Faafoi Kris: Electoral Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13434. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I just want to comment on a few of the points made by the previous speaker the Hon Kate Wilkinson who made the point around coat-tailing and the lack of consensus in this Parliament as to whether that should be included in the Electoral Amendment Bill. Well there was not a consensus because it was the National Party that did not want to bring it in. There was only one party around this House that did not want to have anything to do with changing the law around coat-tailing and it was the National Party. Conveniently the National Party needs ACT in Parliament so to stay in power it needs that piece of the electoral law. I think it is rather rich from the member who just resumed her seat to say that there was not a consensus around that when every other party other than the National Party which did it for its own blind self interest wanted that part of the legislation changed.Never in my mind did I think that I would utter the word “kordéllaphobia” in the House. That is what Scott Simpson suffers from. Unfortunately Scott Simpson is scared of these. Scott Simpson hates ribbons or is scared of ribbons. When he wakes up—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!KRIS FAAFOI: When he wakes up in the middle of the night sweating it is because he hates ribbons. That is the truth because that is what that member said in one of the more ridiculous speeches I have heard in this Parliament. He said that this legislation is going to ban rosettes being worn by anyone—Moana Mackey: And ribbons.KRIS FAAFOI: —and ribbons—on election day because they are intimidatory. Well as Phil Goff has mentioned in his speech for years decades many more years than I have been alive it has been part of the election day ritual for members of parties right across this House to don one of these scary things. I hope Scott is not watching in his office. Turn away Scott if you are watching this speech in your office because you will not want to see this! He thinks that it is intimidatory to wear a ribbon on election day. I think that Phil Goff actually made a number of good points about why it is crucial to identify yourself if you are out and about—oh here he is. Scott Simpson is over here. He is hiding. He is ducking over there because he does not want to see the ribbon.Phil Goff made a number of good points around the wearing of ribbons on election day. I hope this is actually mentioned quite a lot in the Justice and Electoral Committee because it is very important that when you knock on someone’s door on election day to check if they have voted you identify yourself and why—Hon Judith Collins: Mind your own business.KRIS FAAFOI: Oh so that Minister does notdoorknock. When you are knocking on doors you identify yourself and where you are from. You cannot say: “Go out and vote for x y and z.” That is not allowed. But what you can do is say: “Excuse me sir or madam or young person have you voted today?” and that is a tradition and has happened for many many elections. It is very important that the person in the house where you are doorknocking knows where you are from because if you say something that you should not be saying then they know how to get hold of you. The flip side ofthe situation is what you could have—and it may be an unintended consequence—is someone from some other party could go around saying: “Hey I am from the Labour Party. Have you voted?”. If they say yes or no and they come back with some kind of rude remark what is going to be the recompense for that if they have not properly identified themselves? So I think this is a bit silly and probably evidence that the National Party actually cannot get people out on election day to knock on doors so that is why it certainly does not want that there.The Minister of Justice did say in her speech that our electoral system does have a lot of integrity and I would happen to agree with her. But I just also wanted to point out one thing that David Clendon said in his speech. It is good that we are improving the efficiency of our electoral system but I would also like to echo his comments about improving the effectiveness of our electoral system by making sure that we not only make it easier for people to get enrolled—and that is what this piece of legislation does by way of making it easier to enrol online—but also emphasise the importance of actually being enrolled on the electoral roll and why it is important to be on the roll and to make sure you vote. I am pretty sure that all the members of Parliament in this House will send that message out to the youngsters when they visit their schools in their electorate or outside of the electorates. I say to them to just make sure you are enrolled and you vote. I do not care how you vote; just make sure you have a say in this electoral system.As David Clendon said and I agree with him we have to do a much better job at engaging our youngsters in politics and in the decisions that get made in this House. Yes it is also a challenge to us to excite them to get them engaged in politics and in the decisions that we make but I think it is also very important that we tell them about the importance of being enrolled to vote. Certainly I think that the move that this bill does to make it easier for us not only to just update the system and print off a piece of paper and to send it in but to fully enrol and change your details online is certainly a good thing.Just talking about some of the details on election day which I think might be of interest to most of us in this House the bill changes the time at which the early vote can be counted. So to the people who are scrutineers and the people who go and do that I say that it used to be 3 p.m. but now they can get in there much earlier at 2 p.m. and go and get the early vote counted. So that is probably a bit boring for those who are listening to this debate at home but I can say that it is one of the things that make us here in the House excited having been through many many election days ourselves.Right so a number of other speakers have talked about what is not in this bill and I just wanted to end in the way that I started which is to talk about the coat-tailing rule. As Mr Goff said RobertPeden the Chief Electoral Officer of the Electoral Commission has said that the coat-tail rule was a serious concern for most New Zealanders because they do not like what they have seen in terms of I think it was the 2008 election was it Mr Goff when ACT got only 3.65 percent but Rodney Hide took the seat of Epsom. It was given to him by the National Party—and again in 2011 it was given to John Banks over a cup of tea—and that party brought in five MPs with 3.65 percent of the vote but our colleagues to our left over here from New Zealand First who got about 0.5 percent more of the party vote but no electorate seat did not get any MPs in Parliament at all. There was a consensus of all but one of the parties in this House to change that rule—to give the electoral law in our country more integrity as the Minister said—but there was a lack of support from that party across the House. So as Kate Wilkinson said yes there was not a consensus but that was only because one party did not want to agree to that.There are a number of other changes that I think have been mentioned in this debate. I think we still have a concern about the declaration of loans of over $15000 and why you have to declare loans that are not bank loans. I think that is one of the issues that is going to be raised in the select committee. I also wanted to raise the point that there are some common-sense things in this bill that we certainly will be supporting. I think that making it easier for physically and mentally disabled people to register with a representative is a very wise thing to do as is making it easier for them to register online. Just the general use of more technology in the registration of electors is a good thing and I think it will be a first step towards the greater use of technology at probably general elections. I am not sure how far away we are from that and maybe the Minister might be able to tell us during the Committee stage but if we are moving towards some kind of electronic voting to help make it easier for people to vote I certainly think that would be a good thing. It is certainly something that I think is going to be trialled in my area of Mana in some subsequent elections with the Porirua City Council. I think that is a good thing to try to encourage more younger people to vote and I think that it is a good thing that we are seeing more use being made of online technology to help people take part in the democratic process.So as the previous two speakers from this side of the House have said we will be supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee but I would just like to warn the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee that we will certainly be bringing up his “kordéllaphobia” during the select committee stage.