Local Electoral Matters Bill

E Te Māngai, thank you for letting the debate resume on the first reading of the Local Electoral Matters Bill. This bill enables a greater degree of civic participation in local elections, which is always a good thing. This bill gives authorities—local authorities—the ability to decide how they wish to best engage with their voters, and that’s always a good thing.

Under the current law, under the Local Electoral Act, there are two main forms of voting that currently occur, and those are postal voting and the polling booth, but the one we know the best, probably, in local areas is postal voting. There’s a bit of a reality check in that space in terms of how very low voter turnout is, particularly with postal voting. Largely, some of the barriers that are put in place with the requirement to vote by post prevent quite significant sectors of our communities from being actively engaged in some of the decisions that affect their daily lives: the time it takes to actually receive the letter in the mail, to read it through, and, more importantly, to actually post it. I recall, last local election, I actually drove around with my completed voting forms on the front seat of my car for about two weeks while I was looking around for a postbox, in between driving. I don’t know whether it’s because the National Government got rid of them all, but I couldn’t find a postbox where there’d been one previously—or the fact that the post only came three days a week.

But it’s those barriers, in terms of getting people to vote, that this bill looks at alleviating. It’s the fact that we’re able to actually have the possibility of online voting being trialled in a safe and controlled way that is quite exciting in this piece of legislation.

Now, there’s always a risk involved when people are attempting to use online methods for voting, and this has been taken into consideration. There’ve been examples—I know, recently, of Australia—where the security of data or the way that the online voting has occurred has been compromised, so it’s always very important, if we’re introducing new methods of voting, to be able to make sure those systems are robust and that people have faith that their voting is being counted and being done in a legitimate manner.

This bill enables small sections to be trialled, to give local authorities the confidence that the systems that they’re using are able to be relied upon. Through the enabling of this legislation, small groups can be targeted. So you could choose to be just looking at those who are overseas or just voters who may be disabled, who cannot get to the polling booth or be able to complete forms, or maybe even it may be trialled through our younger people, who are not engaging as much through postal voting.

This mechanism provides an ability to limit the risks of trialling a new voting method. The addition to doing this, as well, is that it also gives local authorities access to data to find out who is actually responding, and, by holding that data, which would be verified through a birth date, that means that they can use that data to best engage with those populations who they are not seeing coming forward during local elections. It’s always important to increase voter turnout, and some of the lowest turnout groups in communities are Māori, Pasifika, and young people.

There’s sort of an irony in that space, particularly with regard to young people. When I think of some of the initiatives that are currently happening within Hutt South that the council is seeking to engage with, it’s those initiatives that the next generation will be using the most. They are the ones that will be using our roads, they are the ones that will be benefiting from local projects like RiverLink, which looks to open up the Hutt River, to introduce flood protection, and to put in better traffic mechanisms like the Melling Link to enable more free-flowing traffic around those areas. It is the younger people in our communities that will be using those facilities into the future, and so it’s within our best interests to make sure that what we are building, what is happening, reflects the needs and the wants of those people that will be using those facilities.

So by having online voting and having a mechanism where everybody has the opportunity of engaging far more readily with their local authorities, we increase our chances of building a future New Zealand that meets the daily needs of our communities, and that’s got to be a good thing.

When I look, also, at how we best engage with voters and how we get the best turnout possible, when you look at the recent general election, there was a new ability there for voters to enrol and vote at the same time, and we did see a real increase in terms of voter turnout in younger people. So, again, by removing barriers—by making voting more accessible, more easy, and straightforward—we are always going to increase the levels of voter participation, and that has to be a good thing for New Zealand.

I would just like to conclude by wrapping up. There’s one piece of information that I read that really interested me, and it was that in 2016 a post-election voter awareness survey conducted by Auckland Council saw that 74 percent of respondents said they would prefer online voting to postal voting, and the results, when they were broken down by age group, went across all age categories. So there is a real desire within New Zealand for an increased ability for online voting to happen far more readily, and it’s encouraging to see that we have a piece of legislation here that enables that to happen in a way where local authorities have the ability to control how that is rolled out and to make sure that that data is kept safe, as required.

This will largely benefit, as I’ve said, the next generation, and the key point that I really believe in is that it’s so important that communities help shape the key amenities that they will be using for the future. That’s how we get smarter roads, that’s how we get parks that people use, and that’s how we get facilities and libraries that are meeting the needs of our people. We do that through voter engagement, through people saying what they want and councils taking that into consideration when they make changes and use ratepayers’ money.

