O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I'm very much looking forward to putting right many of the quite false claims and insinuations particularly those around the Justice Committee of which I'm a very proud member. Just to put things in perspective the justice select committee has been a very very busy committee having considered 19 bills in this term alone. Of course one of those bills was the End of Life Choice Bill which required the justice select committee to hear thousands of submissions written and otherwise. The Justice Committee sat over 65 percent of the time that all select committees sat added together just to put things in perspective. So it's a very effective and efficient committee getting through its work.But some of the almost implied criticisms of our committee including one from Dr Nick Smith who talked about—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we talk about the bill please.GREG O'CONNOR: Well I am. This is a very important part of the bill because we actually talked about—one of the criticisms of the bill was that the justice select committee in fact through having had a large number of chairs somehow was rendered incapable of dealing with this issue. Au contraire actually Dr Smith himself who the day that the most important material was being heard in relation to the—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes but we don't need to know about the processes in the select committee. We are actually on a first reading of a bill before the House so the member has only five minutes. He should be able to speak to the bill.GREG O'CONNOR: OK. Thank you. I will speak to the bill of course. This bill is democracy in action as democratic as you could possibly see. Anyone with any knowledge of elections around the world will know what happened in 2000 in the United States and Florida. Through the actions of the Republican Party and those who organise them there was a large number of people disenfranchised which enabled one of the Bush family to win—Jeb Bush I understand—and that actually swayed the election. So that is living proof as to why it is so important that everyone gets the opportunity to vote.Now we've seen evolution of our electoral system our voting system MMP. What you're seeing on this side of the House is an understanding of how MMP works—how it can work. Many of the speakers opposite have talked about the negotiations around the formation of a Government. Well on this side we did negotiate we did form a Government and a very effective Government that despite the predictions from many on the other side that it would be all over by Christmas is still getting stronger by the day. That strength is the type of issues that are being addressed in this bill basically around the ability to ensure that more people are able to vote.If you look at the main part of this bill the most important part about it and that which has attracted much discussion from the Opposition it's a fear that by allowing people to enrol and vote on election day somehow democracy is going to be made a mockery of—that somehow we are entering into a non-democratic process. Well that couldn't be further from the truth. What will happen as a result of this is that those people who—and as we know with elections as we get nearer to election day and while pre-voting has been the new feature pre-voting has been an effective feature. But the reality of it—and I've heard people here speak about the nostalgia of election day the nicety of having morning tea digging the garden and heading down and voting on election day something that I think we all agree is something that should be absolutely available to every New Zealander. Now as a result of this it will be. It'll be available to those who for various reasons distraction—we know that people don't read newspapers these days and we know through social media the sheer difficulty of actually getting in front of people. But of course it's very hard to avoid that on election day. You can imagine whether it be the sports club or various other places: Have you voted?" "No I haven't." "Have you enrolled?" "No." "Well you can now do both." Welcome to the new democracy. Welcome to a new world that is creating a wonderful Government like this Government that I'm proud to be part of with our coalition and supply partners. Part of the next step along is to make sure that New Zealanders get to participate. So I thoroughly recommend this bill to the House."