Martin TraceyHon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Thank you very much Mr Chair. Just in recognition of how this is supposed to work where a member actually asks the Minister a question and the Minister is supposed to respond I would like to respond to the very valid issues that have just been raised by my honoured colleague. Quite rightly the gentleman has pointed out that one of the ways that a department would recognise that this is not a working email address would be a bounced message and we've all received those. A secondary way quite rightly—and the guidelines and procedures are going to be worked through with the departments—would be to request a read receipt. Now that's very logical and very reasonable.I do want to raise with the right honourable gentleman that while he may have had a Hotmail address that may still be working I would suggest that that gentleman is so popular that probably people are getting messages that his mailbox is really really full and so not to use that any more. But if that is not the case I would just suggest that the gentleman go and put a forward on that Hotmail address to his Gmail address and then the other right honourable member's email may get through.The rebuttal presumption has always been in place inside this legislation. We're trying to modernise the piece of legislation into a digital environment—fair enough—and so the rebuttal presumption has always been there. That means that the department has an onus on it to prove that it is a working address and this was designed predominantly for business. I would have to say as a trustee of a particular trust that I have been receiving emails from the Charities Commission and so on and so forth advising me that my return for that particular trust needs to be in place by such and such and such and such. So already some of this is happening and a downstream effect of that is that if I don't do it that trust could be null and voided. So there is an onus on and it was designed for business.Agreeably I take the member's point around small businesses—small owner-operators upon which New Zealand is built—and that will need to be taken into account by the department as they set the policies and procedures around how this will be implemented and used. The responsibility is on the department to be reasonable and sensible. I did actually seek advice on this over the dinner hour rather than just going off and enjoying myself like perhaps some other members did. It had been raised around spam and any of these sorts of emails going into the spam file or as you say into a non-working email address. We have Millennials in the House with seven email addresses.It still is a defence to say I did not receive it." If we get to the nth degree there is forensics that could be requested by the recipient to say "It went into my spam box. I did not open it." Or you know "It's five days I've been in hospital and I've been unable to clear my emails."—all these are real. But with regard to the business community the onus is definitely on the business community to provide a working email address. If we think that they must provide an official physical address—so anything to do with the Companies Office—it is not unreasonable with regard to business and particularly larger businesses as opposed to our small and medium sized businesses that they must ensure that they have a working email address for our governmental departments.I hope that that answers the member's questions I hope it's answered some of the other questions raised in the committee and I look forward to more questions from the interested members of Parliament."