Bishop Chris; Williams PotoCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much. I thought there was going to be a Government member standing up but it appears not. I'm not quite sure why that it is. But I'm looking forward to making this contribution so I'll make it.I want to acknowledge Miss Swarbrick for bringing this bill forward which of course—Chlöe Swarbrick: Thank you Chris.CHRIS BISHOP: She's saying thank you; I don't quite know why—and of course former member Mojo Mathers. It's great to see you here in the Chamber Mojo. I also want to acknowledge the contributions made by members so far particularly the Hon Ruth Dyson who I think is going to sub into the committee. It's not clear whether or not it's going to be the Justice Committee or the Governance and Administration Committee but I'm sure that Miss Dyson will sub in where she'll make a very worthy contribution. It's great to see the passion actually from members particularly Mark Mitchell on our side of the House for these issues.I hope it actually does go to the Justice Committee not only because I'm a member of that committee. I think it would be more appropriate because we're about to kick off the review of the 2017 general election and one of the issues we'll be considering in that review is the accessibility of election-related materials how easy it was to vote and whether or not the dictation services that the Electoral Commission started rolling out in the last few elections have been adequate. That's intimately tied up with what this bill's trying to accomplish so I think it'd be helpful to consider the bill at the same time.Look I think the intent of this bill is extremely worthy and we need to do all we can to support increasing access for people with disabilities to participate and enjoy the electoral process. That's their right guaranteed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that's actually the right thing to do both from a moral point of view but also just from a democratic mandate point of view which of course is why we're all in this place.I do want to sound a note of caution though which is that the traditional view of the National Party—although not necessarily I think of the Labour Party—is that parties should fund themselves; that we don't support State funding of political parties for both principle and pragmatic reasons which I won't go into in this speech. But we hold quite firm to the idea that parties should fund-raise from their members and their supporters to run things like policy discussion meetings and to run things like branch AGMs and meetings where you talk about what you're going to do in the next election and how you're going to campaign and things like that.All that should be funded from party supporters and I sound a cautionary note about some of the things that this bill starts to talk about which is that the contestable fund administered by the commission funded by taxpayers will be allowed to be accessed by people to allow them to participate within the party. So we are heading towards essentially State funding of political parties but State funding for a particular group within political parties. It may be that that's justified and I think there are very strong arguments as to why that would be the case for people with disabilities but you could equally mount strong arguments for people from different backgrounds who also find it difficult to access the democratic process. Members on this side of the House in particular have talked in their contributions about some of the groups that you could mount arguments for and I think we're going to have to tease that out at select committee. That's one of the reasons why the National Party is supporting this bill to committee—to tease that out.I think things like funding to cover the cost of standing in a general election with disability-related costs—I think that's probably far more justifiable when it comes to spending taxpayers' money. Likewise funding for not-for-profit groups which is one of the other purposes of the contestable fund—funding for not-for-profit groups to run education-related events. That's actually quite in line with what the commission does already.I was one who was opposed to the Electoral Commission funding the Vote Compass tools. I personally think that went too far and I think that was funded in the 2014 election. But getting out the vote is of paramount importance obviously in a democracy because the greater the percentage of the population that registers and then turns up to the polling booth the more legitimate this place is—the more legitimate all of our mandates are to be here representing the people in this Parliament. So funding for groups to run events and to run seminars and things—we support that—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. Sorry your time has expired.