Faafoi Kris: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16492. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 2 of the Electoral Amendment Bill. Unlike with Part 1 the Labour Party is going to support Part 2 so this part of the Electoral Amendment Bill will go through with quite a sizable majority. As previous speakers have said Part 2 does make technical amendments to a number of other pieces of legislation. There are consequential amendments to them as a result of Part 1 of this bill. I would also like to take some of this call—I will refer to Part 2 very soon—as a chance to speak to some of the issues that Alfred Ngaro made reference to in his Part 2 speech.I understand that Mr Ngaro is a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee and I think that that committee does need some praise and Mr Ngaro actually needs some praise for taking a call in this debate at all. The Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce has sat in this Chamber and has been requested to answer a number of questions about the changes that have been made to Part 1 of this bill not Part 2 but as of yet Alfred Ngaro is the only National person who is willing to take a call. He did not address exactly why the changes that have been made in Part 1 have been made and some questions need to be addressed there because there are some controversial issues as Mr Ngaro said. My colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has already pointed out many of those but one change that has been made in the bill which I think Mr Ngaro mentioned in his Part 2 speech was around what I thought was a silly amendment that was in an earlier version of this piece of legislation around the use of ribbons and logos on election day. Earlier in this debate I think it was in the first reading I accused Scott Simpson the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee of suffering from I think the term is kordéllaphobia which is a fear of ribbons. I praise Mr Simpson because he has gone away during the select committee process he has realised that this particular piece of legislation was a silly amendment to the bill and he has struck that out of the bill. I do praise the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee.But there is a serious side to this which some members have already addressed and that is around the electoral confirmation cards. Most New Zealanders would know those as the EasyVote cards. Certainly in my electorate when constituents get those cards they know that they are ready to go and vote. Although this piece of legislation had that written into it at the very first stage the Minister of Justice has asked that this be removed. For what reason we do not know. Can I also point specifically to clause 57 in the bill which refers to amendments to the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act. Subclauses (2) and (3) refer to the deletion of the signature of the Minister of Justice in the schedule form 2 and the schedule form 2A. Of course we know that our current Minister of Justice is the Hon Judith Collins. This clause 57 asks for the deletion of the signature of the Minister of Justice. I guess you could call that—[Interruption] No the signature of the Minister of Justice—you are getting to my point—would be an endorsement of whatever that signature pertained to. We would hate for the Minister to be getting a bit of a reputation around the deletion of her endorsement on things given recent events. But let us not cry over sick milk.These amendments to Part 2 are technical amendments but as the Hon Maryan Street said although we apply principle to this on this side of the Chamber we are quite keen to modernise our electoral system to make sure it has integrity to make sure it is efficient and to encourage participation. We believe that Part 2 does do that. We are concerned with what is contained in Part 1 but we on this side of the Chamber do encourage support for Part 2 because we know that in order to make Part 1 work even though we do not agree with all of it Part 2 does have the support of the Labour Party.Part 2 agreed to.