Turei MetiriaMETIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I will not take too long in the debate on this bill. It is great that the parties support it and we certainly do. The inquiry was as always a good one and it raised a number of issues that have not been addressed in this legislation. It would be good to work with the Minister of Justice on more legislation early next year to see whether we can resolve some of these issues that have not been able to be resolved in this bill. Just a few things to note from the inquiry I think: the kids' voting programme that was rolled out—78000 children in years 9 and 10 had access to an experience of being able to vote and learn how to vote. I think that is a really good start and we need to keep rolling out that programme. I recently gave a talk at Logan Park High School to their senior students there and although about two-thirds of the students there were learning about the New Zealand electoral system about a third had not. So there is still a serious gap when young people do not understand how our electoral system works and we can do a great deal more to improve that. The advance voting is increasing as has been discussed and there was a lot of conversation in the Justice and Electoral Committee about there being more places for advance voting in places where people are where they go as opposed to expecting them to go to their local school hall and about increased opening hours. If we were able to do that we could potentially shorten the period of advance voting as long as there was greater access during that period of advance voting. Greater access by having polling booths in the places where people go during the day and in the weekends is incredibly important if we want to maximise people's access to their democratic right to vote. The voters in prisons issue which was raised briefly by my colleague was also talked about to some degree and it continues to be a stain on New Zealand's democracy that the bill of that man was allowed to pass with the support of the National Party members to disenfranchise thousands of New Zealanders many of whom—a predominant number of whom—are reportedly Māori and prevent them from voting. It was a disgraceful act at the time and it continues to be a disgrace. When people are convicted of a crime and they are sentenced to a custodial sentence of 3 years or more you may be able to argue that they should not vote. I would not argue that but you may be able to justify that—someone might. But at the moment the change that was made means that most prisoners now including those who have sentences of fewer than 3 years are not able to vote. Those people are entitled to have a say—all prisoners in my view are entitled to have a say—in the democratic processes of their country. Prisoners are in fact one of the groups of people most excluded from the democratic process when they are in prison. The whole point of the prison process and incarceration is to punish them by relieving them of their freedom of movement. It does not relieve them of their rights as citizens. We do not strip citizens' rights from people who are convicted of crimes and are imprisoned—we simply remove them from society and remove their right to free movement. These people all have rights as citizens and one of those core fundamental rights in a democracy is that they should be able to vote particularly given that the most powerful laws if you like that are created in this place are the laws that enable a person to be incarcerated the punishment laws through the criminal system. They have a right to have a say as to who represents them in this place so that they have some kind of voice and the fact that we continue to disenfranchise thousands of New Zealanders many thousands of Māori in particular is an ongoing disgrace and needs to be changed. There was some talk about voters with disabilities and there was a higher level of satisfaction if you like with the voting system in the last election for those people who had disabilities but there is still more that can be done to improve access for those with disabilities. When I say improve access" I do not just mean making it possible for a person with a disability to vote; I mean making sure they have all of the privacy the agency and the access to voting without others being involved that we all enjoy as people who in the main are able-bodied. It is not just about whether they can actually physically vote; it is the circumstances in which they are able to vote that they do not need to use another person to interpret for them that the rules do not impose an unnecessary burden on them—like for example the rule that says that they have to verbally say what their name is as part of the voting system which for many people with a disability is not possible. It is a silly rule that makes it very difficult for those people. It reduces their access. So we can certainly do much more to improve access to the voting system for people with disabilities. Just finally the Māori electoral option was also discussed. There is a strong view that it should be possible for people to change from the Māori roll to the general roll from the general to the Māori and back again once every electoral period rather than once every 5 years and to decouple—the report describes "decoupling"—the Māori electoral option from the census. The census is actually irrelevant to the rights of people to be able to vote and to the electoral cycle. So there was some very good discussion. Not all of it is represented in this legislation but there is no doubt more time to make some changes. Finally tomorrow is the 20th anniversary as I understand it of the very first MMP election. The very first MMP election was on 12 October 1996 and what we have not done in the last 5 years is make the changes to MMP that were promised by National after the 2014 election. You would remember that we had a referendum on whether or not to keep MMP and there was a resounding call from New Zealanders to keep MMP and a strong commitment from New Zealanders to support changes to the MMP system that would improve that system to improve the democratic approach to improve access and to improve the quality of representation in this . None of those things have been done by National for all sorts of varieties of excuses—Chris Bishop: What a load of rubbish.METIRIA TUREI: Go and talk to Judith Collins if you want to find out about those foolish excuses that she made at the time. So we have had lots of time now to consider what those options might be to make those changes but we continue to have a Government that despite promises to change the system to improve MMP after the referendum—National broke that promise and we still do not have those changes set out in an electoral bill. This was also a missed opportunity to make those changes to improve our democracy. Thank you."