Curran ClareHon CLARE CURRAN (Minister of Broadcasting Communications and Digital Media): Kia ora. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I think this has been a really interesting and really useful debate—the debate on this bill which does a few things but has mainly focused on the merits of online voting. I want to make a couple of comments with a couple of different hats on because this is on the face of it a logical important modernising step in how our electoral system operates. You know people have touched on the importance of civic engagement breaking down the barriers to voting the modernisation and use of new technologies in giving people options in how they cast their vote. What this bill does is it is not the introduction. I just want people out there listening to this to be clear. This bill isn't actually the introduction of an online voting scheme for New Zealand. It provides that opportunity to design trial and do analysis of new voting methods and any next steps would require regulations and possibly other legislation. So this is an important step. I think the reason why I've stressed that is because in 2016 when there was a proposed trial of online voting in a number of local authorities throughout New Zealand which seemed to be going to go ahead that fell over and there were a number of reasons for that. I'm not as across as some members are of all of the detailed reasons for that but security issues basically resulted in a pulling back from that. I think that's an important point and that's where I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about that. Participation in our electoral system is a key issue and a key reason for us to go down this track and to look at it. As Gareth Hughes pointed out you know New Zealand does have a reputation as being an open democracy as being at the forefront of some participatory democracy—measures this Government is absolutely committed to—and with 21 percent of the population not participating in voting people not participating in census and other democratic processes it's absolutely critical that we are looking really closely at this. We've also got the digital divides as well where people have low participation or no digital engagement so this is not something that's going to work necessarily for them. So there are some really good reasons to do it but there are also some really good reasons to take care. For all of those techie people out there who are listening and saying Don't do it. Don't do it." because of the security issues that they've raised before again and again—and this goes to the "what happens" between when you cast your vote and when it gets counted and the potential for interruption in that process. We have to do it well. Blockchain technology may provide the opportunity for that. I also want to stress to those people listening that no voting system is perfect—no voting system. Whether it's postal whether it's casting your vote in a ballot box whatever your system is of voting it's not perfect. But this is a logical step and I think it's incumbent on us as a Parliament to be going down this track. I really value the contributions from across the House on this. I know there's been a lot of thinking and I really value the contributions already at local government level in thinking about this because it's local government where there is a lot of the issue around participation and how we can get more people to engage with that. To all you young people up there [Addresses the public gallery] listening to this debate this is about your future. This is about how you can participate and make change happen in New Zealand and your vote is so precious and so important. So we have to make sure that we're doing it for you that we're doing all of the thinking for you. I urge there to be really well-thought-out contributions on this in the select committee process. It's absolutely vital that we get all sides of this debate and that we really nut this out once and for all."