Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure to take a call on this third reading of the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill and the Electoral Amendment Bill as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee which heard submissions on these two pieces of legislation. What I want to highlight is that as a member of that select committee we were able to receive the Electoral Commission's 2014 report and in fact our own select committee report highlighted two priorities the first of which is that legislative reform must promote and encourage voter participation and secondly that we need to find more ways to meet the changing needs and expectations of voters and communities. This legislation implements 12 of 28 recommendations in the select committee report. I know my colleague Denis O'Rourke has highlighted that it is not ideal but the justification from the Government for not implementing more of those recommendations is that it had no time to implement those recommendations before the 2017 general election but there was a commitment that it would enact legislation to ensure that the recommendations were applicable for the 2020 general election. I want to put that on the record because colleagues on the select committee were very clear that if we had the time we would have implemented all 28 recommendations but we were not able to do so.I would like to take the opportunity to highlight a few aspects of this legislation the first of which I find really interesting. I have been talking to my colleague Poto Williams about this. One of the changes in the legislation is going to ensure that there is transparency in submissions related to proposed electoral boundary changes. I find that incredibly fascinating because what that means is that we will be treating submissions like we do submissions to this House and they will go up on the website. People will be able to see who submitted a submission to the Electoral Commission about proposed boundary changes that they will implement after the 2018 census.So it got me thinking about the relevance of the 2018 census because what that does amongst other things is also anticipate how many general and Māori seats we will have. I also want to highlight that within that process those particular seats are capped in the South Island at 16. So it does have relevance because if our population is increasing by hundreds of thousands of people every year I am going to be really interested in that process to know whether those people have settled in the South Island or not because the number of people who live in the South Island divided by 16 becomes the size of our electorates. So I think it is an incredibly interesting thing to note. Also since the introduction of MMP where in 1996 we had 55 list MPs in fact in 2014 we had 50. So this particular change which will ensure that people who make submissions to boundary changes—which is where my conversation is providing the context to that particular submission process—is I find incredibly important.One of the recommendations that has not been taken up that fits into this particular discussion is that the Māori electoral option is run in conjunction with the census. So every 5 years if you are a Māori descendant of a Māori or identify as Māori in Aotearoa you get to choose whether you go on the Māori roll or whether you go on the general roll. One of the recommendations from our select committee—in fact to again go back to our priorities to increase voter participation—is to enable Māori to choose every election cycle. So in fact we would be able to choose every 3 years between elections whether we want to stay on the Māori roll whether we want to go on the general roll or if we are a first-time enrolee obviously which roll we want to go on. It would be relevant to the 2020 election. That is one of the commitments that the select committee and the Government agreed to which is why I think it is important to highlight it.There has been much made about the broadcasting of the party political broadcasts on the public platform which traditionally has happened both on TV and on radio. I want to particularly highlight a submission from Tom Frewen who thought that we all should think seriously about what we have done with that public broadcasting platform—essentially we have translated that into an amount of money. That money is $3.605 million and rather than use that as a requirement for an opening and closing statement delivered on the public platform which reinforces our public broadcasting service what we have done is actually commodified that amount of money which will be allocated to political parties at the next general election and said to them that they can spend it as they choose.I would like to highlight it because I think Tom Frewen had an incredibly valuable point and that point was: what is the purpose and point of a public broadcaster and those party political broadcasts—opening and closing addresses—off a public platform? That purpose actually was to ensure that every home in New Zealand engaged in the political process and understood who the leaders of the political parties were what their messages were and why actually people should participate which is at the heart of this entire reform. Whether that can happen through other modes—that is Facebook or email or other platforms—is yet to be seen because I think that will be interesting in terms of the inquiry that will happen after this 2017 general election.What I forgot to mention too is that we do have a serious issue in terms of voter turnout. In 2011 it was 69.57 percent. In 2014 it was 72.14 percent and obviously our ultimate goal I think would be to get to 100 percent but that is not realistic when we currently have an enrolment rate of 93 percent. The aspiration is 95 percent. I think anything over 80 percent today would be absolutely fantastic. So we do have to engage with particular cohorts and I do want to highlight that I think the Children's Commissioner's current proposition of allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to enrol and vote—to enable 16-year-olds to participate—is really focused on the statistics around youth participation. There is approximately 68 percent of the 18 to 24-year-old cohort who are enrolled. There are about 450000 people in that age group.We have 150000 young people who are not engaged in the political process. The Children's Commissioner's proposition would add another 150000 young people who would be able to enrol at school. So I think his proposition has merit because the reality of the research that I have seen is that if we can get young people enrolled when they are eligible and if they vote from the first time that they can vote they actually vote for life. But if they do not engage and vote when they are eligible then some of them never vote at all.So I think that the Children's Commissioner's proposition needs to be fully assessed and discussed because at the last general election only 62 percent of the 68 percent who were enrolled actually voted. So 150000 are not enrolled and there is another 114000 who did not vote. It is a serious erosion of our democratic process if our young people are choosing for whatever reason not to engage not to vote. I think it is a big issue that this House should be incredibly concerned about.The other issue that I would like to highlight really quickly is that we will be able to start counting votes from 9 a.m. on election day. These are all the early votes. In 2011 14 percent voted early. In 2014 34 percent voted early. The Electoral Commission is anticipating that in 2017 50 percent of voters who are enrolled will vote early. So being able to start counting from 9 a.m. is actually going to produce faster results. I will not say better results but faster results. Obviously in terms of the integrity in the system people who have chosen to participate want to know those results as do the candidates as soon as possible.It has been very interesting being on this select committee. This is an area that I am incredibly passionate about. I too commend the bill to the House. Thank you.