Barry Maggie; Rurawhe AdrianHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to speak with pleasure at the third reading of the Local Electoral Matters Bill or as it has been rechristened the Super Minor Bill"—oh what might have been. It is an omnibus bill and it covers a bit of ground and makes a few tweaks here and there in some of the electoral Acts. We support the bill of course but we remain very sceptical about the points that particularly Chlöe Swarbrick the speaker who has just resumed her seat made about the ability to encourage young people or just generally anybody to vote really. I mean the numbers of people voting in local government elections is truly tanking and we do need to do something about that because grassroots democracy is important. If you have an 80 percent turnout for local body elections and then I think Dr Smith said about 15 years later it was down to less than half of that—you know we have to do something to interest them. Rarely—very rarely—I find myself in agreement with the Hon Ron Mark but I would have to say that the bewildering array of names of unknown people to vote for in the Auckland area has been daunting and people have said to me "Who are these people? Why should we care?" You've got electricity boards and a plethora of unknowns who seem to be pulling quite good—Chris Bishop: They may be saying "Who is Ron Mark?"Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Ah no—only in Carterton they would not have to ask that question. In Auckland they might have to ask the question but maybe people are daunted by that. You have to do a certain amount though—a little bit of effort at least I think—in the interests of democracy. I do find myself astonished that—what are we—one year and one week out from the census that wasn't we are looking at an online experiment that failed woefully. I think that for electoral boundary issues and for giving us peace of mind really around electoral reform we need to understand that the system online is not the silver bullet that people think it will be and if it fails it's the putting right that counts—to get Alan Martin into the picture here. L V Martin and Son your Fisher & Paykel dealer—Lawrence Yule: L V Martin and Son—beautiful. I remember it. Hon MAGGIE BARRY: We're of an age Lawrence Yule where we know that sort of thing. Chris Bishop: I remember—that's right. Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Even Chris Bishop probably through some new nostalgia movement has heard about it. Chris Bishop: Ron remembers him. Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Yeah yeah—I think there's a few of us in this House who will remember that one. But I mean if something does go wrong you need to really be able to address it pretty swiftly and I think that failing to count one in 10 New Zealanders—Statistics New Zealand to this day remains a bit tight-lipped about why these results have been so long delayed so it doesn't exactly inspire confidence does it? That was touted as being the big proof and something that would be easily achievable and it was not. So at a local government level I wonder what the fallout would be if you had local body elections online and something went wrong. How much of a setback would that be to the online—Chris Bishop: Imagine if Ron Mark got elected. Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Well if there are old ballot papers in the Carterton area for example and Ron Mark's name was there or if people thought it was—if there was a man in a big tall hat standing in the area—perhaps he might find himself with greatness thrust upon him and the mayoralty of Carterton would await him again. Chris Bishop: Back again. Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Back again—the third time lucky. But putting aside the levity of this I think that fundamental public confidence is what we need in our electoral system and inertia the name recognition factor—all of these things don't work terrifically well when you're trying to encourage people to see the relevance and the point of costing your vote for one person over another. Of course it's very easy once you get to Government elections because we're all so colourful and interesting and we're personalities who are well-known etc. So the voter turnout does tend to be a bit higher but we can't take anything for granted and I think that one of these days online voting will be something that we can have trust and confidence in but I'm not sure that I have trust and confidence in what this minor "Super Minor Bill" is doing to encourage people and to reform local electoral matters. But having said that I commend the bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—five minutes."