Swarbrick ChlöeELECTION ACCESS FUND BILLFirst ReadingCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): I move That the Election Access Fund Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Tēnā koutou e te whānau Haua. Nā koutou anō tēnei Whare.[Thank you Mr Speaker. I greet the House. I greet the Haua family. This is also your House.]I want to acknowledge the incredible people who are in the gallery today to show their support for this bill including many of our disabled whānau. Welcome to Parliament to Our House—this Whare belongs to all of us. In the final few weeks of 2017's general election campaign before it could be known that I would be elected—let alone that we would have a change of Government—former Green MP Mojo Mathers requested that the Election Access Fund Bill be drafted. Mojo was introduced to politics when she took up a role in Canterbury as spokeswoman for clean water. Later when she was elected to Parliament Mojo became renowned for her work on animal rights. She became well respected across the House as a compassionate and warm politician able to collaborate cross party to get things done. Mojo was also as it happens Parliament's first deaf MP. In conversation time and again she's told me that she never intended to enter this place as a champion for the rights of deaf and disabled people but by virtue of who Mojo is who and what she represented and her life experiences which are starkly unique and notably underrepresented in a place like this it's who she became. My point is that simply by being involved and visible and unapologetic about existing in this space as New Zealand's first deaf MP Mojo profoundly and irrevocably changed our Parliament. Mojo I want to acknowledge your presence in the Chamber today and say thank you.In her time in Parliament Mojo achieved real change. Amongst other things she worked with former Speaker of the House Lockwood Smith to see that the additional costs incurred by her as a deaf MP—for things like a note-taker in select committee and live captioning of question times so that she had fair access to what was actually being said—were covered by Parliament and not out of her individual office budget which would have wiped out her MP fund and left her with no funding for MP duties for costs that other people other MPs simply don't face. That is the principle at the heart of this bill—that the additional hurdles and costs that those with disabilities incur just to participate on an even footing should be shared amongst all of us as a society and not be the sole responsibility of persons with disabilities. That is the definition of equity. Mojo was a representative with lived experience of a society not designed for her—something that Statistics New Zealand reports is experienced by approximately 1.1 million New Zealanders living with disabilities. But the contributions a person can make to our society extend well beyond the limitations or boxes that we as a society foist on them. People living with disabilities—as indeed all people—have their own values their own vision of a better society their own remarkable skills and passions that make them who they are and it is incumbent on us in this Parliament to ensure that everybody gets a fair shot at participating in our elections let alone becoming an MP.This is a pretty succinct piece of legislation but it has the power to be transformative. Fundamentally it establishes the Election Access Fund to facilitate the participation of persons with disabilities in general elections. This fund will be administered by the Electoral Commission a well-respected independent organisation tasked with coordinating our electoral process. The Electoral Commission will create the criteria for which a person with a disability seeking to stand in an election a non-governmental organisation organising an election education event or a political party may access this fund and notify it in the Gazette. The Electoral Commission will be required to consult with and I quote persons and organisations that the commission considers appropriate prior to creating the criteria or putting out notice." Payments made by this fund to candidates or parties will not be treated as an electoral donation per the Electoral Act 1993. This will enable for example New Zealand Sign Language interpreters at candidate debates political information distributed in Braille and coverage of special transport costs incurred by disabilities. The bill also contains a trigger for the review of its own efficacy. Under clause 9 no later than three years after the commencement of this bill the Minister must review or arrange for the review of its operation. In 2008 New Zealand joined dozens of other countries around the world in ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Article 29 of the convention guarantees that signatory countries will and I quote "ensure that persons with disabilities can effectively and fully participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others directly or through freely chosen representatives including the right and opportunity for persons with disabilities to vote and to be elected" and "promote actively an environment in which persons with disabilities can effectively and fully participate in the conduct of public affairs without discrimination and on an equal basis with others".An equitable playing field creates the foundation for a robust and representative democracy. This bill contributes to ensuring that we level that playing field. It targets all levels of democratic engagement from information sharing through to voting and potentially standing as a candidate. Of course not every person with a disability wants to be a politician; indeed not every person wants to be a politician. In New Zealand we do not coerce people to engage in politics but I believe that all of us in this House believe that it should never be hard to engage with politics should we want to. Working in the lead-up to this first reading of this bill I've seen the best side of our democracy. I want to thank the Minister for Disability Issues the Hon Carmel Sepuloni and Ruth Dyson for their ongoing support for the principles laid out in this legislation. I want to thank the Hon Nick Smith and Dr Shane Reti for constructive input and a collaborative spirit. Thank you to the Hon Tracey Martin for your commitment to improving outcomes for disabled peoples. So too I want to thank David Seymour for his support. I want to acknowledge as well the Clerk's Office for their immense and incredible mahi working with my office and throughout Parliamentary Service and systems to ensure that this reading was as accessible as possible. The fruits of this labour have demonstrated how accessibility is achievable when it is a priority. How about we work to make it a normality? At present our Parliament is not designed to be a House of Representatives. That's not a dig at any of the hard-working MPs that make up either side of these benches but it's a quick observation of the many little things many of us here take for granted: seemingly little things like not second-guessing the climbing of the stairs to our seats or seeing the Speaker as they rise to their feet to call order or hearing and indeed jeering at each other's speeches.This bill is not drafted perfectly and it will not be able to address or fix all of the inequities but it is a crucial and overdue move in the right direction and I look forward to addressing the questions and concerns raised by other members of this House in my final speech in reply.Whether we identify with it or not all of us will find ourselves disabled at some point in our lives whether by our environment or a service that never considered our interaction with it or as we age and our senses naturally deteriorate or by way of accident or otherwise. The Election Access Fund Bill is a step towards consciously creating a more equitable democratic and empathetic playbook for how we as New Zealanders engage in not just politics but society at large. I commend this bill to the House. Ngā mihi."