Katene Rahui: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Katene Rahui: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17987] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 As other speakers have noted the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) consists entirely of amendments to Acts. All of the amendments are simply technical which lend themselves to non-controversial changes to give effect to Parliament’s intent for each piece of legislation. 
Contrary to Mr Barker speaking for 10 minutes—more actually—on the bill and making points that seemed to oppose the points that are being dealt with in the bill Labour is not opposed to any of these changes because otherwise they would not have come to the House. In order to be included amendments must be minor technical and non-controversial. If any party objects to any of these amendments the statute requiring amendment must be removed from the bill before it is tabled. None of these amendments have been removed so obviously Labour does not object to them. We have just spent 10 minutes listening to a member who is not actually objecting to any of the changes that are being made. To this end the substance of the debate would probably be more interesting if we were debating the changes that the Maori Party have not agreed to. 
There are just a few points that I want to make in this debate. The first is around the proposal that section 26A(6)(b) of the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act be amended to require the writ for postal referenda to be returned within 60 days rather than 50 days to allow sufficient time for the Chief Electoral Officer to complete the final count of votes endorse the writ and return it to the Clerk of the House. Ten days is neither here nor there but in the interests of due access to justice we are of course keen to support this to ensure a full and comprehensive referenda process can be undertaken. 
But I would just like to raise an issue in the debate regarding the possibility of electronic voting also known as e-voting. Electronic voting technology can speed the counting of ballots and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. Polling place electronic voting or Internet voting examples have taken place in Australia Belgium Brazil Canada Estonia the European Union France Germany India Ireland Italy the Netherlands Norway Romania Switzerland the United Kingdom Venezuela and the Philippines. Unfortunately New Zealand is not on that long list. I wonder why we cannot add New Zealand into that list to trial both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes. If we already have the facility for online enrolment then it would seem to me an ideal opportunity for citizens initiated referenda to serve as a pilot for e-voting. 
As the member for Te Tai Tonga the amendments to the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 are also worthy of a brief comment. In essence this reform will amend the Act to clarify that there may be only one state of local emergency in force in the same location at any one time. If Parliament were sitting in Tokyo the fact that we have just experienced earthquakes a tidal wave and a nuclear meltdown would mean only that there was one national state of emergency. If we were sitting in Christchurch we would have gone through two earthquakes but there would be only one national state of emergency. The events as they have unfolded in Canterbury have certainly informed the importance of maintaining consistency of communication and the need for a coordinated comprehensive approach. Obviously we support this change. 
Consistency is also a concept that we considered when looking at the amendments to the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act. The bill amends section 24(2) of the Act so as to provide that “every tangata whenua appointee shall continue in office until the appointee’s successor comes into office notwithstanding that the term for which the appointee was appointed may have expired.” This is a pragmatic response to issues that occur from time to time between retirements resignations and new appointments. The Maori Party is aware that unless we set up procedures such as this amendment there might be serious consequences for the work programme and issues involved in the management of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park if indeed tangata whenua representation were missing from the table. 
I want also to focus on issues around the Domestic Violence Act. I want to correct the gross misinformation put to the House this morning by Carol Beaumont about domestic violence prevention funding. Ms Beaumont suggested that there should be great concern about the nature of the funding cuts to family violence prevention funding. Actually she could not be more wrong. In actual fact not only has funding for family violence prevention been maintained at $11.035 million as part of the 2011-12 funding plan but in actual fact the announcements by my colleague Tariana Turia included mention of $2.8 million for a period of 1 year to support innovation and joined-up approaches to the coordination of responses to family violence. This may include responses such as community networks and case collaboration. So the funding for family violence prevention has not only been maintained but it has grown. 
What is different about the approach is that we now see far more emphasis on front-line services. In particular the Family-Centred Services Fund will enable family violence prevention service providers and provider collectives to work more flexibly to restore family safety and family well-being where violence has occurred and to help create the longer-term changes needed to prevent violence from recurring. The Maori Party welcomes this refocus on families and believes it is the right emphasis for our future. 
The amendments in this bill to the Domestic Violence Act will make it clear that a person may be taken into custody only for refusing or failing to comply with a police safety order if after issue the order has been served on the person. They also enable community magistrates justices of the peace and court registrars as well as District Court judges to issue warrants of arrest under sections. We welcome the move for transparency and note also that it reflects the widespread ownership of the prevention of family violence right across Government. 
Finally we support the changes to the Charities Act to clarify the definition of “officer” and to amend the definition of “serious wrongdoing” to include: grossly negligent record-keeping gross mismanagement destruction and misrepresentation of records. It is all good to have such specificity written into the law. There is an amendment made to section 5 of the Act so that the meaning of “charitable purpose” is defined as it applies to amateur sport. This will be in line with current case law which provides that amateur sport is not a charitable purpose for its own sake but it can be charitable if it is a means to achieving charitable purposes such as promoting health or education. We support all these changes and we believe it is consistent with the wider context about ensuring the Charities Commission is more aligned with New Zealand communities. We note in the commission’s statement of intent its commitment to enhance its responsiveness to Maori Pasifika and ethnic communities and we obviously welcome this wider direction of change. 
There are many other amendments made within the bill. So many of them are technical and should not have to be made but they were made because of spelling mistakes because of commas or full stops being in the wrong place or simple typos which should not have slipped through and in fact would not have slipped through if we had a better process in this Parliament. To this end I am really looking forward to the constitutional review and to submissions that the public will make on whether this Parliament needs a second House to review what is going on so that we do not have to pass through things under urgency so that we do not pass through things that should not be passed through such as a simple spelling mistake or a typo. The Maori Party is happy to support this bill at its first reading recognising that further points of detail can be raised at successive stages.