I would like to commend this bill to the House, and I congratulate the Minister on taking a bold step in enabling local authorities to better engage with people and to build a country where everybody has the opportunity of using facilities they need. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. National supports this bill. It is very consistent with the work that the previous Government was undertaking with regard to making changes to the Local Electoral Act to provide for online voting. We support this bill but we support with caution the move to online voting.

A lot of work has been undertaken around the best way to engage New Zealanders in local elections—in elections and local elections. When I chaired the Justice and Electoral Committee a few years ago, we conducted a review into the general election. There were a number of submissions coming to us around the desirability of moving to online voting, and many reasons were given for that. One of those reasons was that it was the logical next step to allow for an engagement of New Zealanders. The second point was more focused on the engagement of those electors. I think that goes to the heart of the intent of changes to legislation to allow an online voting platform, and that is engagement of local electors. It is well-known to all of us that local elections are consistently declining in levels of engagement.

Now, the question about whether or not online voting is going to fix that or not is, I think, still open to discussion and, I think, probably not as a part of this piece of work, but no doubt submitters will raise it in select committee—the plethora of decisions that are presented to the voter. If I use our Order Paper, perhaps, just as a piece of paper, when I was confronted with my local authority voting papers in the last election, I was asked to make a decision around councillors, I was asked to make a decision around the licensing trust, and I was then asked to make a decision around the district health board. I didn’t know a lot of the names, even though I’m very familiar with my community, and, quite frankly, I would see this great number of decisions to be made all at once to be somewhat of a disincentive, as is the postal voting system, to voters. So that’s one thing that I believe Parliament and maybe the select committee should be considering. Also, it is the method. OK, we’ve got online voting on the table. We currently have a postal ballot. There are other methods of engaging voters that, perhaps, should be relooked at. Maybe we should go back to a ballot day. All of these issues were raised, and are raised, consistently in a number of contexts, and I predict that they will be raised in the context of this local electoral bill that we are debating at the moment.

So if I turn more specifically to the bill, the first part of the bill relates to better enabling a trial of internet voting, because it is recognised that, in some countries—Norway, for example, had a trial of internet voting, online voting, and have subsequently reverted back to a paper-based system over issues of integrity of the system. And if there’s one thing this Parliament—and I’m sure we can all agree—really wants to get right, it is to enhance and preserve the integrity of the voting system. So we need to be very mindful of international experiences, such as those as happened in Norway. It’s worth noting that the existing legislation already allows for a trial of online voting, but what this bill does is to allow that trial to take place, for example, in a ward—maybe in Auckland, maybe in New Plymouth—rather than across the whole district. That minimises, clearly, the risk if that trial is not successful. And I also think it’s important that a trial can be undertaken over a ward, because the last thing we need to do with our electoral system is to undermine public confidence in that system, because if a trial were to take place over a whole district—say New Plymouth District Council—and was found not to be as robust as was required, then the greater the area that was under trial, I think the greater the undermining of that particular form of voting, but also the electoral system could be. And I don’t think any of us want to risk that.

So we will support this bill to select committee. It does follow on from work under the previous Government. It is very consistent with our desire to see a more modernised system of voting which is more accessible to voters and is more welcoming to voters of all ages and circumstances. But we do need to be satisfied—we do want to be satisfied—that any shift to online voting is one that doesn’t compromise the integrity of people’s votes. Those people who engage in the democratic process do care about their communities. We want them to be able to vote with certainty.

The second part of the bill is a minor change only, and that enables age-related data to be able to be provided to local authorities in a format that they can use—in age bands. This will enable local authorities to have better information about their voting public, and so National also supports this part of the bill.

So we all look forward to submissions on this. We all look forward to being able to take a step forward in our electoral law and, potentially, improving engagement in local authority elections. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak for New Zealand First on this bill. I want to start by making a couple of comments. Firstly, I listened with interest to the last speaker on the ACC legislation. I’m going to put it on the record that I think the Hon Ruth Dyson is the best Minister for ACC that I’ve ever seen in all my time in Parliament, and I really appreciated the support we had down in Christchurch in those times.

I want to say, also, that this is one of a couple of bills that the Government is presenting, and they’re both linked, and it’s good to see the second one here, which seeks to reinstate the well-beings back into the Local Government Act—something that our party opposed, and I as a mayor was subjected to. It’ll be a very satisfying moment to see that legislation go through under this coalition Government.

The Local Electoral Matters Bill is a bit of bittersweet for New Zealand First. We are supporting this legislation, and we will be supporting the conversation that will ensue from the analysis of this bill by the select committee and the wider community, particularly the Local Government New Zealand community.

