Little AndrewPart 1 Amendments to principal ActHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I just wanted to speak briefly to the important contents of Part 1. It contains a number of substantive measures as well as some technical and somewhat consequential changes to support those substantial changes.The critical area to start with is clause 5 and the amendment there to section 83 which allows the Electoral Commission to treat a special vote declaration as an application for registration as an elector. This will make it easier for voters who are not enrolled and have to do a special vote to fill out one form not two and so that will expedite that process. And of course because the bill also provides for election-day enrolment and voting it will make it easier—particularly on election day which for the 90000 people who turned up to a voting booth on election day in 2017 would make a huge difference.Clause 6—in particular the insertion of new subsection (3A) after current section 88(3) which allows a person who is present in New Zealand to both apply to be an elector and also to conduct a vote and to receive a ballot paper; that is the critical thing that this part of the bill is seeking to do. So it achieves the objective of election-day enrolment. I know some members in the Opposition were concerned that when they saw the advice of the Electoral Commission—the Electoral Commission had expressed a preference to make this change for the election in 2023 but actually when they were asked about it by me as Minister they said it could be implemented for election 2020. And that is what we're seeking to do. They are well apprised of that. The bill is here and I have total confidence their systems will be able to accommodate just this. There are a number of other changes that follow in the subsequent clauses. They are largely technical and deal with administrative requirements the Electoral Commission must do in an election.The next I think quite critical and substantive section or change is in clause 14 inserting new section 155A which is about the use of licensed premises as polling places. So we've now moved on from election-day enrolment in voting to the other thing which gives the Electoral Commission more flexibility about where they locate polling booths particularly on election day. The commission in more recent elections has allowed for advanced voting booths to be in places where like supermarkets and malls liquor is sold. But that hasn't been allowed for election day itself. This will allow the Electoral Commission to continue those polling booths in those places on election day subject to other provisions in this bill that allow the votes cast in those places to be counted somewhere else—and those are the next provisions. Clause 16 amending section 174(1) allows the commission or returning officer to designate another place to be a place where votes are counted. I'm very pleased to see the changes that the Justice Committee made. I think that tidies that up with the consequential technical amendments that are there.The next critical bunch of issues clause 17 cover off the situation where there is an unforeseen or unavoidable disruption that requires polling either in a particular polling booth or perhaps even more broadly than that to have to be disrupted and perhaps moved. There's a process set out for that that includes consulting before a decision is made the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition as well as those experts with some knowledge about the particular event and then at the time a decision is made to then notify the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition that a decision has been made to change arrangements for a particular polling booth or a number of booths to deal with that disruption. The remaining provisions there are consequential and technical amendments that allow that to happen.That's a brief summary of I think the critical aspects of this bill. I think it goes a long way to adding further improvements to this great democracy that we call New Zealand and will give more opportunity for more people to vote and to do so in a way that is convenient to their workaday lives the sort of life patterns that people live these days which makes for I think very good changes to our electoral system.