for bringing this bill to the House—a very long-overdue change to our electoral system that makes it far more accessible and fair and actually just recognises the significance of the Māori roll. We know that arbitrary technical barriers to electoral access mean that fewer people vote. Fewer people voting means our democracy is weakened and Māori are one of the groups for which we hold the most concern when it comes to access to our democracy.We know that there are demographics that suffer worse and Māori are one of those. And I know that my friend from the ACT Party will follow me as her leader did when I spoke on my own strengthening democracy member's bill and that party took great issue to this but Māori do still suffer the consequences of colonisation and so does our democracy. So that is why this bill is important. The idea that Māori have to wait years to switch rolls never served a real purpose that was about tangata whenua voting and participating in our democracy; it always undermined Te Tiriti o Waitangi.Democracy is particularly important to me and that is why my member's bill—the first that I ever got to put into the ballot as a parliamentarian—was aiming to strengthen that democracy. And I just want to speak to the significance of us as a House of Representatives making these changes according to the recommendations of independent bodies like the Electoral Commission like the Supreme Court the Court of Appeal and our Justice Committee after inquiries that often involve thousands of New Zealanders including experts feeding in. I want to note that changes like this were deliberately buried by successive Governments. Politicking over our electoral laws does weaken democracy.So what I wanted to do is to bring light to some of those changes that have been recommended by independent bodies after consultation or after expert inquiry and say actually we do need to get things like money out of our democracy discrimination out of our democracy; that we need to encourage and recognise Māori participation through upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi.But I do want to say on this particular bill that we are also disappointed. Māori voters should be able to change rolls at any time: during a general election and during a by-election. There's no reason that they shouldn't and we know that that change was introduced to what the Electoral Commission recommended because of politicking; because of negotiations with the Opposition that won the day and weakened what would have been the perfect outcome. Now the other night it was a bit sad that the National Party had the Hon Paul Goldsmith get up and read from their canned notes about what a devastating thing it would be if voters in an electorate voted strategically and that we must prevent Māori from doing so—Paul Goldsmith of Epsom for National. Bit sad? Bit tough—bit tough that he had to get up and say that. So apparently it's only bad when Māori do it.This is a one vote per person democracy. It's never going to be perverted by one person voting in an electorate while not voting in another electorate and then switching their rolls for a different election. We need to uphold the mana of our people and say that that isn't cheating. Fearmongering about Māori switching rolls is unhelpful it's prejudiced and I think the member—not quite for Epsom—should know that better than anyone.But we come back to the bill and the prioritisation of electoral reform. So I do want to congratulate the Minister and the Government for actually prioritising some of these reforms that we know have been a long time coming including the Māori roll change that we're seeing come through tonight—including some of the limits that the Government and this Minister put in place in terms of transparency in our electoral donation laws. We know that last term the electoral reforms that we got through also included some restoration to the right of prisoners to vote. So these are a suite of changes and they come together to acknowledge that different demographics have different challenges and that the one vote per person democracy can't exist—that our democracy can't thrive—unless we are constantly reviewing and reforming it to be fit for purpose for a modern Aotearoa and that politics should be taken out of democracy reform. We should listen to the Electoral Commission and the Justice Committee and the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal and Waitangi Tribunal when they tell us something needs to be done rather than placing party interests first.This is a good start. I look forward to the change that will come—either under this or the next Government—that will allow Māori to change rolls whenever they please because it is their right to do so. So I commend the bill to the House.