Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Assistant Speaker and if I haven't done so already congratulations on your promotion to that prestigious position.Look the National Party opposes this bill and I want to make two points in my contribution to this debate. The first is to start about the process. It is hard to find or hard to think of a worse process than what the Government has conducted on this very important piece of electoral legislation and my colleague and friend Dr Nick Smith has gone through the appalling way the Government has gone about introducing this bill to the Parliament and now referring it to the select committee.For time immemorial after an election the Justice Committee holds an inquiry. They go through all the things that happened in the election. Generally that's done on a pretty bipartisan basis and committee hears the submissions and then the Justice Committee makes a report to the Parliament—again done reasonably collegially on a bipartisan basis. The Government then picks up a piece of legislation and introduces any amendment bill to the House. Critically that bill is consulted on between the Government and the Opposition because our electoral law should never become the plaything of politicians. It's too important for that—too important an issue.Now I've only been a member of Parliament for 4½ years—Kieran McAnulty: Too long.CHRIS BISHOP: —but I had the privilege of—ha ha! Too long." says my fellow parliamentary co-captain Kieran McAnulty. Well we'll let the voters decide. But I've only had the privilege of being an MP for 4½ years but I have served on the Justice Committee and that's exactly the process that we went through after the 2014 election. The now Prime Minister sat on that committee. She well knows the process that members of Parliament go through and it worked really well. The Hon Amy Adams was the Minister of Justice after the 2014 election. She accepted the report of the parliamentary select committee. The Minister worked with the Opposition front-bencher who had responsibility for the justice portfolio and there were a series of very sensible changes made and the Electoral Amendment Bill went through the previous Parliament the 50th Parliament I think unanimously and passed the Parliament—no worries with that.What we have here is a Government firstly acting in advance of that select committee inquiry. Now the Minister Andrew Little says that the committee has taken too long. Well actually we're in July 2019. The committee is as I understand it—I'm no longer a member—reasonably soon to report back. There is more than enough time to listen to what the committee has to say. Critically—and this is the second point—the Government has not consulted with the Opposition. The Government has not consulted with the Opposition and some of the changes here are controversial. Frankly I think it is a disgrace.Now Minister Shane Jones was here before. He pretty much summed up the Government's approach to electoral law matters echoing Michael Cullen that famous dictum after the 1999 election: "We won you lost eat that." Well actually I've got to say that is an atrocious way to treat electoral law which should be far above the normal sort of dictates of political process. It should be something that is far more important.So we object to the way in which this bill has been put together from the start. Sadly it is all too common with Labour Governments. I remember working here in the 2005 to 2008 Parliament when the last Labour Government rammed through Parliament the constitutionally objectionable Electoral Finance Bill against massive opposition from not just the National Party Opposition sitting on this side but the Human Rights Commission the New Zealand Law Society—a range of august bodies that told the Labour Government of the day not to ram through a bill that stifled free speech. They did it anyway despite all injunctions to them to not do so and sadly here we are again and of course we've already had the debacle of the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill earlier on in the life of this Parliament. So I really just do plead with members opposite: just consider the damage you are doing to our unwritten constitution when it is the case that the Labour Party can win Government and act without even consulting the Opposition to introduce electoral amendment bills. I think it is genuinely appalling and we object to the process.Let me talk to the second issue to do with the bill which is the issue of same-day enrolment. Now there is a case to be made for same-day enrolment but there is also a strong case to be made in opposition to it. Let me outline some of the reasons why we in the National Party are concerned about this. The first thing to note is as part of the inquiry the Electoral Commission came before the Parliament and told us that if Parliament wanted to do this and if we wanted to implement it for a general election we should do it for the 2023 general election not for the 2020 election. That's the Electoral Commission. That's the advice from the experts. It would be fair to say they strongly implored the Parliament to only implement it for the 2023 election. Why is that? Well actually there are quite significant implications to election day from what the Government is proposing.The second thing to say is I encourage members opposite who clearly haven't done this and I encourage all members of the House to go and read the regulatory impact statement provided by the Ministry of Justice. It is a warning to the Parliament and to the Government about implementing this in time for the 2020 election. I noticed that Andrew Little the Minister has not really advertised the fact which I think members will be interested in that the result of the election is now going to be delayed for 10 days as a result of this piece of legislation because the bill quite neatly inserts into it a provision to allow the return of the writs to 60 days after its issue. I'm just quoting from the general policy statement of the bill: "This change is necessary to support the Electoral Commission to manage the introduction of enrolment on election day and provide more time to process the increased numbers of enrolment and update forms before the official count".Now members opposite may not know a lot about how our elections work. In 2017 17 percent of all votes counted were special votes—17 percent. Almost one in five votes cast at the election were special votes. Special votes take 10 times longer—it's not my words; these are the words of the Ministry of Justice in their regulatory impact statement—to process than ordinary votes. One of the effects of this piece of legislation will be a very large increase in the number of special votes. So that's exactly why the Electoral Commission said to the parliamentary select committee considering this: "Don't do it necessarily for 2020. If you are going to do it do it for 2023." but yet we have the Government saying "No no we're going to do it for 2020." in I believe contravention of all the advice provided by the experts.There are good reasons to ask people to get on to the rolls. There are very good reasons to get people on to the rolls. When you're on the roll you can be sent information from the Electoral Commission about voting. You can be sent information by political parties. Remember jury service is dictated by who's on the electoral roll. It's actually very important that we have our rolls as up to date as possible. What does this bill do? It sends the message that enrolment is optional actually that enrolment is something you don't necessarily need to do until election day. What we will see is far more people rocking up on election day and enrolling and they won't be doing it in advance. So yes it will increase participation. Yes it will increase the number of votes cast but we need to be careful about the practical implementation of same-day enrolment and same-day voting. Members opposite I don't think are aware of the extension of the writs that will be required of the 10-day extension of the election results being declared of the massive increase in special votes that will be required to be counted. I encourage members to go and read the regulatory impact statement which outlines a range of risks to the integrity of the election because of this.We support many of the other changes in the bill as my colleague Nick Smith has mentioned. We support expanding the range of premises that can be used as voting places. I think that's a sensible change. There's some changes around improving the way vote issuing and returns are done. Polling day disruptions—they seem like generally sensible changes. But to have a Government turn up here and arrogantly arrogate to itself the right to force through Parliament a bill that makes fundamental changes to our electoral system without consulting the Opposition and in advance of the Justice Committee inquiry is disgraceful in the extreme."