O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First will be supporting this bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee. There are a number of things that we want to discuss there and in fact amongst those are a number of things that are actually not in the bill at all but that were previously discussed by the committee when it reviewed the outcome of the 2014 election. One of them was mentioned by the Minister in her speech and that is the question of more flexibility for funding for opening and closing addresses on television. There is no provision for that in the bill as yet but I understand from what the Minister said that she is willing to consider that. I want to say right here and put on record that New Zealand First is very interested in that. We do want to discuss it and we do want to try to reach consensus with other parties on that because it is high time that that issue was looked at. The fact is that opening and closing addresses on television are not very popular most people do not watch them they are probably not really worth the money that is spent on them and it would be good if parties had flexibility to use that funding in other ways especially for broadcasting. So that is something we look forward to discussions on both at the committee and perhaps on a one-on-one basis with the Minister.Something else that I think bears more discussion is the whole question of advance voting. There was a lot of discussion about advance voting when the committee reviewed the 2014 election and we noted—with some satisfaction I think—the strong trend of voters to use advance voting. I think it went up by around 20 percent to well over 30 percent at the 2014 election. When you get that number of people using advance voting up to 3 weeks ahead of election day it makes you sit up and take notice. The reasons are pretty obvious: people are working many work on Saturdays many have sports functions to go to on Saturdays or go shopping on Saturdays. Saturdays are very very busy days for people and many people do want to take advantage of shorter queues at polling stations well before election day itself. If we want to really increase turnout we really do need to make sure that we optimise facilities for advance voting.What was discussed at the select committee when it looked at the matter were two things. One was that there are not enough polling booths available in the advance period for the 3 weeks before election day—not enough polling places and that needs to be improved. Second was the problem that some voting places used for advance voting are not the same as the polling places used on election day and that causes confusion and possibly turns people off from going and casting their votes. So those are two things that I think even though they are not in this bill we need to have another look at. Maybe they do not need to be in this bill; maybe it is something that the commission can have a look at without any change in legislation. I am not sure about that but I am sure that we need to discuss this more and I would like to hear the Minister give some indication about whether the Government is going to move in the ways that I have suggested as to how we can improve voting up to 3 weeks before election day.Talking about voting in advance I note that the bill does make some changes about counting votes on election day and the proposal is to extend the period instead of 2 p.m. on election day down to 9 a.m.—that gives the whole day in which it is possible to start counting votes. Given the number of votes that are cast in advance it would be very sensible for that to happen. What New Zealand First would not have supported is any proposal to start counting votes during the 3-week advance voting period. We think that that would have opened up the possibility of leaks of progress votes or of speculation and false claims about how votes are going so it is better not to do that. It should be sufficient to count the votes on election day but I am sure we would support the extension of a few hours by making it possible to start counting votes from 9 a.m.The bill does some other quite sensible things which I am sure that New Zealand First will want to support and one of those concerns contact information on election advertisements out of Parliament offices. They will now be treated as a single sign. Most offices have a number of signs on or near them; the same occurs with vehicles. It is good to see that the law will be clarified to make it possible for all of those signs to be treated as one sign and for those not to infringe the law by remaining in place during the election period especially the advance election period. So it is good to see that and there are some other pretty sensible things too that we would like to state our support for at this stage.One of them is the new section 197(1)(k) which provides that it will be an offence to do a number of things to influence advance voters during that advance voting period. In fact what is proposed is for there to be a buffer zone and that will be 10 metres unless there is some good reason to alter that. I think this is actually a very important provision because I think it is important that people are able to go and cast their votes in peace without being harassed by people whether it is by loudspeakers by being handed pamphlets on their way into a polling booth or by being harassed in some other way. One of the things that will put people off voting is if they have to run a gauntlet of people on the way to a polling booth being harassed and being told which way they should vote or which issue they should vote in favour of or whatever the case may be. So we in New Zealand First do very much support that people should be able to vote and do it in peace without having to be subjected to any form of advertising outside the normal scope of things. I note that there are exemptions in the bill for advertising on people's clothing—the usual rosettes are exempted from these provisions—and similar things on motor cars and so on. I think we have got as a result of this bill a very sensible balance between allowing people to vote in peace and providing some exemptions to make sure that we do not go a little bit too far especially as far as rosettes and those kinds of things are concerned. So that is good to see.Another thing that is good to see is clause 97 which provides for a specific period beginning 2 days immediately before polling day and ending on the close of the poll. It relates to people who would make false statements to influence voters and that will now be an offence during the whole of that period. I think that is a very very important provision when you consider some of the things that happened at the last election and that happened at previous elections. Again it is important for the integrity of our system that that should not be permitted to happen. So we do overall support all of the major components of this bill and there are many other more minor things that it covers as well that are very sensible. But there are a number of items that I said at the beginning of my speech we do want to discuss. They are not actually in the bill. We think they should be in the bill. I know that there are some proposals for Supplementary Order Papers to insert them but I would like to think that we would be able to discuss those before we get to the point of the Committee of the whole House. I would like to think that they will be discussed at the select committee even though they are not in the bill. I hope we are not going to be told they are outside the scope of the bill and that we therefore are not allowed to discuss them. That would not be a good thing to happen.I would like to see a more general discussion at the committee so that we can discuss some of these things. The Minister has already raised one of them; as I said we want to discuss that. I would like to discuss the matter that Jacinda Ardern raised and a number of other matters that I think deserve discussion and that would improve New Zealand's electoral system. So I look forward to the discussion of those things at the select committee and after that. We have had a pretty good record of achieving consensus on most things so far. I hope we can achieve consensus again on some of those other things yet to be discussed.