Electoral Amendment Bill

As members of the Justice and Electoral Committee, we have debated and deliberated both the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill and also this, the Electoral Amendment Bill. What I specifically wanted to read into the Hansard and what I wanted the Minister in the chair, the Hon Mark Mitchell, to confirm is this from our select committee report. I am going to read it: “Māori Electoral Option We note that the bill does not respond to the Inquiry’s recommendation that the Government enable electors of Māori descent to change roll type once each electoral cycle, by providing for the Māori Electoral Option to take place every three years. We consider that implementing this recommendation would increase the ability of Māori to participate meaningfully in the election process. We received confirmation from the Minister of Justice that the Government would look at this issue for inclusion in a subsequent bill, intended to occur before the 2020 general election. We would like to see this issue progressed in time for the 2020 election.”

I want to have some confirmation from the Minister of that fact, because, as I noted earlier, there were 28 recommendations, and this bill actually encapsulates 12 of those. We have worked, I think, collaboratively to ensure that the necessary changes have been implemented for the 2017 general election, and I think the committee has taken its responsibility quite seriously in terms of working with the Electoral Commission and ensuring that all New Zealanders actually actively participate in our democratic process.

I want to take the opportunity to highlight one change that this bill will promote, and that is allowing electoral officials to use an online electronic roll look-up and roll mark-off function in voting places to enable real-time checking of voters’ enrolment status in polling places. The reason I highlight that is that we were told today in the select committee that over the last two elections early voting, which opens 2 weeks before election day, has gone from 14 percent in 2011 to just under 30 percent in 2014, and it is anticipated to reach 50 percent this year. That is actually incredibly significant.

I want to pick up the comments of the Minister in the Chair earlier about our recommendation as a committee to allow enrolment on election day and embedding this practice so that in the subsequent piece of legislation we do allow enrolment on election day. For 27,000 New Zealanders who chose to vote on election day and were not enrolled, their vote actually was not counted, was not part of the democratic process to determine who the ruling party is, and therefore who the Prime Minister of our country is, and also who the representative whom they want to represent them here in this House is.

All of us are here because of the mandate of the people whom we are here to serve, and I think quite genuinely that we do have some challenges to the democratic process. We were told today that we have 90 percent enrolment, but, in fact, we have got a huge problem at the moment with young voters—young people aged between 18 and 24. There are nearly 40,000 of those young people who are not enrolled. So, you know, if we do not address these issues, then in the future I think we are undermining the integrity of the process that enables us to speak in this House, to actually represent the needs and aspirations and interests of our constituents.

There are a number of things that this bill is trying to achieve that we obviously agree with, but I thought it was incumbent on me to particularly speak to those two points, because they are issues that I think are fundamental to the integrity of our electoral system going forward. Any new and innovative ways we can have to encourage people to, firstly, enrol, because that is the first challenge, and then, secondly, to actively participate by voting—it is incumbent upon us to do as much as we can.

We were told that in terms of e-voting and the use of modern technology—so this is enabling people to vote over the internet or to vote via text message—no jurisdiction in the world has currently got a regime that is safe enough for us to be able to move into that mode of engagement with our citizens. But it is something that the Electoral Commission has on its work programme. It definitely spoke about it today, but I do not think we are at the point where we can, for example, enable that. And I can understand why, because if we have not got a secure platform, then actually that does undermine the integrity of the system. It means that people will not have confidence in the integrity and administration of the Electoral Commission.

But I do want to take the opportunity to actually commend the Electoral Commission for the work that it does. Last year it had to deal with a by-election and also a referendum that tried to engage with the entire country. I know in the first referendum there was about a 46 percent turnout and in the second there was a 67 percent turnout. It used that process to try to enrol New Zealanders, and I think that is the challenge yet again: how can we ensure that all eligible citizens of our country are enrolled, and what we can do to encourage their participation, given the general election on 23 September this year? Thank you.

