Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I'm very pleased to allow my good friend and colleague the member for Helensville to sit back with his fine-tooth comb and take a well-earned rest. I want to start by drawing attention to some of the things that the members of the Justice Committee were agreed upon because I took part in the debate on the second reading last Thursday which was at times a pretty tempestuous experience; it certainly highlighted where there are significant differences of opinion. But for those who are listening it's also worth pointing out that there is much that the committee was agreed upon and that we have recommended to the House in our report on this Electoral Amendment Bill. If I could just give a couple of examples of that because they are significant—one is the recommendation for this bill to provide for voting to be able to take place in a wider range of places and in particular with a focus on licensed premises and other areas where alcohol can be sold. In the past there's been an absolute blanket ban on that. I doubt whether there would be many people at least who would argue that it would be desirable to have voting actually in an area where alcohol was being consumed such as a pub. But there are the licensed premises where it is quite possible to walk through to an area that is not being used for the sale and consumption of liquor and I don't think anyone would have much problem with that. A good example would be a sports club perhaps an RSA or a service club of that sort. But also there's the issue of supermarkets and increasingly particularly with advanced voting and many people taking advantage of their opportunity to vote in advance over the 12 days leading up to election day—most of us go shopping several times a week and therefore the opportunity to vote in a supermarket makes perfect sense if it's a heavily populated area. At the moment the legislation wouldn't allow that because most supermarkets of course have a licence to sell liquor.So I think there are some very pragmatic changes there that have been made and there's also arising from that a recommendation that there should be a new clause 16 to allow votes to be moved from a voting place to another area for the preliminary count of votes. Now at the moment the Act requires that the votes are counted where they are cast and a typical example would be a school or perhaps a church hall which has been set up by the Electoral Commission as a voting place in a particular electorate. It's relatively easy therefore to make arrangements for that same venue to be used for the counting of the votes but if we are for instance to move as it would appear that we are going to to allowing supermarkets to be used for that purpose it would not be appropriate for the counting to be taking place in say the foyer of a supermarket which is a very busy area. Therefore there needs to be adequate provision within the law for those votes to be moved to a sensible area which would perhaps be a workroom staffroom—something which is secure—therefore enabling the count to be taken place without any interference or unwarranted interruption. Of course you need then to ensure that the law makes adequate provision to ensure the security of the transfer of those votes. That again is a matter that the Justice Committee was able to agree upon and I doubt whether there will be any opposition to it in this House.There is one other aspect that I'll draw attention to before I get on to one or two of the more contentious issues. Clause 5 which enables or would enable special vote declarations to be treated as applications to enrol or to update details—now currently the enrolment form and the special vote form contain largely the same information. So the committee is saying the Electoral Commission should be able to—not absolutely required to because they may have reasons to believe it isn't appropriate but should be able to treat the special vote form as an enrolment form. Given the fact that many New Zealanders are nomadic—we've got so many people who are voting from overseas and all sorts of things—it does make sense I think to ensure that we continually strive to have the most accurate enrolment information possible. So I commend the Minister of Justice for putting this proposal before the committee and the committee as I say warmly endorses it.There's also the provision under the bill as introduced clause 17 the new section 195(6) that sets out some situations that would be considered unforeseen or unavoidable disruptions. It's interesting to have a look at some of the provisions that could be contemplated in that for a polling disruption. These include a natural disaster—well imagine if and we all pray it won't happen but if there were to be another Canterbury or Kaikōura earthquake on an election day it would be inconceivable that the election activity could continue. It would be inconceivable in those circumstances that voting could be continued. There's also adverse weather conditions—well just in the last few days we've seen the terrible flooding down south and my heart goes out to all the people of Mataura and surrounding areas who are dealing with that. What a horrific experience that has been. Again you wouldn't have been able to have voting being conducted while people were dealing with a terrible weather event of that sort. There's also the possibility of riots or disorder—well fortunately they're not particularly common in New Zealand but we've seen just recently for example in Hong Kong which is a highly respectable democracy where nevertheless rioting would if we had something similar here make it very very difficult.But I want to go on to the fact that the next thing is the inclusion of the provision for a terrorist act because again we all pray that we will never see another terrorist act but if the terrible atrocity the anniversary of which is approaching just a month away of 15 March in Christchurch—if anything of that nature were to happen on election day it would clearly again make it impossible for voting to continue. So these are all sensible changes.Now I say that and I've laboured those points perhaps just to emphasise that this is not a wholly contentious bill but the point that my colleague Dr Nick Smith made before about process is one that we on this side of the House feel very strongly about and we object to. As he mentioned there were nine bills during the previous term of Government led by Sir John Key and latterly Sir Bill English and all of those were measures that were brought through the House consensually with full consultation with all Opposition parties and that's the way it should be. Here we have the fourth example in less than three years where the new Government has put through changes to our electoral laws in a way that has not involved consultation with this large Opposition party the National Party or presumably with the ACT Party and we find that constitutionally obnoxious. In particular it is worth noting that it's not just the Opposition that is opposed to it. The Electoral Commission advised the committee that the 10-day extension to the announcement of the final election result is a direct consequence of allowing same-day enrolment because of the extra complexity that it would add to the vote and the commission had previously told the committee that it therefore did not support same-day enrolment.Hon Dr Nick Smith: For 2020.Hon TIM MACINDOE: For 2020. So for this Minister and his party to be pushing ahead with this for reasons that we believe have far more to do with their own electoral advantage than what is in the best interests of the nation is obnoxious.Now Dr Nick Smith mentioned in his contribution earlier that it was just under 1 percent of potential voters who turned up on election day last year and were turned away because they were not enrolled and that therefore just over 99 percent of the voters would be inconvenienced by having to wait another 10 days for the formation of a Government when this is introduced. That is a significant point but I think that even more significant is the fact that because of this provision—i.e. to allow same-day enrolment—we will see over time a steady increase in the number of people in that category and therefore the delay will get greater and greater over time. There will be no incentive for people to enrol in advance if we say Well just front up on election day and even if you're not enrolled we'll get it all sorted then." That will add considerably to the time required that will delay the publication of the vote and as I say over time the whole process will become more and more cumbersome.That's where the point that Dr Smith also made is so valid: that it's not just the fact that the voters need to know who the candidates are—and that's why we have a provision for the final date for the closing of nominations for the election—but that the candidates have an absolute right and I would argue a responsibility to know who the potential voters are. Now the moment somebody gets enrolled—Michael Wood: Nick Smith told us this about 15 minutes ago.Hon TIM MACINDOE: —on the Electoral Act—Mr Wood as you would know; you are an electorate member of Parliament—you have the opportunity to contact those particular voters. One way that you might do that is by direct targeted mail and I think most candidates have at different times used that opportunity. Of course you can't do that if you don't have somebody on the roll in the first place and therefore the ability of the candidate to reach out to the potential voter to sell his or her message to argue on the things that he or she believes to be most important issues of the campaign is taken away. I don't believe that that serves the interests of democracy at all well. I don't believe that it results in a well-educated election—Darroch Ball: What nonsense. Just nonsense.Hon TIM MACINDOE: "Nonsense." says Mr Ball. [Time expired]"