Barry Maggie; Rurawhe AdrianHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to speak at the second reading of the Local Electoral Matters Bill a bill that promised much and delivered little—much like the Government really. Minor changes well short of the mark—an online voting bill I suppose and while we on this side of the House think it's a good idea to explore it this bill really didn't deliver a whole lot. Having sat on the Justice Committee which considered the submissions and was involved in the consultation with the local government and other bodies that came through to speak about this I think we do have to remember that the final decision on proceeding with an internet voting trial this year following the passage of this bill—and it will pass and we do support it—does rest with councils and local government. There's a lot to learn from what not to do with online voting. We've been very cautious about it in the past. I recall as the Minister of Conservation looking very carefully at how people who were on the conservation islands in remote locations would be able to have that opportunity to use the internet to contribute their vote in a democratic way. But sending voting papers from overseas as with outlying islands; fishing vessels as well fall into that category—we still believe that there needs to be a paper ballot to be generated and we remain cautious about using the internet to vote generally until the security issues which many people spoke to the committee about have been fully resolved and they are not showing any signs of that occurring at this time. But we do support the bill. We agree it provides some very useful additional tools for improving participation in local elections and of course participating in democracy is what we want people to be able to do but we don't believe it's the magic bullet. We don't believe it's the only answer. I think there has been a lot of hype a lot of expectations raised that this bill will deliver the solution to really I suppose the inertia and the antipathy—really is what it comes down to on some occasions: people that are just not engaged and don't want to bother voting. There are a lot of underlying major issues that we need to think about in regards to this.Recasting the vote with an online sort of voting system: I think electors need and we need as legislators some form of a contingency mechanism in case there are problems because there are problems—and other speakers have alluded to them—and they occur within postal voting as well. But when there are issues you need to be able to put it right as L V Martin once memorably said. What a character he was. But in the sense of something as important as your democratic vote being either lost or somehow misrepresented there does need to be in our view on this side of the House a trial but we need to be really careful and we need to make sure that there are contingency reports and contingency measures I should say.So the Justice Committee did recommend that the bill be passed with amendments which is why on the side of the House we're not spending a whole lot of time on it. We have spoken about it at some length and it's gone through the due process. As I said at the outset this bill delivered not very much but promised a lot. I think that the less said about it the better. Let's move through the progress of other important legislation in this House. With that I commend the bill to the House but with reservations.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Members this is a split call five minutes. I call Dr Duncan Webb.