O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Just replying to some of the previous speakers like the Hon Nick Smith who might be pleased to know that when we look at what the issues are around local bodies and the poor turnout actually his own electorate of Nelson at 52 percent had the highest turnout at the last election. So perhaps Mr Nick Smith's passion in this House has outraged—perhaps the outrage at the Nelson market on a Saturday morning might just be having some effect. So there you go—he's very pleased. The next one down was Dunedin at 45 percent and the numbers go down thenceforth so that's where we actually look at the need to have this bill to increase participation. In fact it's gone down from 2010 when there was a 49 percent turnout nationally to 41 percent in 2013. It did consolidate in 2016 at 42 percent—up 0.2 percent. But therein lies the problem. We come to this House and we talk about democracy and I think there's no one in this House who would profess to be anything other than a great believer in democracy—that very system that has us all standing or sitting here tonight. But like any democratic process it's participation that we really must ensure that we increase because without participation we end up with something of a pseudo-democratic system. So it behoves us to look at ways that we can engage particularly our younger members of the public. It's quite interesting that when you look at the demographic of course in the South Island where the average age of people is higher it's a greater turnout and if you go to Auckland it's very low. It behoves us to look at ways that we can get our younger population voting in local body elections and indeed what better way to do it. We are not a great example in this House. One only has to look around here at any one time to see how many heads are down looking at our devices but we probably are fogies compared to many of our younger contemporaries who spend their whole lives on these devices. So it does make sense that in any attempt we make to increase their participation we obviously have to look at modern methods and of course electronic voting is the most logical way to go. Look at the Justice Committee we did examine this. Obviously we only have to look around the world to see examples of where other countries have used electronic methods to interfere with others and to influence others. So it is important that we do actually have protections in place and that's why with this bill—despite the criticisms of those opposite—whatever we do we've got to make sure that it does stand the test of time. So what better way to test it than to give our local bodies the ability to use electronic voting and that's essentially what this bill does. It gives our local bodies the opportunity to decide—particularly locally—what will suit them. Nowhere in this bill is it a substitute for our mail voting. In fact when we talk about fraud and the possibility of fraud one of the things at the moment is of course that virtually all local bodies use some form of postal voting. The old days of having voting sites are pretty much gone in local body elections. Of course there is also how many forms turn up at different houses and truth be known we will never know how many of those voting forms are filled out by one person in those houses. Again it's something that while electronic voting will not overcome that—it will be the same problem but electronic footprints in many ways or electronic fingerprints left behind in the case of any inquiries into such behaviour are more likely to be able to be tracked down than even doing so on a paper-based voting system. So I think this is something that its time has come. There'll be those that are surprised we haven't gone further but I think with electronic voting you know we do and rightfully need to be very careful to protect our democracy to ensure that as we build it slowly and learn from our experiences—and in fact if you have a look at this bill there are safeguards within the bill to ensure that where there are unsatisfactory results where it is believed that an election has gone awry for any reason then there is the opportunity to ensure that there is a remedy put in place. That is again well covered in this bill. So I commend this bill to the House as a piece of legislation whose time has arrived and I have no doubt that it will form the basis the building blocks of a much better voting system and hopefully will increase voter participation. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.