New Zealand First will continue to support this bill. It really does not do a great deal, to be honest, but what it does do is worth having, so we will support it. The bill is actually more notable for what it does not do than for what it does. It implements only 12 out of 28 recommendations made by the Justice and Electoral Committee and does not implement a number of things sought by the Electoral Commission either. I want to mention only two of them and to ask the Minister in the chair, Mark Mitchell, some questions about them.

The first is about the adequacy of the legislative provisions for dealing with emergencies. As we speak, there are still some very serious fires happening in Christchurch. They have occurred recently in other parts of the country as well. What if election day had been today or yesterday? I think there would be people in parts of Christchurch who would not really have had an opportunity to vote. I know that the current legislation does have some provisions about that, but the Electoral Commission raises concerns about it, says that we need to review it, and points to the seriousness of this. Today we have a good example, with those fires, of why it is serious and why it is urgent.

So my question to the Minister is: why has so little been done about that, and why has the Government not brought forward provisions in this legislation, in this bill, to address those very serious issues? I think the Government is just being lazy. It knows it needs to do this; it has not. It has chosen not to do it because it cannot be bothered, and it has a responsibility to do it. I want to know why it has not been done. After all, it has been nearly 3 years since the last election. That is quite a long period of time, and we have had a number of emergencies since then.

Take Kaikōura, for example, the earthquake there last year—only a few months ago. What would have happened to the people there if soon after that earthquake there had been an election or a by-election? Again, I am saying that these provisions need review. It is not that there is no provision there; it is that they are outdated and they definitely need to be changed. The Electoral Commission has said so, and New Zealand First is saying so. Why has it not been done?

The second issue is this—and it is the one that has been raised by some other people. It has been raised also by the Electoral Commission. It is the increasing vulnerability to security risks of the technology underpinning New Zealand’s electoral system. We all know that Russia, during the United States’ presidential election, was accused of, and almost0 certainly did, hack into the American electoral system and, possibly, compromised it. Whether it did or not does not matter. The fact that these things can happen, and are happening, around the world demonstrates again that this is a serious risk for elections here in New Zealand.

Again, I ask the Government, with the Electoral Commission having highlighted that years ago now, and with 3 years having passed since the last election, why has the Government not done a review of that so that it can assure New Zealanders that the New Zealand electoral system and its vulnerability in terms of technology supporting those elections—why has that not been reviewed? Why is the Government not now in a position to assure New Zealanders that we would be safe from some of the disadvantages that occur from the hacking and other skulduggery that occurs, both, possibly, from within New Zealand and from outside it. The only actions that I can identify are in the upcoming intelligence legislation, but that is really not targeted to this particular issue, and I want to ask the Government why it has not done more about that by now.

I have got only two, relatively brief, contributions to make on the Electoral Amendment Bill, and the first relates tangentially to an issue that my colleague Louisa Wall raised, and that is enrolling to vote on election day. I accept that there is divided opinion in the House over whether somebody who is not on the electoral roll should be able to enrol on the day. I personally believe that people should be allowed to enrol on the day. If they are voting early, they can enrol when they vote. There does not seem to me to be any logical sense now to then say: “But not if you enrol on election day itself.”

But the question that I have got is actually around the dormant roll. Even for members who might be opposed to somebody enrolling from scratch on the day, I ask whether somebody who is on the dormant roll—so they have been on the roll, but, for whatever reason, they have fallen off the roll. So it could be that their EasyVote pack was sent out to them, and then it bounced back because they have shifted address. Why could they not enrol on the day, because in many cases that is simply going to be a question of updating their contact details?

So it is not that they were not on the roll; it is that they were on the roll and have been taken off, and they may not even be aware that they have been taken off the roll because their contact details simply were not up to date. Why could we not allow for them to update their contact details and vote on the day? These are not people who are enrolling for the first time; these are people who often inadvertently simply find themselves off the roll. I wonder whether there is some appetite to at least consider that issue, if not the issue of enrolment—

💬 Hon David Parker: Three flats in 3 years.

That is right. I mean, people are moving around a lot at the moment, particularly people in certain areas, and, therefore, allowing them to update their details and vote on the day is not bringing somebody new on to the roll; it is simply reinstating somebody who has been taken off.

