Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. I'm very pleased to be standing here tonight to speak to the Local Electoral Matters Bill as part of its first reading. I have a history in local government having spent 15 years on the Westland District Council down in the great part of this country in the South Island but I'm sure we're all in agreement here in this House that our democracy is really only as effective as those who chose to participate make it. So it's beholden on us to ensure that the system that it operates in is accessible and that people do participate in our democracy.The figures from the Department of Internal Affairs show that voter turnout does continue to be higher for district councils than for city or regional councils but all councils have seen a decline since 1989 which was when the local government reforms happened. One encouraging statistic in this year when we celebrate 125 years of women's suffrage here in New Zealand is that the proportion of women who participate in the election process in local authorities is rising and has been rising since 1989. So in 2016 in the last local government elections the results show that it was the highest percentage of women candidates which was 35 percent and women elected which was 38 percent in the last 28 years and I think that's something to be quite proud of—that we are still managing to encourage women to participate in local democracy.But what was also clear when I was researching some of the statistics was that rural councils tend to be much more engaged in the local democratic process than their metropolitan counterparts or their provincial counterparts. When I thought about it I thought it's probably more to do with those high-impact local issues that encourage people to get out and take part in their local democracy. I also found that in the years where there was a mayoral election rather than when a mayor had been elected unopposed it tended to bring out more participation in that local democratic process. So there were other factors that influenced whether people participated in their local body elections.But whether or not people do engage we should still be looking to the future and making it more accessible and evolving the process as people in communities and technology evolve with us. But it does seem a bit ironic that the postal voting which was brought in seems to be the most passive way of casting your vote in local authorities. The information is delivered to you you get to scrutinise the candidates in the candidate profiles that come out and you cast your vote on your ballot paper and put it in an envelope all at your leisure. So you have quite a time period in which to do that and to make your assessment and to do any research that you want. So it's not an onerous process as we already have it but I think as I said we still need to evolve with our electoral system as technology evolves.There are some other stats that I thought I would show off about in the House tonight. In the great electorate of West Coast - Tasman since—Hon Members: Fine electorate.MAUREEN PUGH: It would be inappropriate of me not to sing the praises of such a wonderful place. In the great West Coast - Tasman electorate since the 2010 elections we've gone from 62 percent voter turnout down to 50.9 percent—Greg O'Connor: In the mighty Buller?MAUREEN PUGH: —in the Buller—and in Grey it has gone from 47.8 percent to 49.1 percent. That flies in the face of what I've just said about a mayoral election because that mayor has been elected unopposed five times but it still manages to get close to 50 percent voter turnout. And in Westland it's gone from 62.4 percent to 59 percent and they're great stats compared to some of our metropolitan and provincial councils.But if there is a champion of local government elections turnout that prize clearly goes to a small council in the electorate of my good friend and colleague the Hon Chris Finlayson who is the list MP in Rongotai and he looks after the Chathams. So the Chathams win the prize for the best local government turnout where in 2016—Tamati Coffey: No Paul does. He's the MP.MAUREEN PUGH: —I said the list MP"—71.9 percent of voters in the Chathams sent in their votes.Now I take the point that my former mayoral colleague Ron Mark made earlier in the night about the complication of electoral voting that you get in some of those bigger councils like Auckland—and I have been blessed with never having to have to deal with it. But I can imagine the size of the book that comes the number of people that you have to review and assess. In the Chathams it's not such an onerous process. So I imagine that because it's so simple and because there is less choice because they know everybody over there intimately they vote. So 71.9 percent is a fantastic turnout in any democracy.But we do need to keep evolving and this bill does provide some ideas about how we bring about those changes. I've just attended the science forum in the Grand Hall tonight and they were talking about some of the processes around transport and the transport infrastructure and planning. You know we can plan so far but we simply don't know what we don't know about where technology is going to take us. But this small step in the electoral process is going to be fairly painless. It is only a trial that will break down to a small component of a ward inside a local body area so that we can test an online system. This bill is an omnibus bill and it will amend the Local Electoral Act of 2001 so that the trial of online voting can go ahead. That is actually allowed under the existing Act but it can't be broken down to the size of a ward—rather it's allowed across a whole district. The omnibus bill also amends the Electoral Act of 1993 where it will enable the date of birth information to be used when designing future voting systems and the analysis of the participation by age group to be used.The other clear stat that I'd like to share is around the level of engagement by people aged 18 to 35 years old. They are woefully under-represented and we do need to find ways of encouraging them to vote. It is a little ironic that two weeks ago today I believe we were all celebrating with reverence Anzac Day and the sacrifice that our returned servicemen and women made to this country in defence of democracy. The participation by our young people over the years in Anzac Day services has been increasingly amazing to me and the reverence with which they treat that day but the very thing that our soldiers went off to defend for us—to enable us to have our democracy—is a little bit lost on them I believe.Some of us on this side of the House are a little cautious about the use of the internet for voting and I certainly do with my colleagues share that caution but I look forward to the debate going further into select committee about how we will preserve the privacy of the information that is used and the security of that information that is used. I know that the Justice and Electoral Committee after the 2014 general election did discuss online voting and it was disregarded at that time but it's clearly here for us to debate tonight and I have pleasure in commending the bill to the House. Thank you sir."