Ngaro Alfred: Electoral Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNgaro Alfred: Electoral Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 18 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16747. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ALFRED NGARO (National):Kia orana Mr Assistant Speaker. It is interesting that the Hon Phil Goff talks about democracy and the right of democracy and yet he will not talk about the Electoral Finance Act. That was not a right of democracy. That was not democracy in action. That is why he bows his head in shame; it is because he knows that when he talks about pointing fingers over here he has got four fingers pointing back at him.Scott Simpson: That’s right.ALFRED NGARO: That is right. But anyway he knows that he lives with that shame. The reality is we have an electoral process that has democracy. It is called a select committee. The Electoral Amendment Bill has gone through the Justice and Electoral Committee. As one of the longest-serving members of the Justice and Electoral Committee I can say that at one stage there was very robust debate. This is where it got to. It got to the point where even the Hon Lianne Dalziel drew a line in the sand. It was around the issues of closing the electoral roll 2 weeks out—2 weeks out—from the election. I can tell you this: there was wailing and the gnashing of teeth there was sackcloth and there were ashes. There was a lot of robust debate. We got to the point where we said: “Look let’s keep the status quo.”There was another point about the rosettes and the ribbons and the balloons. Again that was another difficult issue; robust debate was had there. People were drawing the line around those issues as well. We got to the point where we became unanimous to the point where we agreed with all things. I also want to acknowledge the honourable member over there Denis O’Rourke. The confirmation of identity the insertion of new clause 24 amending section 167 came from Denis. What a great and a brilliant idea. At one time in the select committee he introduced this and said: “Look we should do this”. Denis does not talk about this but Denis this is your proud work over here.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!ALFRED NGARO: I want to acknowledge that Mr O’Rourke. Thank you. But this is the thing I want to finally say on this: this has been a robust debate and process over a long period of time. We got to the point where we unanimously agreed with all the provisions that were included in this bill even around the confirmation of identity. Can I say this: with all due respect we know the importance of constituents of New Zealand voters making a vote. There is no issue where there is a barrier here from either the use of EasyVote cards or even the confirmation of identity introduced by Mr Denis O’Rourke where you will simply go up to the polling booth and be asked this: “Is this your name? Are you Denis O’Rourke?”. All he needs to say is “Yes” or nod his head. That is all there is. There is nothing there that is included to be a barrier in this regard for the voting of democracy for all New Zealanders.Can I finally say that this is a bill that has got to the point where we on the committee believed that it was unanimous right across the board—even New Zealand First even the Greens and even the Labour Party. There is only one conclusion that one can come to that is that they fell asleep at the wheel. People out there need to know this. Confirmation needs—for deliberation on each of these bills—to go back to each and every caucus. So the Labour caucus the New Zealand First caucus and even the Greens caucus would have had to have given confirmation and would have said to the members of the select committee: “We’ve seen the bill. You’ve reported back to us. We are good to go. We give it the green light thumbs up; go to the select committee and vote unanimously.”So where did democracy go wrong? Why are the speeches from all of these parties disagreeing with where we are now? This is a bill that has reached democracy. Unfortunately it is now in the realm of politics with the Opposition. I commend this bill to the House.