The second issue that I want to query as to whether it is going to be addressed in the other amendments being considered is the issue of selfies taken in the polling booth. With the changes to early voting to create the bubble, I guess, around early voting, it therefore brings up the issue around voters who want to take selfies. We have got a youth engagement issue when it comes to general elections: they do not show up and they do not vote. Actually, I have got no problem with them taking a selfie when they are voting, and thereby promoting the fact that they are voting, if that, therefore, encourages other people to get out there and vote. It seems to me a little bit antiquated for us to say that selfies in a polling booth are not allowed. I guess there must be a safeguard that a person’s selfie has to be just a selfie and it cannot be of somebody else casting their vote, because that interferes with their privacy.

💬 Kris Faafoi: That’s a photo.

That is a photo, not a selfie—yes. But if someone wants to take a selfie of themselves voting and use that to promote the fact that they have voted, and thereby encourage other people to vote as well, surely that is a good thing.

Therefore, with these new restrictions placed around early voting, I hope that that will not discourage the selfie behaviour, because, actually, those who voted early last time were able to do things—like selfies—that they could not have done if they had voted on the day, because of a loophole in the law. So by creating this new bubble around the advance voting polling places, I hope we are not going to inadvertently discourage a behaviour that is actually something we should be encouraging, which is to encourage people to do their civic—

💬 Hon David Parker: It shouldn’t say “Vote National” on their photo link.

Well, if they want to say whom they have voted for on the day, I actually think that is OK, and I know that that is going to be more contentious. But, certainly, at least saying that they have voted is something that we should encourage, and if it is not being considered as part of this bill, I know that there is another tranche of changes being considered, and I wonder whether it could be considered as part of that.

Mine will be a very brief contribution because Mr Hipkins stole most of what I wanted to say. But I want to make three comments. The first of those is to just come back to the question of enrolment on the day. I apologise, because I was not on the Justice and Electoral Committee and so I did not hear the debate there and I do not know whether the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Justice, has made any remarks on this. But I do think Mr Hipkins’ point bears emphasis, which is that now, because of the growth in advance voting, where you can enrol—when you go to advance vote, you can actually do your enrolment and cast your vote—there is no logical difference now between doing that and doing exactly the same thing on what happens to be polling day.

I understand that the Electoral Commission believes that nearly half of voters will advance vote at this coming election. That is great. We are giving people a lot more opportunity to exercise their democratic right. But we are now setting up two contradictory systems: one if you show up to cast your advance vote, and one if you show up to cast your vote on election day. I just do not think there is any logic any more to that at all.

I imagine that this clause probably owes its history to when it was much harder to process somebody who enrolled on election day. It was a pen and paper type of system, and you had to find a point at which you drew a line and said: “No, we’ve got an electoral roll that’s going to be printed on this day.” But we allow special votes. We allow people to enrol right up until the day before. That is great, that is terrific, and I support that. But now we are—in this legislation and in what we have done previously—effectively, setting up a contradictory system that differentiates between people who cast an advance vote and people who cast a vote on the day. I think that is anachronistic.

I think the time has come to simply say that we want people to participate in our elections. We desperately need more people to believe in democracy, for the reasons that Denis O’Rourke was talking about before. When we look around the world, people’s faith in democracy has been so diminished that they end up following political leaders whom many of us in this House would be deeply, deeply concerned about, and concerned about the things that they stand for. We need to make it as easy as possible, and it is within our reach now to allow people to participate by enrolling on the day that they vote. Fifty percent of people are going to have that opportunity and another 50 percent are not. That is contradictory and that is wrong in my view.

The other matter is also the question of social media, which was going to be the other point that I was going to raise as well. My view is that the taking of photographs and the exercise of voting is a good thing as long as it does not breach—and Mr Parker, I know, has a concern he has just articulated about it; giving away who you voted for and acting as a promotion of who you voted for. But the act of voting is incredible exciting for some people when it is their first time. Last time I cast my—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Not even just the first time.

Well, not just the first time either, that is right. Mr Lees-Galloway likes a selfie at any moment, and in the polling booth would just be another occasion for him to take a selfie—shaving, breakfast, whatever it is, he will have a selfie.

