Ngaro Alfred: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16489. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ALFRED NGARO (National):I rise to take a call on the Electoral Amendment Bill—Part 2 “Consequential amendments to other enactments”. Can I make just some brief comments about the comments that were made by the Hon Maryan Street. I have the honour and privilege to have been part of the Justice and Electoral Committee since 2012. The committee had the Hon Lianne Dalziel also Charles Chauvel from the Opposition present as well. I can say that I am one member on the committee who has been there for some time. We went through the process of the inquiry as one would normally do. We heard a number of the submitters who were there. Can I say that over that journey over that process there were a number of issues that were controversial and that were issues of contention amongst the deliberations of the committee. However over that period of time the roles and positions of Government members have changed. Previously the chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee was Tim Macindoe and now it is the honourable member over here—Scott Simpson of Coromandel. There have been changes on the Opposition side as well. So Opposition members may not be aware of that journey and the sorts of contentious issues that were there. There were issues around for instance the balloons and logos and tags and so forth.However we got to a point where I have to say that it was this year as we deliberated at the select committee there was unanimous—can I repeat that unanimous—support for the bill as it currently stands. So one must question the reasons why we now have opposition why we now have Supplementary Order Papers that have been introduced. There were none in Part 2—yes in Part 1. One can only query that maybe there was an ability to say yes we agreed in the select committee but when Opposition members went back to their caucuses there was concern. But then as you know even with Part 2 Part 2 went back along with Part 1 and that was deliberated on in caucus. It was brought back again to the select committee and again I must confirm that at the committee it was a unanimous decision to support all parts of the bill even Part 2 where it is technical—“Consequential amendments to other enactments”. All parts of the bill were supported.The New Zealand electoral system has a very high level of integrity. Part 1 has minor changes to the legal framework. Then in Part 2 there are minor changes and amendments to the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act amendments to the Referenda (Postal Voting) Act amendments to the Electoral (Administration) Amendment Act 2011 and amendments to Electoral Regulations as well. All of these were debated rigorously over 2 years to the point where again even in respect of Part 2 with no Supplementary Order Papers there was unanimous support. I do not want to prolong this debate because the debate has been lengthy in the select committee. On all of the issues even the ones of contention that will be raised again here can I just say—and I may sound like a broken record—that all parts of the Electoral Amendment Bill were supported by all of the committee members. The Labour New Zealand First and Green Party members all saw this as a good bill an important bill and an amendment bill that will ensure that we have a democratic election come 20 September this year. I support Part 2 amendments to the Committee.