Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity of speaking on the Election Access Fund Bill. It was a real learning experience for me to understand what this bill set out to achieve and also to hear from submitters during those views that we heard at the Governance and Administration Committee. Can I firstly acknowledge Chlöe Swarbrick for bringing such a great bill to this House—another great member's bill from her—and also acknowledge Mojo Mathers who initiated this bill during the last Parliament I understand. Briefly I'd just like to outline what the bill does and then I would like to cover some of the key changes that have been recommended by the committee.The purpose of the bill is basically to facilitate the participation of people with a disability in general elections. That was an interesting task set out to start with. We have varying and different disabilities within the community and identifying a way for people to have access to campaign to be selected and to stand in a general election has proven in the past to have a number of obstacles for those in the community—so having a thorough examination of where those obstacles lie and how we can be far more understanding of where they exist to facilitate a greater level of participation in our democracy.The fund can be used by any disabled candidate to cover disability-related costs of standing in a general election. For example the classic example would be an interpreter in terms of sign language. There were lots of examples given during the submissions of how that was a high cost for many candidates to meet particularly in events such as a public debate in a town hall when you're campaigning and to try and have to pay for that as well as campaigning can be a real obstacle for candidates. Also any not-for-profit body running an election education event or producing an election publication to make sure that they are making sure everything is accessible can also apply to the fund—and any registered political party who wishes to support the access needs of their members. It will be for the Electoral Commission to determine eligibility for payments from the fund.So in terms of where we want this to be it's important to note that there is a clause in there—clause 9—which enables for a review of how this new fund is tracking. This is new ground. This is new ground for New Zealand in terms of facilitating greater participation in our election process so it's really important that we keep track of it.So in particular what the committee has recommended is to tighten up that review period. Initially we had a longer period and the committee has recommended for the Minister to arrange this review and to give further details within a six-month period after the release of the Electoral Commission's report. In particular we were interested to see who would manage to access the fund whether it was working effectively and also the wider question on whether this should be applying to local government elections as well. So in the first instance for the next general election which this will apply for—not the one next year but the one following—many submitters did suggest that local elections should also be covered by the fund. This was debated pretty thoroughly amongst the Governance and Administration Committee and we felt that it was best that the fund should first focus on a general election to see how well it operated in that space and for the review by the Minister and the Electoral Commission to then consider whether it should be more widely applied to local body elections as well.I think there was a general consensus from Governance and Administration Committee members that we hoped and expected that local elections would be covered eventually because it made good sense for accessibility to be made as wide and as available as possible but this would be better managed after the fund had been tested and reviewed. So I would like to say too that it was really good to have consensus right across all Governance and Administration Committee members. The way that we operated was to set up a subgroup that had members deliberating and going into the detail about some of these issues aside from the select committee. It was really good to see such a high level of engagement and consensus from right across the House on an issue as important as enabling everybody in our society to fully participate in something as important as an election and to be standing as a candidate as well.So the Electoral Commission will also be including a review as well as the Minister and looking at whether or not there's fair access to it and how that's operating. I think it's a really important thing to note that there's a wider body of work to make sure that we have good accessibility right across the board. There's some excellent work under way in terms of the Disability Strategy by looking at key areas such as employment education health and housing to make sure that we are reaching far beyond just this member's bill to make sure that we have an accessible and inclusive society.With employment this Government has prioritised and encouraged employers to adopt equal opportunity for hiring practices and ensure that people are being included as widely as possible. In terms of education making sure that there are strong messages to include all students and teachers having access to New Zealand Sign Language—that's incredibly important. It's so heartening to see my own daughter coming home and being able to use sign language at home to see how much that's being used and rolled out across our schools and in our early education centres as well. In health we want to support the implementation of the provisions of New Zealand's Disability Strategy making sure that works right across the board in all our health services. Finally in terms of housing the houses that we're building we want to make sure that those houses have good accessibility and are able to be used by everyone in our community.I'd like to once again conclude by thanking Chlöe for her work on this. She worked incredibly hard to make sure that everyone was consulted that the details of the policy were spelt out and that we had a clear understanding of how this election fund would be working going forward. I think that it's a great legacy for New Zealand that we've got consensus that people are encouraged to be able to participate in our community no matter what their background lives or abilities are. I would like to commend this bill to the House.