Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Labour supports this motion. We thank the Government for complying with the traditions that we have as to the appointments of these people and Jacinda Ardern on behalf of Labour has been involved in those processes most closely. Can I add to the thanks of the Minister of Justice Labour's thanks to the outgoing people in these two roles: Mr Peden and Ms Hūria. Can I say in respect of Ms Wright who has been appointed as Chief Electoral Officer that I think one of the most important challenges she faces is maintaining public confidence in our electoral system. I think it is a terrible shame what is happening in America at the moment where one of the presidential candidates Mr Trump is trying—even in advance of what will hopefully be a loss on election day—to question the legitimacy of the electoral outcome and is undermining public confidence in it. In New Zealand we do have great public confidence in our electoral processes and that is deservedly so. In order to maintain that confidence we have to do really well in making sure that as many people as possible are enrolled. People have a legal duty to enrol but we have to facilitate that and make sure that we maintain the proportion of our population that are on the roll and make sure that people are entitled to exercise their right to vote. At the last election compared with the prior election we had a drop of about 1 percent in the people who were estimated to be on the roll. In 2011 93.7 percent of the population who were entitled to vote were on the roll; the estimate for the last election is that that was down to 92.6 percent. Maybe that is one of the reasons according to the Justice and Electoral Committee that of people who voted at the last election there were about 40675 invalid votes. That was split into two main groupings: over 10000 were informal votes and 29800-odd—close to 30000—were disallowed votes. The centrality of paying due attention to ensuring that our roll is robust and up to date is important and it is becoming a harder task as more and more people—now I think more than 50 percent of all New Zealanders—live in rental accommodation. As the proportion of the population in rental accommodation increases there are more changes of addresses and therefore it is a bigger task for the Electoral Commission to ensure that the roll is up to date. I am sure that these people are up to the task. Alicia Wright as we have been told comes from Defence and has the background that is necessary to perform this important role. Kristy McDonald is known to many of us. I have had dealings with her over the years—actually as far back as university when she was ahead of me by a year at Otago University. Kristy McDonald has had an outstanding career. In terms of the work that she has done on behalf of the Government I can remember one particularly difficult inquiry that she ran for the Government into problems that there were around people who had been convicted of crimes but were on the police witness protection programme because of their cooperation with the Crown and while on the police witness protection programme had committed traffic offences—some of them quite serious traffic offences—that had not been properly disclosed to the court and so they were treated as first offenders even though they had a prior record of criminality. I thought that Kristy McDonald handled herself very well in respect of that inquiry and all of the other leading roles that she has had as a prosecutor for the Crown as defence counsel and as the chair of various bodies including disciplinary tribunals and commercial bodies. So I think she is very very well qualified to be the deputy chairperson of the Electoral Commission. We are very lucky that she has agreed to serve in that role. I am sure we will also be served well by Alicia—I am not sure how to pronounce that; I am sorry if I have got that wrong—Wright. I really just end by saying again that it is absolutely imperative for public confidence and democracy which we all so believe in in this House that we have good people to ensure that our elections and our election processes enable people to exercise their right of preference on the day.