Tinetti JanJAN TINETTI (Labour): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I'm delighted to be standing here speaking on the Electronic Interactions Reform Bill as the last speaker of the night on this bill.I sat here the other night and I listened to the debate and it was the first time that I had actually really really engaged with this very very important bill. It is very important which is why we are taking so much time over this. We are amending an update—to update 17 Acts. That's not a light piece of legislation. With that I'd like to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Tracey Martin for stewarding it to this particular point. And a special thank you to the former Government Administration Committee because I had a good look over the work that they did and they really did put a lot of time and effort into this.The eight submitters took a lot of time and they need their moment to be heard in the House as well. So it's not something that we should be taking a short time over. We should be talking about this so that the general public understand what this bill is about. It is good to see the progress of developing digital services. It does make it easier for all New Zealanders to interact with the Government. And if we don't get this right—if we don't help people to understand this—there's a whole lot of things that don't happen down the track. With the Electronic Interactions Reform Bill if we don't put this through in its entirety now the initiatives set out in Appendix A of this bill would not proceed as they are written out and future changes enabled by the bill which are currently planned simply won't happen.Now this evening we've spoken a lot or we've heard a lot about digital natives and digital immigrants. I don't really talk a lot about digital natives and digital immigrants anymore because I believe that the lines are becoming very blurred. What I believe this particular bill sets out is it sets out for a just-in-time demographic as opposed to a just-in-case demographic.So what is that? A just-in-time demographic is those people that are set up and understand when they want to get their marriage licences or they want to get birth certificates that they get them just in time when they need them. We once were a generation of people that were just in case". We held on to our documents just in case one day we might need them. But "just in time" is that we're able to do this by going on electronically and getting these documents just in time—when we need them. This is what this bill sets out: the ability to be able to do that.An example of this would be when a family needs a birth certificate and while this may not be the case at the moment this bill sets this up to be able to do this eventually down the line. So when children change schools for example sometimes going into the new school they can't enrol without showing their birth certificate. And if you've had to change houses—several times in the lifespan at the last school—you obviously can't find that birth certificate any more. I've seen it heaps and heaps of times.Just in time means you can get straight online and you can apply for that birth certificate straight away and it will be able to come. That would be much easier for those families than what they're currently having to put up with. This bill makes it easier for people who struggle to get to offices for making applications: applications for marriage licences etc. as set out in the bill. It makes it easier for those people to make those applications than to go into the offices. I've worked with many people in different demographics who find it very difficult to go into offices. They're a bit whakamā—they're a bit shy about going in. They don't understand automatically when they go into those offices what they need to take with them. And so they often get frustrated when they're there and then don't come back again.This bill sets out the ability for those people to be able to have a support person with them as they're working at their computer at home. I think that's a really positive step for those people. But it's not just a demographic who are feeling shy or who are feeling whakamā it is a demographic of people who are rurally isolated who can't easily get to offices.Now my wee story goes along the lines of a few years ago two days before my driver licence expired I suddenly realised that it was expiring and I lived in the heart of rural Southland at that point and I was one hour away from the nearest centre to get my driver licence. I had to make time in my day to go and do that and I didn't quite have the right information with me when I actually got there. So my whole experience took about four hours all up to get the driver licence renewed. This actually allows for people to do this online. If they haven't got the right information they can access it online so the bill does make it completely a lot easier and accessible for people to actually go along and get their documents that they need.The notices being served by email is another interesting point in this particular bill. It is great to see the changes around proving the use of email in this particular bill but I do wonder at some point that we're being left behind a little bit as a Government too. We think we're bringing this into the modern age but I know that my particular children in their 20s don't actually use email any more and maybe that's something that we need to look at into the future—about how we can look to even modernise our digital reforms even further. I think it's a good start though. I think it would be good for my particular children. I'm not certain that it's because they don't like getting letters but the fact that all of a sudden their parking fines suddenly turn up at my house rather than their own I think probably says more about the fact that they would not check their mailbox but they'd think mum would pay their parking fines for them.It was good to see the Government Administration Committee acknowledge the digital divide in their work. I think this is a huge issue that does need further work and it was good to see that the committee recommended that there should be more work done around this. The digital divide hits a lot of people. It is not just people in rural areas; it's not just people from low socio-economic areas. We've got age divides in there as well and these are something that we've heard a lot about over the last few times that we've talked about this bill.There are some really good solutions to this though and we need to look at those solutions about how we can actually help people to address the digital divide so that they can access this bill really really well. Things like in schools in areas that I've worked in in the past having the internet so that it's available to all people in the community—having a net out so that a lot of people in the low socio-economic communities can access the internet that schools provide. In my particular school that I worked in over the last 11 years we used to have a lot of people who would come up to our school access our internet and they would access it so that they could pay bills—access their documentation online. I could see that this would work in really really well—this bill—with those people who don't have access to the internet in any other way. So I think there are a lot of places around where they would be able to do that.So I believe that this is a really good bill. I'm delighted to see it go through the House. I'm delighted to see it coming into fruition after so long. We as a Government are very very proud that this is a piece of legislation that we are putting through. It is important. It will make a difference to a lot of people and I look forward to seeing future variations of this bill as they come through the House in future years. So with that Madam Deputy Speaker I commend this bill to the House.Bill read a third time."