Katene Rahui: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Katene Rahui: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
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RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Tena koe. I am very pleased to speak on the Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) which has the aim of amending the Electoral Act 1993 to implement further electoral reform with amendments arising from the Government’s response to the report from the Justice and Electoral Committee on its inquiry into the 2008 general election and amendments relating to online enrolment. 
I think it is very important that we have this legislation and that we have a very robust and transparent electoral system. Last year I was one of the members of the delegation from New Zealand that went to the Solomon Islands as official observers of the Solomon Islands elections. While we were there one of the things we observed was the fact that the enrolments there were not very clear; they were not very transparent. In fact it was very obvious that many people were enrolled several times over and many people who were no longer living were enrolled several times over. There were real problems with the electoral system there and it meant that when it came to voting time people there were not in a position to actually use their democratic right to vote very fairly. We observed instances in which people were actually living in one area and were voting in another because they preferred to vote in their home villages rather than in the area in which they were working. So they were filling up the boats going home to their home villages. There were horrific photos actually of people in these rust buckets sitting crammed on to the boats to go home. There were instances of candidates picking up and actually paying for people to go home to vote for them. It was altogether a real problem for the people of the Solomon Islands and particularly for the Government of the Solomon Islands to be able to put in place a system that actually was fair to all people. 
Here in New Zealand we have a system that we can rightly be very proud of. But we still need to keep working on it all the time to make sure it is improved. One of the things we need to work on and make sure is improved is the ability of people to vote. We heard earlier about the fact that people who are leaving Christchurch and moving to other areas may not actually realise that they have the ability and the right to still vote in Christchurch so we need to get that information out to them. There is also the fact that Maori have the lowest proportion of people who engage in the electoral system. We need to get information out to Maori to encourage them not only to enrol but also to vote. I think the ability for the Tuhono Trust to be able to get this information on Maori voters and get it to their iwi will be helpful because I think if people are voting through their iwi structures they will get into the habit. They will realise that they can have a say in the system and that one voice is very powerful because once people start to put all of those voices together they can actually vote in the people who will make a change and will make a difference in their lives. I am very pleased on behalf of the Maori Party to support this bill and I commend it to the House.