Hughes Darren: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Hughes Darren: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
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Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 The Labour Opposition will be supporting the first reading of the Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill (No 2) in the name of Simon Power. There are so many things to say about the different aspects of our electoral law. My colleagues the Hon Lianne Dalziel and Charles Chauvel have already touched on those events. 
I acknowledge the previous speaker Hekia Parata. I think she would be offended if I did not make reference to her as the speaker following her speech. I know that despite her natural shyness she will set this to one side to allow me to make a couple of comments. I note that on Saturday Labour won the second by-election of this parliamentary term. It is great indeed to see that Labour’s record is winning two out of two by-elections. Matters of electoral administration are very very important to Labour. In fact if I were to be unkind to the honourable member I would say that her claim that she does not do runner-up is not a line she can keep on using. This is the third time she has come in as runner-up in an electoral race. I think she will have to use a new strap-line for her campaigns. [ 
Interruption 
] I am sorry; I cannot hear the member as her own colleagues are drowning her out. 
Hekia Parata 
: A greater degree of snideness is required in your tone. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: That can be achieved. I can deliver that for the member if she chooses. But I will not. I just note that I commiserate with the member because her own personal share of the vote fell by almost 3000. Almost 3000 fewer people voted for her on Saturday than 2 years ago. I almost wondered whether Jonathan Coleman had been giving some advice to that particular campaign. 
Hekia Parata 
: There was a low turn-out on Saturday. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I am pleased to hear Government members now saying that there was a low turn-out on Saturday because I had not heard that from the spin of the National Government. Now the candidate for Mana is saying that one of the reasons she lost 3000 votes on Saturday was that there was a low turn-out. I acknowledge the member and I agree with the argument that she has put forward. I think that was very useful indeed. 
The member will be grateful to the Prime Minister for the extraordinary amount of time he spent in her electorate and the predictions he made. It was unusual to see him in the electorate on Saturday night. None of us thought we would see him in Mana on Saturday evening. He made the decision to be there while of course there were other matters of State on his mind and we are all thinking of him in that respect. But he was there in Mana and he obviously had some expectations that did not come to pass. Anyway that is the way it went. I am glad the member had the chance to speak on matters of electoral administration. There was a far more honourable showing on Saturday I must say than we saw just a year ago in the Mt Albert electorate. I am very critical of Jonathan Coleman for many reasons and a lot of them are shared by his own colleagues so I feel in great company in that respect. But I must admit I will give him credit for one thing. On election night he and Melissa Lee showed up to concede in person. I was very surprised that the member Hekia Parata did not appear in person to concede defeat in the Mana electorate. I thought she would have done that. I must admit I was a bit surprised about that because when all is said and done she is a good person. I thought that might have been a classy touch to what was a very clean campaign. 
However having said that I will touch on other matters on this bill because it is important. Having poked a little bit of borax at the National Party I want to give praise to Simon Power on this 23rd day of November 2010—one day after the 22nd of November. That date will be important to the Minister of Justice for reasons known to him. Minister Power has managed this process with a great degree of integrity and he has sought to genuinely balance a degree of bipartisan cooperation to the extent that that can be expected. There are some genuine differences across the aisle here about the ways these matters should be handled. The balance of the package that the Minister has developed—and is delivering by way of two other bills that we will debate on Thursday—and this bill tonight is not perfect from the Labour Party’s point of view. I know that National does not think it is perfect either but there is a balance. I think we have got ourselves back into a very credible position where we are trying to have laws for electoral purposes that even if we do not regard them as perfect most sides can live with. I do have to say that Simon Power has brought us to that position through his ministerial role and we do appreciate it. I definitely put on the record that we are grateful to him for that. 
As other speakers have said—including Mr Bakshi who very eloquently pointed it out—this is stage two of a two-stage reform package. He made the point quite firmly that the bill does make changes to how the new Electoral Commission can operate. We of course had an Electoral Commission previously but this bill coordinates the different branches of that commission in a way that we have not seen before. It is almost but not quite a one-stop shop but that model of one agency that will deliver on our electoral laws and will give the advice the support the guidance and importantly the information about our electoral system will be quite an important thing. So the Labour Opposition does understand why the Government has done this. 
I think all political parties regardless of their political philosophy who have stumped up on the campaign trail have all at different points felt some degree of frustration at some of the duplication that has occurred in our processes. So being able to streamline that—a phrase that I think all parties have used to explain their support for this bill—will obviously have some reduction in terms of the costs of running elections but more to the point it will provide more clarity for political parties and parliamentary candidates than has necessarily been the case in the past. This a staged process although the commission exists. Mr Chauvel spoke about the fact that two members of the commission are appointed and there is a third member to come on board which should take place as quickly as possible. Again I say that the Minister has been very generous in his consultation on that. Once that is set up I think it will be quite important for the members to assume those responsibilities as soon as that can take place. 
I must admit I am surprised that the role of the Chief Registrar of Electors do not fall into this new commission until 2012 which is still quite some time away. That takes us beyond the Botany by-election and it takes us beyond the general election of 2011 as well. So there will be quite some time before these reforms all take place. But there is a road map for it and I think that is quite a useful thing that has been signalled to us. 
I will pick up on some of the points that members of the Justice and Electoral Committee made because I think they focused on this quite heavily after the general election. We have a convention I guess that after every general election the committee conducts an inquiry. There are submissions from different political parties and most of them are from those who are active in the election process. In some years nothing really happens with those reports but this year I was very pleased to see that the multiparty committee that inquired into that has made some recommendations that the Government has picked up. Those have been outlined by Lianne Dalziel and Hekia Parata just mentioned a number of them in respect of immigration information that is available. 
I think that moving down the path of e-enrolment will be a very important thing particularly when people find through moving around that they can easily be dropped off the roll which none of us like to see happen. I think the reforms that were made when Tim Barnett was the chair of the select committee to assume that people would be reinstated on the roll after every general election were a good thing. Members will recall that after each election everyone was wiped from the roll and forced to re-enrol—that was a crazy system. It has been much better to have the reform whereby people are assumed to continue as electors unless there is a reason not to. So I am pleased to see that that has continued. 
We are lucky in New Zealand that we have very high levels of enrolment and an optional voting system. That is an important element to make sure that people get on the electoral roll and exercise their right to vote. In Australia of course with its compulsory voting system that is not as important. There is an almost 100 percent rate of participation in elections. I know that there is a state election in Victoria this weekend and once again we will see an electoral system that works very very credibly. Labour supports the referral of this bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee. For the reasons I have outlined this is useful legislation and we congratulate the Minister of Justice Simon Power on the way he is conducting this process.