Yang Jian; Williams PotoDr JIAN YANG (National): This bill addresses basically the new voting methods for local elections and addresses the design the trial and also the analysis of new voting methods. It makes changes—minor changes—to both the Local Electoral Act and the main Electoral Act. This is not a huge bill. It's focused on some small changes. It attempts to make it easier to trial new voting methods mainly electronic voting. Now electronic voting of course is getting increasingly popular or important simply because we are living in an increasingly digitised world. Just like people do online shopping so people now go online to do many other things. I understand now half of the New Zealand population are doing online shopping so people would believe that online voting will become increasingly popular or increasingly important. For that reason the National Party will support the bill to select committee to see more details. However on the other hand we need to be a bit more cautious with regard to online voting because in some countries the Governments tried online voting but then reverted back to traditional voting like postal voting. So online voting may not be almighty and may not be the best practice in some cases. As I mentioned there are examples there in other countries like in Norway but also because we believe this bill could enable—enable—the trial of various voting methods. Now there is a concern there because when you have various kinds of voting methods people may get confused. It will then reduce turnout instead of helping or increasing turnout in local elections. Turnout for local elections has been low and we all know that but is the traditional postal voting the main reason for the low turnout? I think that is an issue we can debate on but generally speaking we believe that there are many reasons why people do not go to vote in the local elections. For example some other speakers have mentioned that people do not know these candidates and therefore they do not feel connected. I think that's perhaps one of the key reasons why people do not really go to vote in their local elections. There are some other reasons. For example people may not know the functions of local governments or local organisations. They may not feel that it's important for them to participate—so that can be another reason—and some other people may feel that there is so much information that they can't simply digest it and therefore they simply give up like many other previous speakers have mentioned. And you may say that to new immigrants it can be a challenge because they are not used to the political situation and the political environment in New Zealand and therefore they may need more time to adjust and may need more help or assistance in getting them to better know the situation or the political system in New Zealand. Language can be another barrier for example because the information is largely in English and is in such a hefty booklet people feel that it's very hard for those who do not have a good mastery of English to understand the information. So there are various reasons why people do not participate in local elections. Having said that we believe it is important for us to enable people to vote and to make it easier for people to vote. For that reason we support the bill to the select committee. Thank you. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call—five minutes.