Sepuloni CarmelHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I've been waiting all night for this call. So Part 4 Enabling electronic licenses and electronic voting"—I'm particularly interested in the electronic voting side of this particularly given I wasn't part of the select committee so I'm wanting a little bit of detail around that. Clause 82 of the bill would amend section 26Z of the Conservation Act 1987 to enable elections to be conducted by electronic vote as well as by postal voting. I think my questions really are with respect to whether or not a precedent has been set for legislating for electronic voting in the past or whether or not this is in fact the first. I think it would be really clear to the House why that would be of interest to me given that there has been lots of discussion about the fact we are in 2017 in the modern age where when it comes to voting having to undertake a postal vote or in the case of general elections for instance having to show up to a hall and cast a vote on paper does seem to many to be quite an archaic way of having to exercise I guess your democratic right—The CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! I hate to interrupt the Minister but I do want to remind the Minister that the voting is about the Fish & Game councils. Please ensure that your speech is about that clause in particular rather than wide ranging.Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Thanks Madam Chair. It is about the Fish & Game councils but I really want to know the detail behind what they are anticipating with the electronic voting—with respect to members of the Fish & Game councils whether or not the process has been set up in advance of this or whether the legislation is pre-empting a move to go down the track of electronic voting. That's where I'm going with that.I would like to know this because it isn't just about the Fish & Game councils; it is about other areas where we can anticipate there will be the desire to head towards electronic voting given as I said before that we are in 2017 and so much more is being done online. I'd like to know from the Minister the safety procedures and precautions they have in place because that's always the criticism and those are always the questions that are asked about online or electronic voting—whether or not there are the safety measures in place and what they are. I guess that's the question that I have and that's where I'm heading in terms of the detail around what has already been put in place.If the case is that actually they're just pre-empting that this is where we're moving to then I'd like to know from the Minister what the next steps will be with regard to establishing that system of electronic voting with respect to the Fish & Game councils. I do think there will be other areas watching this space really carefully to see what develops to see whether or not it works for the Fish & Game councils and whether or not there is a major shift away from postal voting to the electronic voting that's being proposed in Subpart 1 in Part 4 of this piece of legislation.So those are some of the questions that I want to put to the Minister. It does seem to be quite innovative and she might know whether or not there are other pieces of legislation where electronic voting has already been introduced. I think that would be of interest to the House in general given that that will be an area that we'll need to head more in the direction of. So perhaps the Fish & Game councils—and with regard to this bill that this is actually just setting the scene for future changes that we can expect to happen. If that is the case then I guess just more of an explanation from the Minister would be of interest to me and I'm sure of general interest to the House. So it would be great if the Minister could answer those questions."