Naylor JonoJONO NAYLOR (National): It is with a certain sense of déjà vu that I find myself standing to speak to this member's bill. Not so long ago we passed the Electoral Amendment Act and brought into force a number of recommendations that came forward after the Justice and Electoral Committee had gone through quite a long process of picking apart the 2014 election. We heard from many different submitters and we heard a whole bunch of things that people thought perhaps could be brought into play for the 2017 election and beyond so we brought forward a bill that contained a number of amendments to the Electoral Act. Some of those amendments were significant improvements; for example around clarity around advertising at advance polling booths—we set a parameter inside of which it would be inappropriate to campaign. We brought forward some amendments regarding standardising exactly when signage would be able to be put up at election time.There was a particular look at the electoral roll actually and we had quite a long discussion about access to the electoral roll. One of those discussions was around who it was who would have access to the electronic version of the electoral roll. We had ideas put forward that perhaps the intelligence agencies might have access to that. We kind of batted that around looked and decided that the electoral roll was actually something that was quite important and quite significant to New Zealand so we said that there should not be any changes as to who should have access to the electronic version of the electoral roll. In doing so what I think was really interesting about that conversation about the electoral roll was the importance that it has not simply just for general electoral purposes. In fact the electoral roll is actually important to a number of other organisations who use the statistical data from it. The information is valuable to political parties during an election time in terms of scrutineering in terms of identifying where voters may or may not be and also for local government purposes which of course happen outside of the normal general election cycle.It was with a certain level of trepidation that the committee and then the House decided that they would not necessarily want to tinker too much with that. A proposal was brought forward that perhaps some should be allowed to register to vote by way of a special vote on election day and that was rejected by the committee. I recall that it was actually brought forward by a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee stage and was again rejected at that point. So here we are finding ourselves a few short months—or maybe it is even weeks—later debating this again.When I saw that this had come up I thought: Aha! There must be some new information that has come to light that we did not have before us when we first heard this." I listened intently to the speech from the sponsoring member Meka Whaitiri for that new piece of information—that new "Aha!" moment that said something has changed that warrants this House going back around the mulberry bush again spending its valuable time to revisit an issue that was a decision made a very short time ago. I did not hear it. I did not hear any argument that had not already been put forth at either the select committee stage or the Committee of the whole House or at the first second or third reading of the electoral amendment legislation. But here we are. We are around the mulberry bush again. If we are just going to rehash the same old arguments I guess we will just have to do that again now.Why is it that we have an electoral roll? I think it is a really important question that we ask because this piece of legislation that has been proposed ultimately undermines the value of the electoral roll in New Zealand. If we say to people that they can just rock up on the day and cast their votes there is no need for them to actually go to the effort of enrolling in the first place. In the first election we might not see much of a change. We might actually see as the member has suggested an increase in voter participation because those people who have not enrolled will have their votes counted. But I will put dollars to doughnuts that over time the number of people who actually choose to enrol will diminish because word will get around that actually you do not need to bother to enrol; you just rock up on the day and you cast your vote.I will tell you what I believe happens when people enrol. I know some people do not get around to it but quite frankly I think one thing that the Electoral Commission does well—there are a number of things that it does very well but in particular what it does very very well is promote to New Zealanders across all sorts of media: "An election is coming are you enrolled?". It sends out information it asks whether you are enrolled you get those packs in the mail if you are on mail you see it on the TV you hear it on the radio. You would have to be living under a rock basically to not know that there is an election going on when there is the little cartoon guy with the orange background running around saying: "Are you enrolled?".So people will slowly as time goes by enrol less and less often. I believe that enrolment is a very very important part of the process. If people are so disengaged from the process that they do not get around to enrolling what confidence can we have that they are actually engaging listening to the comments that are around and informing themselves in order to make an informed decision? It is absolutely somebody's right to vote. I absolutely agree with the point that it is somebody's right to vote but in New Zealand we have a system that says you enrol to vote. I cannot understand if the member is so committed to this idea why she does not just scrap the enrolment altogether. But no—she still believes that enrolment is important but she is just prepared to undermine the enrolment process.There are some other points that make it very important that we actually get as many people enrolled beforehand as we can. It makes vote counting a lot simpler. On election night what we want to have for certainty for the country is the most accurate—the most accurate—outcome that we can have on election night. Now we always understand that there are special votes being counted and things rearrange a little bit. The Greens traditionally get a little bit of a smile on their faces after the special votes have been counted and actually we in National sort of get a little bit sad because the last time around—I think the last two elections—we lost somebody after the election night and the Greens have gone: "Yes. We've got an extra one." But that variation is generally pretty small. And so in an MMP environment when parties are trying to get into post-election negotiations over how to form a Government the last thing we want is to increase the amount of special votes that are being cast and therefore create more uncertainty for a longer period of time after election night.It is clear to me that actually despite the fact that on the first time up there might be increased participation—I believe that over time this kind of thing will actually undermine the election process. If we need to work harder to get people enrolled earlier then let us work harder to do that. If we need to work harder to get people engaged in the democratic process then let us do that. But let us not just take a short-cut route. Let us not just take the easy way out that actually says: "Oh let's just make it really easy for them so that we don't have to worry about it."Now when we had this debate during the electoral amendment legislation a member from the other side accused us of simply voting for this because as he perceived we were doing it because it would benefit our side of the House. The funny thing about that accusation is that at that point that member I believe was admitting to himself and to this House that the only reason he was voting for it was that he believed it actually served his purposes better. You cannot make accusations without it coming around to face the other way as well.There is no need for us to go around the mulberry bush again. We have done it once recently. I will not support this bill."