Penk Chris; Allan KiritapuCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Madam Chair and thanks to the Minister for that engagement following my first question—that was really helpful actually to get bit of a sense of how the Electoral Commission would be looking to engage. And I'd be remiss I suppose for not mentioning that the Electoral Commission of course is the body that is responsible for the running of elections that are general in nature as opposed to local—and that's been the subject of some discussion recently and I think the National Party's made pretty clear its view that it should be the Electoral Commission that's also responsible for running local government elections. However that's by the by in terms of this bill.In terms of Part 1 which we remain on obviously at this stage I'm just interested in teasing out a scenario in which an election is called and where the choice has been made by a Māori person to go from one roll to the other quite recently—such that they would be within the period of time that they're not allowed to change before an election and then the election having been called would actually put them in that window. Now in fairness to the bill as it was introduced to the House this situation was contemplated at least somewhat. So looking at section 78Aas it would be within the legislation—that's under clause 6—that's saying that the Māori option [would be] paused for registered electors and persons on dormant roll if by-election called". So whoever's drafted the legislation or the policy intent behind it and the very smart people who have helped put it together have acknowledged that there's a situation where it's not an attempt to game the system; it's just an accident of timing that a person has said "I want to change my roll from Māori to general" or vice versa and a by-election is called—a "notice of vacancy [has been] published" in the language of the statute and indeed the way we operate business in the case of by-elections. We've had a couple of by-elections or will have a couple of by-elections this year; we're all far too familiar with these mechanisms!But the legislation has contemplated that. And just so everyone's aware what happens then is that the Electoral Commission has to pause at that point. So they don't process applications that they've got sitting on their desks in a pile; maybe a virtual pile or a physical pile of papers I'm not sure. But they won't process those until such time as the election's finished because that would fall foul of the rule against processing applications during that certain period before a by-election. And similarly with Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 280 that the Minister has introduced saying that that stand-down period if you want also applies to local elections and general elections the equivalent provision's there. So that's good; so far so good. I think I'm right in saying that the Minister would intend and the policy intent is that if a person happens to want to change roll and then a general election is called or a local election or a by-election—in whatever instance it is a person shouldn't have that undone; their wish to change rolls shouldn't be undone by the fact that the election would take place within that certain period. And I think that would be fair because they're not doing it to game the system; they're just doing it at a certain moment in time and it just so happens that an election gets called. But if I've made my question clear enough for the Minister to give an answer then I'll certainly welcome her comments on that.Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): In sum if a Prime Minister calls a snap election tomorrow and you'd just changed your roll yesterday does that stay valid? Yep. So in SOP 280 at what will become the new section 78AA(4) it sets out—this is on page 2 of the SOP—the relevant period: if less than three months' of polling day is given that the period commences on that day on which public notice of the polling day is given and it ends on the polling day itself."