Particularly for young people casting their first vote, it is an exciting thing. I cast my vote at the last election as an advance vote at Victoria University, and the excitement that people had for their first vote was huge. They wanted to take that selfie of themselves, even holding the ballot paper and putting their finger over where they had made the mark—whatever it was. That is great—we should support that. It makes people feel good that they are part of the democratic process; we should not make up a rule that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to them. So I think that that is overly restrictive, and I do think that we should use social media generally better to help people understand the electoral process.

This brings me to my last point, which is not Labour Party policy—but I am going to make it, because I get the opportunity to say it right now—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Sit down, sit down!

Ring the bell!

💬 Jono Naylor: They’re all feeling very nervous now, Grant.

Ha, ha! I want to see the next round of the Justice and Electoral Committee election review after 2017 look much more seriously at online voting. We have to do it. I know and I understand the risks. It is why I am not saying we should do it right now, today, but if everyone in this Chamber trusts doing their banking online, and most of us do, then we should trust the ability to vote online. If we want to increase participation by a wide range of people in our society in voting, we will take seriously the challenge of making online voting a secure and real option at an election in New Zealand some time very soon.

It is not often in this House that you get the opportunity to repeat a recent speech without being accused of repetition, but on this occasion I am able to do so, because, having given my speech, we were then told that we were debating a different bill—

💬 Jono Naylor: It’s OK, we all heard it.

Ha, ha! Actually, I have made that sort of mistake before when it has been my mistake, but on this occasion it was not. Of course, the Minister in the chair, Mark Mitchell, because it turned out that we were debating the broadcasting bill rather than the electoral bill, did not have to respond to my comments, and I think the Minister should.

💬 Jono Naylor: He already did, under the other bill.

Ha, ha! I do not think that we should be maintaining two separate lists of New Zealanders whom we have information about, when we could actually have one. Virtually everyone in New Zealand who is eligible to vote has an IRD number, and we know that, overseas, the Inland Revenue roll is the basis for their electoral roll. We know that superannuitants have an IRD number, we know that everyone in work has an IRD number, we know that everyone who is a beneficiary has an IRD number, and everyone who has a student loan has an IRD number. We have almost a complete set of the people in New Zealand who are eligible to vote.

There are some problems in there. There are some people who have an IRD number who are not eligible to vote, so you have to sort that through. There are a couple of ways you could do that. You could work out whether it is actually an important enough number to worry about. It might actually be so infinitesimally small that you just ignore it and just change the law to let those people vote anyway, because it is not going to change the outcome, or you could actually just require a simple declaration when you vote that says “… and I am a resident, or citizen, or have been in New Zealand for more than 1 year”, which I think are the criteria to vote. If someone voted fraudulently in that situation, it would be just like any other fraudulent vote. No doubt, if there was an election outcome that came down to one vote, people would be scrutinising whether there were possibly some invalid votes, as already happens when you have got a close election and people are challenging whether people were enrolled in the right electorate or whether their vote was spoilt in some way as to mean that it ought not to have been counted.

I do not understand why we spend all of this money every 3 years to create a separate list of New Zealanders when we have already got a list at the IRD. I have raised this on a number of occasions. I think this is a great area where we could actually improve the number of people who are eligible to vote, whilst saving money for the Government. I heard the Hon Michael Woodhouse say that there are problems with that, but the point has to be made that some of the best democracies in the world, including Scandinavian counties, approach it on that basis. I really think that it is worthy of consideration, both to save money and to have better rolls.

I think it is becoming more and more important that as people, effectively, abandon their letterboxes—people do not get much stuff through the letterbox now, and their addresses are electronic. I am not sure that we actually need to have a residential address tied to everyone. I might have that wrong, because maybe, given physical constituencies, we need accuracy on that in advance of election day, but maybe, again, there could be just a declaration that “I live in the electorate”. Or when you fill it in, you put your address in—“I live at”, you know, in my case, “95 London St, Dunedin”, and when I put it in, that qualifies me to vote there if I have got an IRD number. We need to actually think some of these things through again, because I think we overly complicate this.

