Hodgson Pete: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Hodgson Pete: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:15697] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I am surprised and disappointed that the member from Dunedin who has just resumed his seat Mr Woodhouse was unable to make a contribution longer than the modest one he made. In the course of his speech he spent much time speaking about Mana and a surfeit of support from Dunedin to help in the Mana electorate because there are an awful lot of Labour Party activists in Dunedin. Well if that is to be the tenor of that member’s contribution let me take issue with the fact that we have a surfeit of Labour Party supporters in Dunedin who were able to help in the Mana by-election and contrast that with the fact that a fellow called Joe Butterfield has just been appointed as chief executive of the Southland District Health Board. He comes from Timaru which is 200 kilometres from Dunedin and I say to Mr Assistant Speaker Roy it is 400 kilometres from Invercargill which you know so well. There is no air link. And this is a man who is well into his 70s. 
What does that say for the quality of National Party hacks in Dunedin? The Minister of Health thinks that the National Party hacks in Dunedin are all of such low standards that he has to appoint a very experienced man I must admit from 200 kilometres further north. Well enough—enough of that. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Back to Mana. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: All I would say about Mana is that the turn out in Mana exceeded the turn-out in Mt Albert that the party vote for the Labour Party in Mana exceeded the party vote for the Labour Party in the 2008 election that whenever we have a by-election there is always a lesser turn-out than there is in a general election therefore there is always a lesser majority than there is in a general election before or after. It happens time and again. We could go through any by-election. One could go to the Taranaki - King Country by-election and find the same thing. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: There’s only ever one winner. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: There was only one winner in the Taranaki - King Country by-election. True he came to this House in a tractor which he failed to stop and in which he went up the steps of Parliament House. But there was only one winner. The Labour Party did not win Taranaki - King Country; we came second and there is no place for second in politics. We consider the Taranaki - King Country by-election to be a dreadful loss. Mana on the other hand was not. “We won. You lost. Eat that!” Ha ha! I do not know whether I am quoting anyone. I wonder who last said that. What seat were they in? What reaction did it cause around the country? Was there a strike by capital? I think there was but probably not in this case. 
I will make some serious remarks about electoral reform. This legislation is pretty modest. It does not do a lot but it does some stuff that is really rather interesting including for example moving us towards electronic enrolments. I think that is pretty smart. One thing will follow like night follows day as soon as we have electronic enrolments and it is that people will ask why they cannot enrol on election day or why they cannot enrol after election day and before the special votes are counted and so on. People will push the boundaries and that has been part of history. We used to close the electoral roll 28 days before an election in order to get the roll printed. It was a lovely excuse. We had to close the roll 28 days before an election in order to print it because unless it could be seen that they were on the printed roll they could not be issued with voting papers. Of course there were exceptions say where someone had just come of age in the week before the election in which case they could cast a special vote. 
Finally one bright spark said: “Well if you can cast a special vote for that reason maybe you can cast a special vote for the fact that you have only just gone on the roll in general a week before.” So one way or another after a lot of argy-bargy through the 1990s the enrolment closure period moved from 28 days out to 5 p.m. the day before the election. Still in the last election 20000-odd people—I cannot remember the exact number; let us say 25000 people about the adult population of Timaru—on election day went to the trouble of going down to the polling booth asking for their name to be looked up finding that their name was not to be found on the roll asking for a special vote being given a special vote filling in the special voting form putting it in the ballot box and having their special vote not counted—only because they were not on the roll. That occurred with 25000-odd New Zealanders or maybe 23000. 
Under-enrolment even though we have high levels of enrolment when compared with the standards of some jurisdictions continues to disenfranchise folk. We need to be preoccupied by that. So moving to electronic enrolment is a damn good idea but it does beg the question of whether people can enrol on election day. If people can enrol on election day then the question arises as to whether those people can enrol and then vote. Of course the administrators will say that they are busy enough already. But as administration gets easier and easier and we move to a more and more straightforward and electronic approach to life in general including electronic voting one day then the idea of electronic enrolling and voting at once will be plausible and the minute it is plausible it will be demanded. 
We are on a bit of a journey and this legislation takes us one step further. Earlier speakers have spoken of the value of a mostly agreed electoral system—of a mostly agreed electoral system. There are periods in our history including one recently when the electoral system the law around the electoral Acts or various pieces of legislation that we use including parliamentary rules has not been agreed on across the House. There will always be some argy-bargy. There will always be a viewpoint from say the ACT Party that there should be absolutely no restriction ever again on anyone doing for example television advertising because that is just horrible. If someone is extremely rich and wants to spend a lot of money buying an election result—and is stupid enough to spend their money on that says the ACT Party—then they should be allowed to because that is what a liberal society looks like. There are other people who hold the view that it is best that we do not have people winning elections on the basis of how rich they are but rather on the basis of the contest of their arguments and whether their arguments stack up in the views of the majority. 
There will always be differences but it is really important that we get a significant measure of agreement which we have not always had. Indeed there were some terrible debates in this House over the 28-day enrolment rule of 1993 1996 and 1999—way back then. Then when we got ourselves into the MMP debate around 1992-93 and we had some incredible debates then too. I say that this legislation and the legislation that is coming up later this week now has a significant measure of agreement at least between the two major parties. I acknowledge that minor parties hold other views and I am respectful of those. But equally I think minor parties would acknowledge that it is good that the bulk of us have a rough measure of agreement about what electoral laws should be like because it so important because it is part of our constitution. All I would say— 
Hilary Calvert 
: Because you get free TV Pete. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: There goes the ACT Party position. I told her what it was and minutes later the member having returned from urgent public business walks into the Chamber and like the puppet she is out it came. It is just what one would expect from the ACT Party. It is good to see her here another person from Dunedin and that is great. In fact there are not a lot of people left in Dunedin north midweek because half of that number are up here in the House. We have a significant measure of agreement across the House. I add my thanks to the Minister of Justice the Hon Simon Power and indeed to the National caucus for their contribution to that better measure of agreement. It is not great agreement but it is much much better. We are probably a better nation for that better agreement. Thank you.