Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): That was an absolutely pathetic argument for not allowing voters to enrol on the day. I have a message for Jono Naylor: a lot of people show up at the polling booth on the day and find that they are not on the roll and they are not aware that they are not on the roll. It is not that they are too apathetic or lazy to actually go along and vote or that they just decide on a whim that they are going to show up to the polling booth; many of them arrive at the polling booth fully expecting that they are going to be able to exercise their democratic right but find that their name has dropped off the roll. Who are these people? Well they are more likely to be the people who are transient so are therefore less likely to be the people who are voting for the National Party—which of course suits it to have those votes discounted—but actually many of them were not aware that they were not on the roll.Under the old system—the new system is much better—everybody had to re-enrol every election. A few elections back we changed that so that people stayed on the electoral roll. But of course what happens is that if somebody moves house during that period of time and they do not update their enrolment details at the time they move house—some people might move house several times between elections—then they might not even be aware that they have been dropped off the roll because their confirmation is sent back to the Electoral Commission. To say that they are too apathetic to update their enrolment details is absolutely pathetic. It means that they are not having their right to vote respected because the Electoral Commission has decided to remove them from the roll and they may not have even been aware of that.There is no good reason not to allow people to enrol and vote on the day. They are allowed to enrol and vote as an early vote so therefore how is it in any way different for someone to go to an early vote polling booth and say I might not be on the roll. Can I fill in an enrolment form and cast my vote now?" versus someone who shows up on election day and says exactly the same thing? There is absolutely no justification for that other than the fact that National would prefer to disenfranchise a group of voters who it knows are less likely to vote for it than to vote for some of the other political parties on the ballot paper. I think that is completely wrong.I liked the idea put forward by the Electoral Commission bearing in mind that the Electoral Commission is the independent body that we have to oversee elections. It put forward a suggestion that somebody who is completing a special vote declaration on the day should be treated as having enrolled on the day and that their vote should be counted in that regard. I think that is a very sensible solution that means that everybody's vote will be counted. So I am very disappointed that the National Government did not take up that opportunity.I think there are some other areas around modernising electoral law that were missed. One of the ones that I have always been a little surprised by certainly at the last election is this issue of selfies in the polling booth. I have no problem with someone taking a selfie of themselves voting or even indicating the way they are voting when they are doing an advance ballot. Actually I do not have a problem with them doing it on the day either. If someone is allowed to put up on Facebook when they cast an early vote that they just voted for whichever party they voted for why should they not be allowed to do that on election day as well?If we want to encourage participation and turnout there is no good reason if we are living in the 21st century to say to someone: "You can't do a selfie in the polling booth." There have to be a few constraints around that. Of course I think they should be allowed to share their vote. They should not be allowed to infringe on the rights of somebody else who is voting so they should not be taking photos of somebody else in the polling booth or the way somebody else is voting. But if they want to share the fact that they have been down to vote and they voted for a particular political party this is the 21st century and they should be allowed to do so. I know that not everybody including some of the people who are on my own side will agree with that but I think it is time we got into the 21st century.I want to talk about the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill which is part of this package that we are debating at the moment. Again it comes down to the fact that Parliament needs to drag itself into the 21st century and we need to make sure that our electoral system gets into the 21st century as well. When the rule around opening and closing broadcasts for election campaigns was introduced there were two TV channels in New Zealand—only the two. If you were sitting at home watching TV and the opening and closing broadcasts were broadcast on both of those channels as they were back in those days you had no choice other than to watch them or turn off the TV. The reality now is that that is simply not the medium any more. People can be watching live streamed content on Netflix they can be using MY SKY or any other type of device they could be watching all sorts of other things or they could be accessing content via social media.The idea that we have these opening and closing broadcasts which are expensive to produce because they are quite long-form and very few people watch them and the idea that we should lock that into law and lock political parties into spending some of their broadcast allocation to do that simply does not make sense. It is not good for the broadcasters either. Let us be really frank about this. TVNZ had 25 percent fewer viewers in the timeslot that it set aside for the opening and closing broadcasts at the last election campaign than it would normally have had during that timeslot. From memory Coronation Street was supplanted by the opening and closing broadcasts. So if even Coronation Street can get more viewers—Sue Moroney: Rugby test.CHRIS HIPKINS: —than the opening and closing broadcasts that might say something about that. It was on at the same time as the rugby test. That might have been one of the reasons people were otherwise engaged.The law also allows political parties to spend some of their broadcast allocation on internet advertising. Actually it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern between the two in the sense that a lot of the way we access content now is through an online medium. If you take something like TVNZ Ondemand or TV3's equivalent to that and someone missed their TV show at the regular appointed timeslot and decided to watch it on the on demand channel under the old law political parties would not have been able to insert their adverts into the on demand version that people were watching through live streaming. What is the difference? It is the same TV programme; it is just being watched at a different time using a different way of conveying it to the television set that somebody is watching it on or the laptop or whatever technology they are watching it on. So there is no good reason to say that political parties should not be able to use that form of advertising.We also need to consider the fact that there are other forms of content that people are accessing online. If we want informed citizens going to the polling booth then being able to advertise in the other forms of online content is also important. It is important too because it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish between them. If you are looking at the Stuff news website for example and you are watching a video clip on the Stuff news website would that be deemed to be a TV programme or would it be some other form of content? I think through this bill we have actually removed the need to try to draw that distinction by simply saying that online advertising is an acceptable use for the broadcasting allocation that is being given to political parties.I do not agree with the suggestion put forward by some in this debate that there should be no limits on broadcast advertising. I think one of the things that is good about New Zealand having visited other countries particularly having visited the United States during a presidential election campaign is that it is fantastic that we do not have the plethora of attack advertisements that they have in those other places. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Wisconsin which was one of the battleground states in the last presidential election and literally every second advertisement was an advertisement attacking someone. It was not promoting in any way shape or form the candidate that they were trying to promote; they were just attack ads. That is the sort of territory I think we would get into if we removed all the restrictions and all the caps on broadcast advertising in New Zealand. I think it is fantastic that we do not have that level of smear campaigning in New Zealand that they have in the United States in particular. It is good to see that the current restrictions are being protected.Overall I think there are some good changes. I think this bill takes a few small steps towards bringing electoral law into the 21st century but I think there is significant progress that still needs to be made if we want to engage everybody in the electoral process and if we want to ensure that everybody's democratic right to vote and to have their vote counted is respected. If we want to engage younger voters in the process—bear in mind that younger voters are the least likely to vote—I absolutely do not accept the argument put forward by many that it is because they are too apathetic or self-interested. In fact I think the young voters whom I have spoken to are some of the least self-interested people when it comes to voting. I would like to ensure that they have their votes counted and that they are encouraged to participate in the process. It is disappointing that this bill as it is currently put before the House misses the opportunity to do a lot more in that regard."