I am a little bit suspicious, in this regard, of the trend that we do see from time to time—I think we have to say this, although I am certainly not suggesting that we have a corrupt system in New Zealand. It is true that most of the people who are itinerant or are moving between three or four flats are likely to be lower-income people than people who are stable at one home that they live in for the whole time. There is a socio-economic dimension to that that means that the rules presently work to the benefit of those who attract the most votes from people who are better off. And, of course—this is poll proven—we all know that to be true, that in New Zealand, disproportionately, those higher-income people vote for the National Party, or parties of the right, and, disproportionately, a larger number of the people who are at the lower to middle income groups vote for the Labour Party and parties of the left. We do not want a bias in the way in which we have electoral outcomes based on those sorts of facts, and so we need to take special care that the people who are most often disenfranchised and unable to vote—actually, for the health of our democracy, we want to make sure that they have the opportunity to vote.

In case the National Government was worried that that is going to change the outcomes of the elections, in Australia they have compulsory voting. They have a very high rate of voter turnout. It is actually something that I wonder whether other democracies are going to consider over the forthcoming years, and I do not think anyone on either side should be scared of that as an outcome, because as you see in Australia you still get the same flip-flop from Government to Government as electors tire of one side and want to change sides. So I do not think that benefits any one particular side, but I do think that the legitimacy of democracies in the Western World is being undermined by the decreasing rate of voter turnout.

I think that the cynicism with which politics is regarded, partly because of the disintegration of current media models and the parody that we sometimes also make so easy—the fodder that we give to those who would parody us is so much more easily exploited. Fashions change, and as a consequence I think that there is a parlous decline in public confidence in democracy around the world. I for one really believe that that old saying, that the only thing worse than a democracy is the alternative, is actually a backhanded way of saying that democracy is incredibly important.

In order to maintain public confidence in democracy, we have got to maintain the highest rates of participation in elections as possible, and we should consider all of the measures, whether it be compulsory voting or different ways that we ensure that higher proportions of the population are enrolled. All of these things should be explored so that we can maintain public confidence in New Zealand’s democracy.

We can be a world leader in this area. We are one of the oldest unbroken democracies in the world—150 years without being broken by civil disturbance or internal wars. We really, really should be holding on to what we have here, which is so precious. I think our system is absolutely wonderful in New Zealand. It lacks some of the checks and balances that you see in other countries like the United States, but its checks and balances have become so unwieldy its democracy does not work.

We on the other hand have such a simple system that is even more reliant on being cleaned out by elections if there is a ruling party that gets it wrong. So in some ways our unicameral system, with so much power in the executive attached to the party that gains power—I think that we really have to do our utmost to maximise both enrolment and voter turnout at elections.

Can I just agree with my colleague David Parker—I actually think that we have a wonderful electoral system too, but it can obviously be better. I would like to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its work within this bill. I want to make my comments in context of some things that are particular to my electorate, because we had the most popular early voting booth in the country, in terms of raw numbers. So more people turned up to our early voting booth in Porirua than anywhere else in the country, which I think is a good thing.

It speaks to a good effort to get people on the roll. Obviously, people were keen to vote. My understanding was that just over 82 percent of people in the electorate voted, which I think would come as a surprise to a lot of people out there, given the nature of the electorate and the assumptions that may have been made. That is quite high, and the enrolment too in the electorate was also quite high at 94 percent. I think there is some wiggle room in there because I think some people, as Mr Parker said, may be transient and may no longer be at the addresses that they were—we certainly picked that up when we were out on the hustings, so we know there is work to do there.

But I just wanted to echo some of the comments, especially by my Wellington colleagues Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins. The first comment is around electronic voting. I think with Porirua—the city that is encompassed completely in my electorate—being the youngest city in the country we have to make sure that we encourage as many of those young people as possible to be interested in the political process.

