Electoral Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The Electoral Amendment Bill is the latest chapter in a longstanding, ongoing endeavour to ensure that our electoral system is the best it can be. As the bill’s general policy statement notes, the New Zealand electoral system has a very high level of integrity. However, minor changes to the legal framework are required to help continuously improve the efficiency and integrity of elections. As members will be aware, against that backdrop the bill primarily puts in place recommendations of the Justice and Electoral Committee’s inquiry into the 2011 general election. Specifically, the bill implements recommendations that require legislation and can be put in place in time for the 2014 general election. The Electoral Amendment Bill will improve services to voters, candidates, and parties; improve efficiency through greater use of technology; and simplify and clarify existing provisions of the Electoral Act.

At this time I would like to recap some of the specific changes the bill makes. The bill provides for full online enrolment using electronic identity verification, makes loans to parties subject to similar disclosure rules as donations, extends the time for filing party expense returns, and allows bulk nomination and party list documents to be lodged by email. The bill also clarifies that the High Court can direct the Electoral Commission to recalculate and amend the allocation of list seats if there is a successful electorate petition. These reforms, along with other, largely technical changes contained in this bill, will not only update aspects of the Electoral Act; they will also enhance the already strong integrity of our electoral system.

I thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its diligent consideration of the bill, and for reporting back by the end of last year. I would also like to again thank those members of the public who made submissions. As I said during the second reading of this bill and on many other occasions, electoral reform should, if possible, be based on consensus. I note that there was unanimous consensus among the committee on the report back of the bill. I would like to take this opportunity to note that, in addition to the positive changes contained in this bill, I also intend to amend the electoral regulations in the next few months to implement several other recommendations of the inquiry into the 2011 general election.

We are lucky to live in a nation where our electoral system has a very high level of integrity. New Zealand is a nation where we actively seek to build on the lessons learnt from previous elections, and where we take a multiparty approach to electoral reform. The Electoral Amendment Bill is one result of this drive for continuous incremental improvement. It will enhance the integrity of our electoral system and ensure that the law remains relevant going forward. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Can I just refer members to Speaker Statham, 1923, in Speakers’ ruling 60/5, where he says interjections are out of order unless rare, reasonable, relevant, and restrained.

The Electoral Amendment Bill will have a positive impact on the administration of this year’s general election and future elections. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to speak in this third reading of the Electoral Amendment Bill, which is a bill that should have enjoyed the support of every party in this House. This is electoral law reform. This is the modernisation of our electoral legislation. This should have enjoyed all the support of the House. We used to have in New Zealand a proud reputation around our electoral systems and the maintenance of them. The convention that all parties, or at least the vast majority of parties, would support changes to legislation was one that had not been broken until now—until now. This is a shame, because we ought to have been able to get up and say, yes, we support this bill, because some of the silly things that were originally in it were taken out, such as the prohibitions on streamers, ribbons, balloons, and rosettes on election day. That was a silly provision and that, quite rightly, bit the dust.

What we now have here is a potential improvement lost—an improvement that could have put into the legislation the enrolment confirmation card. We could have had that provision surrounding the EasyVote card put into the legislation and cemented in there so that nobody could touch it—not the National Party, not the Labour Party; nobody could touch it. It could have stayed there, and it would have had the support of the House. However, it transpired, in the course of the consideration of this bill—which, I have to say, was considered by quite a different composition of the Justice and Electoral Committee from the one that had previously considered the review of the last election. So there have been some changes of personnel. But in the meantime the Minister brought to the House a piece of legislation that had in it provisions for the EasyVote card to be written in. So the EasyVote card, instead of just being an administrative piece of apparatus, could actually have been part of the legislation.

The importance of the EasyVote card is that it allows people to come without any hindrance, without any obstruction, without any barrier to present their vote in a polling booth. They can hand over their EasyVote card and say “This is who I am.”—or not say it. They can just hand over their EasyVote card and simply demonstrate that this is who they are because they received it in the mail, according to the process. Where we have had in the past the one or two infringements of that practice—where the EasyVote card has been abused—that has been found. That has been caught out. There is not any evidence of large-scale fraud with the EasyVote card.

So now in this legislation we have barriers being put up. We have a provision now that says that people must go up and they must say their name. It does not matter if the polling clerk cannot understand, cannot spell it, has never heard it before, does not recognise the ethnicity of the person coming to vote, or if, as in the case of one person I know who contacted me yesterday, the person cannot speak. They have to say their name and present some other evidence that they are who they say they are, or provide a way of finding their name on the electoral roll, and then that must be verified.

What this does is to put barriers in the way of people voting. Everything else in this legislation we could have supported, but why did the Minister not wish to reinstate in the bill the passages that the select committee chose to delete? On reflection, some of us thought that was not such a good idea. Why did the Minister not choose to reinstate those provisions? They were there in her original. They were in her original bill. The select committee took them out. Some of us reflected on that, thought that was not a good idea, heard the cries of people around us who said “Hold on a minute—that’s not right.”, and came back to the Committee with Supplementary Order Papers that would have reinstated those very clauses that had been struck out, which were the Minister’s originally. We could have had a harmonious presentation at this third reading of the bill and great support across the House for this bill. But for some reason the Minister could not see fit to reinstate clauses that she had drafted and had included in the original draft of the legislation.

We remain concerned on this side of the House that there is now in this bill a disadvantage to people—a disadvantage and an additional barrier that the EasyVote card would have disposed of quickly. For that reason, the Labour Party will not be supporting this bill at the third reading. We wish we could. We should be able to. It was not beyond—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.