Little AndrewELECTORAL AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I move that the electoral amendment bill (No 2) be now read a second time. There are a lot of twos in this legislation. This bill amends the Electoral Act—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry could I just clarify with the member. It might be just Electoral Amendment Bill.Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It is sorry. You're absolutely correct. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): No more twos.Hon ANDREW LITTLE: No. I move That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a second time.This bill amends the Electoral Act 1993 and the Electoral Regulations 1996. This bill will improve New Zealand's voting experience by making it as easy as possible for New Zealanders to vote. And isn't that a good thing in a democracy? I want to thank the Justice Committee for its diligent consideration of the bill and those members of the public who made submissions. The committee received 131 submissions from interested groups and individuals. The committee also heard oral evidence from 11 submitters. Most of those submitters strongly supported the bill which provides greater accessibility for voters and helps increase voter engagement. I was interested to note that many of the submitters took the time to raise other concerns and offer other suggestions for electoral reform. This includes 23 submitters in support of removing the blanket ban on prisoner voting. Now although that issue could not be addressed in this bill as I announced late last year this Government will be bringing forward a further bill shortly which will restore voting rights to people sentenced to less than three years in prison. As with the changes in this bill we are committed to helping people engage with the democratic process as easily as possible. I'm pleased to see that the Justice Committee has adopted some of the suggestions made by submitters and has recommended some helpful changes to this current bill. That includes making it clear that ballot boxes should be accompanied at all times by polling place officials adding terrorism as a particular example of unforeseen or unavoidable disruption that may warrant the Electoral Commission using emergency measures to protect the integrity of the electoral process and requiring the Electoral Commission to inform both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition if there is an adjournment of polling because of an unforeseen or unavoidable disruption. I'd like to briefly reiterate a number of specific changes that the bill makes. As I've already mentioned the most significant change the bill makes is to enfranchise more people by enabling electors to enrol on election day. This bill will enable New Zealand - based electors to enrol or to update their enrolment details on election day just as they already can during the advance voting period. The obvious question is why would you distinguish between the two and that's the question the National Party has to answer. Why do they want to discriminate? Why do they want to disadvantage some voters—19000 indeed at the last election? Why would a party in this Parliament want to do that to voters? Well let them speak for themselves as I know they will in the most constitutionally outraged way they possibly can.At the last election as I said 19000 people were disenfranchised because although they voted on election day they were not enrolled. Thousands more had their constituency vote discounted because they hadn't updated their address details to their new constituency.Simeon Brown: They should enrol early.Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It's interesting hearing the member interject because that does define the National Party: they love punishing people. They love punishing innocent people going about their busy lives stressful lives. When they come to exercise their democratic right the National Party loves to punish them and that's the difference between parties on this side of the House and the National Party. We want to help people and facilitate people exercising their democratic right and we should do that.Now the position that of course the National Party's adopting is in my view totally unacceptable. No elector should be disenfranchised when they've demonstrated their commitment to the democratic process by going to a voting place to cast a vote.The bill extends the period for the return of the writ from 50 to 60 days. Dr Nick Smith has claimed in the minority view from the National Party that somehow I misled the nation by not making this explicit. It has been pretty clear in the bill from the outset and if you want to facilitate more people voting you've got to give more time for the counters to count the vote. That just makes sense.This is the first extension in the period for the return of the writ since it was increased from 40 days to the current 50 days in 1953. And we know who was in Government then: it was Sid Holland—Sid Holland was the Prime Minister—and it was the National Party. They were quite happy to extend it by 10 days under their Government but apparently not good for this one. Well I ask you: how could that possibly be consistent?This extension supports the introduction of election day enrolment by ensuring that the Electoral Commission has additional time both before and after the election to prepare check and verify the increased number of post - writ day enrolments and to process the expected increase in special votes.The bill also makes it easier to designate venues such as malls and supermarkets to be voting places. These are familiar places used daily by the public and so will help make voting more accessible for voters. Currently venues cannot be used as polling places if they are a licensed premise. This applies even if no alcohol is consumed in the part of the venue being used as a voting place. Other venues—for example shopping malls—may be used for advance voting but are not able to be used as voting places on election day because all voting places need to have sufficient room for the preliminary counting of votes to be conducted on site. This bill removes the prohibition on designating a licensed premise such as a supermarket as a voting place and it also allows the Electoral Commission to designate a different place for the preliminary count of the votes cast in a polling place if this is necessary to enable votes to be counted in a more appropriate space.The bill also updates the provisions for managing elections in the event of an emergency. The Electoral Act's current provisions for managing elections in the event of an emergency are very limited and inflexible and are not well suited to the MMP system which involves both electorate and party votes. The changes made in this bill will ensure a more flexible and pragmatic response to a wider range of potential polling disruptions maintain the integrity and conduct of electoral processes and ensure those affected by polling disruptions are still able to vote in the election.I'd also like to mention two other changes this bill makes that cannot be implemented for the 2020 election but are being made now to help the Electoral Commission prepare for future elections. The first of these is to enable any voter whose application to enrol has been accepted and who can be electronically marked off the electoral roll to be issued an ordinary ballot paper rather than a special voting paper. The second change is to enable the Electoral Commission to permit the special vote declaration to be treated as an application to enrol or update enrolment details. These changes will improve vote issuing and counting processes at the 2023 general election and beyond. Changing the law now will give the Electoral Commission sufficient time and certainty to make the necessary operational changes. The bill will be followed by changes to the electoral regulations to improve the efficiency and timeliness of overseas postal and dictation vote issuing processing.In the time available I'd just like to make some concluding remarks just about what the issues of contention are here. It is disappointing that the National Party so vehemently opposes same-day enrolment and therefore voting. It's interesting hearing the cry of Dr Nick Smith when he says it's screwing the scrum or it's giving an unfair advantage. He doesn't stop for a moment to reflect that perhaps the current system is unfair if it denies—as of 2017—19000 people who turned up to a ballot booth their rights to have their vote counted and the many thousands more who because they hadn't changed their address details could not have their vote properly counted as well. That's what's unfair.It is time for this Parliament and long-serving members like the Hon Dr Nick Smith to accept that life has moved on. People lead busy lives and the way people organise their lives means they don't always get around to making sure they're on the roll. They change addresses and sometimes the post doesn't get where it should go and they're not alerted to the fact they are not on the roll or should be on the roll or they should have changed their address details. Let's just accept the humanity of the situation. We should have a system flexible and sensible enough to accommodate these very human incidences where people turn up and find out they're not enrolled cast a special vote and then find that the vote isn't counted. That is wrong and this House should be doing everything it can to extend the franchise to those who by current definitions already have it and should remove the obstructions and the obstacles that prevent some people if not from voting at least from having their vote counted.This is very important and it is very important equally to have flexibility in the allocation of places where people can vote. The truth is people do go to malls on election day as well as during the advance voting period. If that is a place where people gather—which is what the original voting booths 100-odd years ago were set up for: churches schools places where people went—then we should put polling booths in places where people go on election day. This bill does that. It'll be good for democracy good for New Zealand good for this House and good for everyone. I commend the bill to the House.