Robertson GrantGRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): Mine will be a very brief contribution because Mr Hipkins stole most of what I wanted to say. But I want to make three comments. The first of those is to just come back to the question of enrolment on the day. I apologise because I was not on the Justice and Electoral Committee and so I did not hear the debate there and I do not know whether the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Justice has made any remarks on this. But I do think Mr Hipkins' point bears emphasis which is that now because of the growth in advance voting where you can enrol—when you go to advance vote you can actually do your enrolment and cast your vote—there is no logical difference now between doing that and doing exactly the same thing on what happens to be polling day.I understand that the Electoral Commission believes that nearly half of voters will advance vote at this coming election. That is great. We are giving people a lot more opportunity to exercise their democratic right. But we are now setting up two contradictory systems: one if you show up to cast your advance vote and one if you show up to cast your vote on election day. I just do not think there is any logic any more to that at all.I imagine that this clause probably owes its history to when it was much harder to process somebody who enrolled on election day. It was a pen and paper type of system and you had to find a point at which you drew a line and said: No we've got an electoral roll that's going to be printed on this day." But we allow special votes. We allow people to enrol right up until the day before. That is great that is terrific and I support that. But now we are—in this legislation and in what we have done previously—effectively setting up a contradictory system that differentiates between people who cast an advance vote and people who cast a vote on the day. I think that is anachronistic.I think the time has come to simply say that we want people to participate in our elections. We desperately need more people to believe in democracy for the reasons that Denis O'Rourke was talking about before. When we look around the world people's faith in democracy has been so diminished that they end up following political leaders whom many of us in this House would be deeply deeply concerned about and concerned about the things that they stand for. We need to make it as easy as possible and it is within our reach now to allow people to participate by enrolling on the day that they vote. Fifty percent of people are going to have that opportunity and another 50 percent are not. That is contradictory and that is wrong in my view.The other matter is also the question of social media which was going to be the other point that I was going to raise as well. My view is that the taking of photographs and the exercise of voting is a good thing as long as it does not breach—and Mr Parker I know has a concern he has just articulated about it; giving away who you voted for and acting as a promotion of who you voted for. But the act of voting is incredible exciting for some people when it is their first time. Last time I cast my—Iain Lees-Galloway: Not even just the first time.GRANT ROBERTSON: Well not just the first time either that is right. Mr Lees-Galloway likes a selfie at any moment and in the polling booth would just be another occasion for him to take a selfie—shaving breakfast whatever it is he will have a selfie. Particularly for young people casting their first vote it is an exciting thing. I cast my vote at the last election as an advance vote at Victoria University and the excitement that people had for their first vote was huge. They wanted to take that selfie of themselves even holding the ballot paper and putting their finger over where they had made the mark—whatever it was. That is great—we should support that. It makes people feel good that they are part of the democratic process; we should not make up a rule that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to them. So I think that that is overly restrictive and I do think that we should use social media generally better to help people understand the electoral process.This brings me to my last point which is not Labour Party policy—but I am going to make it because I get the opportunity to say it right now—Iain Lees-Galloway: Sit down sit down!GRANT ROBERTSON: Ring the bell! Jono Naylor: They're all feeling very nervous now Grant.GRANT ROBERTSON: Ha ha! I want to see the next round of the Justice and Electoral Committee election review after 2017 look much more seriously at online voting. We have to do it. I know and I understand the risks. It is why I am not saying we should do it right now today but if everyone in this Chamber trusts doing their banking online and most of us do then we should trust the ability to vote online. If we want to increase participation by a wide range of people in our society in voting we will take seriously the challenge of making online voting a secure and real option at an election in New Zealand some time very soon."