Huo RaymondRAYMOND HUO (Labour): Having listened to the contributions of members who spoke before me I think it is fitting for me to say that a certain level of consensus has been reached that this bill is a very important first step. This bill is about how to modernise our elections. It's about e-enabled elections. So this bill is about moving e-democracy from a hypothetical vision to a possible established mechanism for online voting. The bill seeks to achieve two main things. The first thing is it will enable regulations to be made so that a voting method can be developed and secondly it enables a certain kind of data analysis of voter participation involving age groups and other specific data in local elections. Changes under this bill provide flexibility while designing a trial of a certain kind of new method of voting to avoid the risk of designing a trial over a larger population.Although this bill does not propose a certain kind of particular new voting method online voting is obviously topical and we do have high-level expectations from the general public and conversely we do have escalating challenges for postal voting. Advances in technologies such as social media e-commerce and the digital economy have changed our lives. The rise of the internet and e-commerce the digital economy and social media platforms have changed and transformed business and Governments' and certainly individuals' behaviour. New technologies such as a social media platform and cloud storage have changed the way data is to be collected stored used and distributed. This has created many benefits but at the same time many challenges as well. We have covered these kinds of issues while debating another bill the Privacy Bill before this sitting block.This bill is about how to modernise our elections and how to introduce possible e-enabled elections. For its proponents online voting is a way for us to modernise elections. I can list at least three more reasons to support such a claim. Firstly if we go to say the South Island to the Hon Damien O'Connor's electorate we will appreciate that New Zealand is geographically extensive. We don't necessarily have many metropolitan cities and it is not easy for voters to travel and that's certainly the case for Kiwis working or living overseas when coming to each election cycle. Secondly it helps to facilitate access to the ballot box for those with difficulties accessing the station. Thirdly as many members touched upon previously online voting as a new method will definitely help engage more with young voters although it is a big ask for us to say that online voting will be the silver bullet and it will be the solution to sort out all the problems or to help reverse the declining turnout in legislative elections worldwide. It is important for us to have this bill to be introduced as the first step. Through the progress of this bill and particularly through select committee progress where we will be able to look into the submissions we would be better placed to understand the impact of online voting on young voters or generally on voting behaviour especially among young voters. We would be better placed to understand the relationship between online voting e-democracy actual participation and socio-economic factors such as age gender income and education etc. At the moment we don't have the necessary data to help guide us in that direction. Previously data sourced internationally would offer some further grim reading. For example turnout for European Parliament elections has decreased each cycle from a high of 61 percent in 1979 to close to 42 percent in 2014. However increased turnout was observed following the introduction of online voting in the 2000 Arizona Democratic primary elections in the United States in the 2012 Budget referendum in Brazil and in Estonian local elections for the period of 2005 and 2009. In the Republic of Estonia an online voting method known as i-voting provides a unique solution that simply and conveniently helps to engage with younger voters. In 2005 Estonia became the first country in the world to hold nationwide elections using online voting and in 2007—Simon O'Connor: Which country?RAYMOND HUO: Estonia. It made headlines as the first country to use the i-voting system in parliamentary elections. I-voting is a kind of system that enables voters to cast their votes from any internet-connected computer anywhere in the world. During the designated pre-voting period the voter logs on using an ID card and casts a ballot. The system allows voters to vote as many times as they want and since each vote cancels the last the voter always has the option of updating his or her preference. The voter's identity is removed from the ballot before it reaches the national electoral commission for counting thereby ensuring anonymity and that leads us to the second major issue under this bill involving data analysis in terms of age groups and other factors such as voter participation. While on this particular point there are some ideas floated that it probably is about time for us to consider some ideas involving a unified national identification document. Now we have all sorts of identity documents ranging from driver licences to passports. Arguments for identity documents are that it helps to avoid mismatching people and to fight against fraud and arguments against such a kind of mechanism are understandably data privacy and associated costs. New Zealand together with Australia Canada and the United Kingdom does not have such kinds of unified national identity documents. In Singapore every citizen and permanent resident aged over 15 is required to register for such a kind of ID card. The card is necessary not only for procedures of State but also for day-to-day transactions. In Singapore they use the ID cards at schools for instance to identify students both online and in exams. So this is a very important step. I look forward to the progress of this bill and especially the submissions to the extraordinarily busy Justice Committee. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.