Dean JacquiHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. National supports this bill. It is very consistent with the work that the previous Government was undertaking with regard to making changes to the Local Electoral Act to provide for online voting. We support this bill but we support with caution the move to online voting.A lot of work has been undertaken around the best way to engage New Zealanders in local elections—in elections and local elections. When I chaired the Justice and Electoral Committee a few years ago we conducted a review into the general election. There were a number of submissions coming to us around the desirability of moving to online voting and many reasons were given for that. One of those reasons was that it was the logical next step to allow for an engagement of New Zealanders. The second point was more focused on the engagement of those electors. I think that goes to the heart of the intent of changes to legislation to allow an online voting platform and that is engagement of local electors. It is well-known to all of us that local elections are consistently declining in levels of engagement.Now the question about whether or not online voting is going to fix that or not is I think still open to discussion and I think probably not as a part of this piece of work but no doubt submitters will raise it in select committee—the plethora of decisions that are presented to the voter. If I use our Order Paper perhaps just as a piece of paper when I was confronted with my local authority voting papers in the last election I was asked to make a decision around councillors I was asked to make a decision around the licensing trust and I was then asked to make a decision around the district health board. I didn't know a lot of the names even though I'm very familiar with my community and quite frankly I would see this great number of decisions to be made all at once to be somewhat of a disincentive as is the postal voting system to voters. So that's one thing that I believe Parliament and maybe the select committee should be considering. Also it is the method. OK we've got online voting on the table. We currently have a postal ballot. There are other methods of engaging voters that perhaps should be relooked at. Maybe we should go back to a ballot day. All of these issues were raised and are raised consistently in a number of contexts and I predict that they will be raised in the context of this local electoral bill that we are debating at the moment.So if I turn more specifically to the bill the first part of the bill relates to better enabling a trial of internet voting because it is recognised that in some countries—Norway for example had a trial of internet voting online voting and have subsequently reverted back to a paper-based system over issues of integrity of the system. And if there's one thing this Parliament—and I'm sure we can all agree—really wants to get right it is to enhance and preserve the integrity of the voting system. So we need to be very mindful of international experiences such as those as happened in Norway. It's worth noting that the existing legislation already allows for a trial of online voting but what this bill does is to allow that trial to take place for example in a ward—maybe in Auckland maybe in New Plymouth—rather than across the whole district. That minimises clearly the risk if that trial is not successful. And I also think it's important that a trial can be undertaken over a ward because the last thing we need to do with our electoral system is to undermine public confidence in that system because if a trial were to take place over a whole district—say New Plymouth District Council—and was found not to be as robust as was required then the greater the area that was under trial I think the greater the undermining of that particular form of voting but also the electoral system could be. And I don't think any of us want to risk that.So we will support this bill to select committee. It does follow on from work under the previous Government. It is very consistent with our desire to see a more modernised system of voting which is more accessible to voters and is more welcoming to voters of all ages and circumstances. But we do need to be satisfied—we do want to be satisfied—that any shift to online voting is one that doesn't compromise the integrity of people's votes. Those people who engage in the democratic process do care about their communities. We want them to be able to vote with certainty.The second part of the bill is a minor change only and that enables age-related data to be able to be provided to local authorities in a format that they can use—in age bands. This will enable local authorities to have better information about their voting public and so National also supports this part of the bill.So we all look forward to submissions on this. We all look forward to being able to take a step forward in our electoral law and potentially improving engagement in local authority elections. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.