O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): Firstly on the Electoral Amendment Bill I note that only 12 out of the 28 recommendations made by the Justice and Electoral Committee have been progressed by the Government. That is not a very good record—12 out of 28 recommendations. So it is less than a 50 percent pass mark as far as I am concerned. It is a lot of work that is not being done. The bill in addition addresses only some of the issues some of the statutory issues and really the Government has given no indication about addressing some of the other things. One of those is that there simply were not enough polling places during the advance voting period. People were looking for them and could not find them. A lot more people would have voted if they had been able to find them. Secondly some of the voting places used for advance voting were not the same voting places used on election day. So that caused confusion and that should not happen. So those are two things that cannot be in this bill because they are not statutory. But the Government needs to give an indication about whether it is going to fix those things as well.I just want to add about the Electoral Amendment Bill that I agree with the other speakers who have said that any qualified elector should be able to enrol on election day or indeed on any day during the 3-week voting period—any day. The reason for that is it can be done safely and securely and it should be done because it gives people more freedom to choose when and how they are going to enrol. So they ought to be able to turn up and enrol and vote at the same time. Why not? There is actually no good reason for that. So the legislation does not go far enough but New Zealand First will vote in favour because as far as it goes it is OK.I really want to spend most of my time on the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill because claims that the broadcasting of the opening and closing addresses have become unpopular are grossly exaggerated. The truth is that TV ONE and Radio New Zealand have been lobbying for years so that they do not have to perform their public duty of broadcasting these opening and closing addresses free of charge. No doubt they could get a bigger audience if they were free to broadcast something else instead but that is not the issue. The issue is that they are public broadcasters and they have a public duty to do this. Many people in fact still do watch those especially people who are not much interested in the digital media. So that should still happen. If there is going to be funding for digital media it should be done separately and not at the expense of these opening and closing addresses. We should not just be letting those broadcasters off the hook; we should be making them carry on and do their public duty.What the bill does effectively is convert the assessed value of that free air time into cash funding for advertising on digital media and in addition to that the Government has increased the total amount by $750000 to a total of $3.6 million. So that is a lot of money and it is important that it be fairly distributed. That brings me to the other reason why New Zealand First opposes this particular bill and that is that the Minister and the Government have chosen not to review and change the criteria for the allocation of those funds and they should have done so. The Minister wrote to all of the parties asking whether they supported her proposals. New Zealand First said it would not do so unless those criteria were in fact reviewed and hopefully changed. There was no effort put into doing that at all and therefore there is no consensus as Mark Mitchell claimed—no consensus at all. New Zealand First is very definitely opposed to the proposal unless those criteria have been changed because they are quite simply unfair to smaller parties. There is no problem I guess for the National Party and the Labour Party but the criteria are unfair to the smaller parties and I want to explain why that is.The criteria are simply outdated. This is what they say. This is what the Electoral Commission is required to do by statute in terms of those criteria. Section 75(2)(a) of the Broadcasting Act states that the commission must have regard to: the number of persons who voted at the immediately preceding general election for that party and for candidates belonging to that political party;"—no problem with that; that is very proper criteria—"(b) the number of persons who voted at any by-election held since the immediately preceding general election". We say that that is not relevant. General elections include most importantly a party vote and that does not happen at by-elections so how on earth could they actually be relevant to the allocation for funds at a general election? Paragraph (c) mentions the number of members of Parliament who were members of that political party immediately before the end of the last Parliament. We think that is the best and most solid criterion and we would like to see that stay. Paragraph (d) states: "any relationships that exist between a political party and any other political party;". I struggle to see the relevance of that but perhaps somebody can explain why that should be relevant. Paragraph (e) states: "any other indications of public support for that political party such as the results of opinion polls". For goodness' sake—opinion polls!Opinion polls are notoriously inaccurate before an election. Just look at the much lower poll results New Zealand First had at each and every one of the recent general elections—much lower than the result we actually got as a party. There are reasons for that. There are good and identifiable demographic reasons why that is the case. I am not going to go into that detail but if you talk to the pollsters they will agree that there are issues there that will make those polls not accurate enough for the purposes of an allocation of $3.6 million of public funds. Finally paragraph (f) is fine and it is: "the need to provide a fair opportunity for each registered political party … to convey its policies" and so on. We say that those criteria are inherently unfair to smaller parties and are complex and uncertain.In 2014 the National Party was allocated $1053622. It got 59 seats so that is by proportion $17858 a seat. Labour was allocated $919828. It got 32 seats—$28744 per seat by proportion. The Greens were allocated $401380. It got 14 seats—$28670 per seat by proportion. New Zealand First got only $200690 but got 11 seats which equates to only $18244 per seat. Even the tiny Māori Party got $100344 but got only two seats which equates to a very high $50177 and the one-member ACT Party got an incredible $76930 for one seat. So I put it to you Mr Assistant Speaker and to everybody else listening: how could that possibly be a fair allocation of that money? There is no possible way that there is any fairness or even any rationality to support the current criteria. They are thoroughly out of date. They need to be changed. The Minister just brushed over that despite New Zealand First's objections. There is no consensus. This bill should not be proceeding for those reasons and New Zealand First will therefore definitely vote against it."