They may not be enthused to go in and vote for their particular candidates on the particular day because they do not want to go to a polling booth, as we have traditionally done. But in the future, if they were enthused enough to take part in the political process and vote for whomever they like, having electronic voting—being able to vote via a laptop, via a device—I think, in the future, is something that this Parliament should seriously be looking at. Actually, I think it should seriously be further down the track than it already is because I think there is an opportunity for cynicism around politics to take hold in the country, especially with our younger voters.

It is up to us as politicians and candidates as to how we behave, and people will make judgments on that. They will make judgments not just by not voting but also by expressing their vote and also by having particular different ways of expressing their vote and a different way to going into a polling booth and voting on election day. I like having a paper ballot. That is the thing that I have grown up with. But that is not necessarily the way that it is going to be in the future. I am not young any more, but I think—

💬 Peeni Henare: No.

—thanks, Peeni—that we seriously need to have a look at electronic voting.

The second issue is the one that my colleague Chris Hipkins raised around selfies. I want to use that as another way to get into what we can and cannot do on election day. I do not want it to get to the stage where—I think that we have seen in Australia—you can literally run the gauntlet at polling booths and people are waving political banners in your face, but I think we have to be a little bit more open in this technological age of what we can and cannot do and what voters can and cannot do. Maybe it is fair that we restrict what political parties can do, but I think that to make sure that voting is normal and a good thing to do we should be a lot more open about what people can say and do with social media around the vote.

In essence, I think this is an improvement, but I still do not think we have quite cottoned on to where technology is and where people—and especially younger people—in New Zealand might be at in terms of participating in the democratic process. I think that once we do that—and, hopefully, it will not take too much longer; maybe in the 52nd Parliament we can address some of these issues—we will be able to be much closer to the voters and the voters will be much closer to us, and they will be able to send us a much more precise message at the polling booths on polling day.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I mentioned in my previous contribution that I would be standing up to make a significant contribution on the Electoral Amendment Bill.

💬 Jono Naylor: We’re waiting with bated breath.

Excellent. I want to support the members of the House who have talked about electronic voting. I cannot express just how much I was disappointed when the Electoral Commission decided to not put that on a priority list, but I did have a think to myself around the Government’s supposedly awesome roll-out of broadband. I wonder how the voters in Mitimiti might walk into the polling booth at Mātihetihe School—you can look that one up—go to vote, and there is no internet connection. I just wonder how that might affect some of the advances in electronic voting, which I think is the way to engage not only the young people but also those of an older demographic.

One of the confusing things that I always hear about from my constituents who come into my office—sure, there is a confusion about the Māori roll and the general roll. What is even more confusing is how a Māori electorate covers so many general electorates. One of my constituents who lives in Epsom went in to vote and was told that there were no forms there for them to vote for their Māori member, and that they had to cast a special vote. I raise that case because I see in this amendment bill here that the ability to opt for the Māori roll is not a priority at this particular election. I would like to think that, come 2020, we will be able to make it an option at each election for those who wish to, to opt on—or opt off, for that matter—the Māori roll. I think that is a broader step in tidying up what I think are some confusing or grey areas for Māori voters. If we can do that, I think we will raise the number of Māori voters.

We have already heard how our democracy is in crisis when fewer people get out to vote. With this focus around the Māori electorate option for 2020, I wonder—just as a question to the Minister in the chair—in last year’s Budget, $5 million was set aside to increase Māori voter participation. I just want to ask: where is it? Is this it—we are going to propose, in an electoral amendment bill, to simply tidy up or allow for a more regular opportunity for Māori voters to opt on to or off the roll? How is that going to increase Māori participation in the democratic process and in voting here in Aotearoa New Zealand? Five million dollars—I have not seen a strategy. I have not seen a plan. I think the only recommendation I have seen or heard is that polling booths should be on a marae. You do not need to pay $5 million to get that kind of advice.

That is a broader challenge around Māori participation. I was disappointed that there were not many Māori who—actually, I do not think there were any, if I recall correctly—made a submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee. I will certainly be encouraging as many of my constituents as possible to make a contribution to the next bill.

