Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): Listening to the debate so far on the Electoral Amendment Bill I cannot help but get the feeling that there is a little bit of fiddling while Rome burns going on when it comes to this debate. This bill makes a number of technical amendments to current electoral law while the huge elephant in the room is the declining level of participation by the citizens of this country in their democratic process and the dwindling levels of confidence in the institutions of our democracy whether that be lack of confidence in this Parliament or the electoral system or whether it is just wider scepticism about the whole of Government and the whole of the governing process. We are seeing that much more visibly in other countries than we are in New Zealand at the moment but we are not immune to that here in New Zealand. If we want to see indicators of that let us start with the number of people who are not on the electoral roll which is quite significant and then the number who are not voting. Combine those two numbers together and the second runner-up at the last election was not actually us in the Labour Party; it was that group of people. It was the non-voting group of people who actually came second. The non-voters party came second at the last election. That is something that none of us in this House should take any pride in. I have to say that we are here debating the rules by which we are elected and I am willing to make a wager right now that there will be very little public scrutiny of this debate. It will not get covered in the media—it will not be on television and it will barely be covered in any other form of media—and yet we are determining the rules by which we get elected by which we then have the authority to make the laws of this country and no one is scrutinising us. That is something that we should be concerned about because what we have seen over the last decade or more is a diminishing of the fourth estate the media and the role of the media in scrutinising what we do. The fact that we are changing the laws around elections with no scrutiny is something that we should be concerned about as well as the fact that most New Zealanders now will be getting information about politics and about the electoral system through non-traditional media—things like social media. The problem with that is it encourages people to live in an echo chamber where the only views that they get are ones that they already have. Their existing views are reinforced and they are not actually exposed to alternative arguments and debate and I think that that is something that we should be really concerned about. And of course it relates to this because when we are talking about low turnout and we are talking about people not being on the electoral roll—all of those things contribute to that. So here we are debating a whole lot of technical amendments but we are missing that wider picture. My colleague Jacinda Ardern talked about the importance of civics education and I absolutely agree with her on that but I would go so far as to say that the entire New Zealand curriculum is actually civics education because the single most important thing that we can do is encourage young New Zealanders to be critical thinkers and to question everything that is put before them. That is what the New Zealand curriculum can do should do and is designed to do. If anyone wants to see the risks of a jingoistic approach to civics education we only need to look at our good friends in the United States of America to see what happens there. Bear in mind when you watch those video clips on social media of the average Donald Trump voter explaining why they are supporting Donald Trump that every one of them was taught civics in school. Every one of those people who are voting for Donald Trump was indoctrinated with a version of civics. They were taught to memorise the Presidents of the United States and yet they were not taught to critically question everything that is put before them by politicians. I want every student in school to question everything that I say and everything that the members opposite say because actually that is how we get an informed democracy. I do not think that a narrow version of civics education that is about memorising the former New Zealand Prime Ministers or any of that sort of thing is going to deliver that. I actually think that the best civics education is a very broad curriculum that encourages New Zealanders yes to understand our history but also to question everything. I think if we do that we will be taking a big step in the right direction. But let us just talk in my remaining 30 seconds about the particular issue that really annoys me and that is the fact that people cannot enrol to vote on election day. They can enrol in the early voting period but they cannot enrol on the day. Jacqui Dean says that that means that they are not engaged. That is not true. Many of the people who show up to vote on election day do not know that they are not actually on the roll—it is because they have moved house or something like that. They have been participating they have been following the debate they have been engaging in debate they show up to vote and their vote does not count because they are not on the roll and they were not aware of that. That does not mean they are not engaged.