Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Madam Chair. Turning to Part 2 and looking a bit more deeply at the meaning of party secretary" under clause 16 and again it is changing the Electoral Act itself. It seems to me that a few questions would be helpfully answered by the Minister of Justice answers which we might well have gained or be expected to gain during a select committee process. So if any of them sort of seem a little bit mundane or perhaps in the nature of items that I could be expected to have known or be able to cross-reference or to ask our excellent officials in this space then I simply respectfully refer you to the fact that we've had a process whereby there's been so little opportunity for that kind of scrutiny of the bill until this point such that it's now still even at this relatively late stage the committee of the whole House stage less than 24 hours since some of us learnt even of the existence of the bill let alone have a chance to read and understand it. So looking at the definition of "party secretary" or "secretary" or the meaning of it in new section 3EA—echo alpha—we're talking about a person who in relation to a party is responsible for the administration and correspondence of the party. My question to the Minister is what does that mean in the context of a party which inevitably I'd say in any reasonably sized party or any unreasonably sized party either for that matter might well have more than one person who's responsible for administration and correspondence. I do acknowledge that there are provisions there that are pointed to in terms of the designation of that. I'm not fully aware of all those meanings. I must admit I haven't had a chance within the limited time available to look through those. What I'm really seeking from the Minister is an assurance that the meaning of the "party secretary" is such that we could have a situation where if more than one person was carrying out that function of administration and correspondence that they would be caught by the terms of the Act because I suspect that's the intention. I suspect that the function of the Act is intended to in this case point to the need for him or her to be living in New Zealand. But with the phrasing of this particular bill very much in the singular it's not clear to me that it would be possible that you'd have co - party secretaries perhaps in the same way that the Green Party has co-leaders. So that's a possibility that I'd be grateful if the Minister would be able to clear up.The second is really the substance of the amendment regarding the party secretary which is a new requirement that they must live in New Zealand. That raises a number of interesting questions as well: for example is it possible to have a non - New Zealand citizen who is performing this function but living in New Zealand at the time? The converse of that so to speak would be a New Zealand citizen who was living overseas at the time but not able to fulfil the role of a party secretary. That seems a bit anomalous with the way that we've got the overseas aspect of an overseas person elsewhere in the same bill. There we're talking about it being OK to be a New Zealander or technically a non - overseas person either because you're essentially legitimately part of New Zealand's democratic purposes albeit that you're living overseas at the time or you can be someone who might generally be regarded as foreign in sort of a pretty loose sense of that word but based in New Zealand. So I don't know why a different approach has been taken in relation to a party secretary in terms of where they are physically living at the time. Then the obvious question becomes as well: well what does it mean to live in New Zealand? Do they have had to live for a minimum sort of qualifying period?Perhaps we could borrow the language from other statutes on the book to be ordinarily resident—for example a certain number of days per year; those kinds of mechanisms. They exist elsewhere in the law. It would not be hard to fit them in there. And again I'd be happy to work with the Minister and anyone else on the other side of the Chamber who'd be prepared to add a bit of clarity in the law which does not currently exist and for reasons that as discussed in terms of process we haven't had the chance to sort of patch up or tidy up until this point.Moving to clause 17 now again within Part 2 really this is an interesting one about electoral advertisements. What we're talking about is a person who's not able to publish various kinds of advertisements without specifying their name and so on. That's fine as far as it goes. But I'm wondering about the phrase "permit to be published" in particular whether this is going to capture the social media companies themselves. So it's not just a candidate for an election for example it might be myself duly re-elected as the National Party candidate for Helensville and if I can continue with that train of thought. [Bell rung] As well as continue as the National Party candidate for Helensville then I'd simply point out that we've got an interesting little point raised by the law. We were talking about a person who can't essentially publish something without demonstrating their true name or their address. But you could argue very readily and I think quite reasonably that a platform like Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or any of those other social media entities or perhaps some other online portal actually arguably is permitting to be published such an advertisement. So my question to the Minister and no doubt his excellent officials who are standing by for such questions I expect is whether such social media companies and other publishers if we regard them as publishers and not merely platforms will be caught by that definition and whether or not the Minister intends that to be so; then the technical advice about whether that is in fact something that the law is able to achieve mechanically by those words.The remainder of that clause is around the requirements for the person who is doing the publishing. So we need to know their true name; that's a reasonably intriguing phrase. I don't know what the true name of a person might be as distinct from an untrue name or a false name. I wonder if that means a person who has changed their name perhaps legally—it might be by deed poll—or is generally known by another name for whatever reason. Whatever change in their lifestyle or other circumstances might dictate that they might want to go under a different name—perfectly legitimate reasons that a person might do that. So I wonder if that's what the Minister is intending by having the true name of the person as the test for what they've got to publish in terms of identifying themselves because I'm not sure that that's the best expression of that just to sort of suggest that someone could have a true name or an untrue name or a false name. So perhaps a legal name or a name by which they can be readily identified or associated which would surely be sort of the purpose behind the legislation given that what we're looking at I suspect is ensuring that people who are publishing ads in the online space as well as in more general kinds of ways can be captured by the intent of the legislation which has a certain amount of transparency about who exactly is putting up what on Facebook or online and the like.Then the final point in relation to that and again I sort of make it as a point but intend it as a question is around the person's place of residence or business so the address for that has to be published. I wonder if the Minister would contemplate having a test equivalent to those for authorisation statements where it's something along the lines—and forgive me if I don't get the wording exactly correct—that it's an address at which the person might reasonably be expected to be found. I'm sort of looking over in the direction of the officials as well as the Minister as I say that. I don't know if that's something they contemplated. It might be that there's very good reasons that they haven't gone with that and it would be good to know those reasons if so.These are the kinds of questions. Of course I don't wish to labour the point too much but with a new person in the chair I'd probably get away with it.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Nope.CHRIS PENK: No? She's shaking her head. She's been watching unfortunately. Well there go my next two contributions.But in any case the point really was and it is actually a serious one that they're asking these questions now because it's the committee of the whole House stage and this is the appropriate time or one of the appropriate times normally for being able to sort of interrogate this level of detail interrogate even the Minister if we can sort of put it like that and understand that. Normally the other opportunity to do that would be in the select committee process. We could sort of embarrass ourselves with our lack of knowledge and perhaps silly questions although you know famously there's no such thing as a silly question but for anyone who's attended the Justice Committee there is such a thing as a silly question.And so it is that I'd love the Minister to respond with answers to those two key points. One is about the party secretary which I suppose in turn has two parts: who's responsible for the administration of correspondence could that be more than one person in relation to a particular party; and second what does it mean that they must live in New Zealand. Then the other point really the key one in relation to the electoral advertisements was whether the likes of Facebook but again other entities too that publish or allow themselves to publish "cause or permit to be published" even in the wording of the law are they captured by that intention to essentially create an offence whereby someone can't do that without publishing name and address details."