That brings me to my next point. I wonder why it has taken a full parliamentary term to get to this point. We are making changes, some of them substantial changes, to our election process—which will take place in September of this year—once again in such a short time frame, and we expect voters to understand them. I am not saying that all voters are ignorant of the voting process, or that it will cause a state of confusion and wide chaos, but what I am saying is that we have had 3 years and have only just come to this point.

I was one of the early members on the Justice and Electoral Committee, and this legislation was the first piece of work that we entered into. That was over 2 years ago, and here we are now, with amendments that only look into 12 of the 28 recommendations—after 2 and a bit years! I do not know whether that is a process or whether that is a common occurrence when each election is reviewed, but I am a little bit disappointed that, leading into an election that is not too far away—on 23 September 2017—people are not more aware of this bill that we are proposing. They are not sure about where the future of voting lies.

Just as my final point, I want to touch on the comments made by the Hon David Parker around the IRD as a register of where our citizens are. I agree with that, and I want to marry that comment with the comment around technology, because the Justice and Electoral Committee, in its review, decided to have a look at RealMe and the process of registering for RealMe to be able to engage with Government websites with personal, authenticated identification. We all had a task in front of us to go and register a RealMe account.

💬 Hon David Parker: Driver’s licence.

That was harder than voting—that was harder than sitting your driver’s licence. It was not easy for people to go down and get RealMe identification. You can go online and you can start the process, but then you still have to go down to the post office to finish it, to authenticate it. For the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee, we all found barriers somewhere along that process. So I think that if we could marry the technology discussion with the point made by my colleague Mr Parker around the IRD number, we will kill two birds with one stone, perhaps.

I want to close here by saying that we do support this particular bill, but we are disappointed that only 12 of the 28 recommendations will be seen through.

I just want to take the time very quickly to address some of the issues that have been raised, but I would like to start by acknowledging the Hon David Parker and the comments that he made about vote of confidence and making sure that people want to engage and have confidence in our electoral system. I think it is really important that there is a commitment, and a commitment does exist in this House to carry on a programme of legislative updating. There is obviously clearly a commitment to do that next term, for 2020, as well. I think that quite a few of the issues that have been raised and discussed here in the Chamber this afternoon are ones that will find themselves on the agenda for any legislative update in 2020.

I just wanted to address the issues raised by Mr O’Rourke around the ability for other State actors to interfere in our electorate system. I think that it is a very good point that he raised, and it probably comes back to the points that have been talked about here today around online voting and the fact that there may be opportunities to interfere with a country’s electoral system, especially through an internet-based online voting type of system. I think we need to be very conscious of making sure that we have done all that we can so that if we ever go online the integrity of that system is 100 percent.

At the moment we have a paper-based system, so a lot of that risk is mitigated through the fact that we do actually operate primarily a paper-based system in our electoral system. The other thing that I will say is that the Electoral Commission is very aware of these types of threats and risks. It has got a very robust programme itself, in making sure that it identifies, mitigates, and manages those risks.

I wanted to come back to Mr Robertson’s comments around on-the-day registration. I think that there is recognition that we should be moving towards this, but the Electoral Commission was very clear about the fact that there is a risk in trying to protect and make sure that the integrity of that information and data that is collected on election day does not interfere with the process of actually counting the votes, thereby actually pushing the process out.

There is a good argument that can be made that this could be addressed before 2020, especially in light of the fact that we see there is a trend of people moving towards early voting. There was fair bit of discussion about selfies. I would have to say there is a fair bit of risk around that. Someone mentioned Mr Iain Lees-Galloway. He would try to photobomb anyone who was trying to take a selfie.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: There’d certainly be a risk involved if I tried to take a selfie whilst I was shaving.

There’s definitely a risk involved in that. The other point that I finally wanted to finish on was just the point around the IRD. I think that in the Hon David Parker’s speech he even highlighted some of the issues around this. That is, who would be eligible, who would not be eligible, and also I think there are probably some privacy issues that would have to be looked at in terms of an automatic enrolment—but I think it is a good point and one that I am sure would find itself on the agenda for the 2020 review.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill without amendment, and the Electoral Amendment Bill without amendment.

Report adopted.