This bill, which aims to, principally, enable some changes to the methods of voting at local government elections is possibly somewhat overdue. Looking back at some of the more recent history under the last term of Government, it’s understandable why the honourable Minister Louise Upston had some concerns and did not progress this legislation.

I think, looking back on the history, it was very clear—if I step one step back again, it’s very obvious to everybody that there is something wrong with the local government elections when you consider that in the 2017 election, we had something like, amongst people in the cohort of 45 and over, a 79 percent turnout. Those aged 65-69—88.2 percent turnout. Those aged 70 and over, an 86.3 percent turnout.

Ironically, given all of the discussions as to how important young people feel it is to participate in Government and have their say and participate in formulating law and shaping this nation, the lowest turnout is in the cohort from 25 to 29, where less than two-thirds—some 67.6 percent—turned out to vote.

Now, if you look at those numbers for the general election and compare them to the turnout in the 2016 local authority elections, we’re looking at 43 percent for council and 42 percent for mayor—43 percent and 42 percent, as opposed to a turnout in the 2017 election, which sits up in the 80s. Something’s wrong.

Now, this legislation looks to enable—make it possible—for trials to be conducted within a frame of electronic voting. And I know that this has been something that some of my former family in Local Government New Zealand have championed and have thought would be the panacea and the silver bullet to overcoming this problem. I know it’s a view that’s held by many members of Parliament—that this is the silver bullet. This is going to shift the voting turnout in territorial authority elections from 40 percent to 80 percent.

Well, let me tell the House and put it on the record now exactly what I used to say as the Mayor of Carterton—and I’m looking across at the honourable member Lawrence Yule, who was the president of Local Government New Zealand at the time and was unfortunate enough to have to listen to me expressing my views as forcefully as I did on some occasions. I said it then, and I’ll say it now: this will not save the problem.

Electronic voting for local government elections in their current frame—and this is the message from New Zealand First, through the Hansard, to the committee. In the current frame, in the current structure of local government elections, this will not—electronic voting will not—solve the problem on its own.

Fundamentally, we need to accept that local government elections—it’s so good to look around this House and see other members of Parliament who have spent time in local government. There’s quite a few here. Fundamentally, the way New Zealand First sees it, is there’s two things that stand out when you look at local government elections and compare them to central government. One, local government elections are done by post. Well, therein is a problem. And for many, many years, both sides of the competing factions—left and right—have accused the others of rorting the system by having volunteers taking postal envelopes out of letterboxes of houses that are not occupied and submitting them.

Now, those are accusations that are thrown around quite regularly. But what they essentially say is that the postal system is able to be rorted. What I also see is that there is a lot of stuff that is posted out that never ever gets picked up by the person for whom it is intended, and if you look at the current housing crisis and look at the high transience levels of residents, and particularly those in low socio-economic groups and those who live in low socio-economic areas, we all know that there are many families who will change houses three to four times within an electoral cycle. So they will never see it. There is a high probability they may never receive their envelope. There is a clear possibility that someone else might receive it and fraudulently use it. Postal voting itself is an issue, and now with the denigration of services—and where I live, we only get rural post three times a week, and we’re only 6 kilometres out of Carterton. So postal voting is fraught.

There is another problem: central government elections are held on one day. We physically have to get out of bed, get dressed, get spruced up, go down to the polling booth, and cast our vote. That in itself lends an air of significance and importance and value to the day, and families do it together. Communities, rugby teams who have got a game on, netball teams that have got a game on—they talk about how they’re going to get their vote done and then get to the game, or get to the game and then, when mum and dad have got all the kids at the netball and the footy, organise themselves so they can be there for the Saturday morning netball, be there for the Saturday morning football if it’s on that particular day, and then still get their vote done. They talk about it. They plan it. Postal voting doesn’t give that opportunity—in fact, it provides a negative.

The next thing is the wad and the size of that booklet that comes in the mail, and God forbid I should ever have the misfortune to live in Auckland and have to handle one of those books that comes in my mailbox. Because you’re not only dealing with the mayor or the council, you’re dealing with the hospital boards and you’re dealing with the liquor licensing board and you’re dealing with the cat control board and the love-the-bird board and every other little board and every little community group that’s going—and Maureen Pugh is looking at me and smiling. We know what those books look like and most people look at them, open them, and say, “Who the hell are these people? I have no idea who these people are.” And they put it on the “too hard” place, which is the mantelpiece or in their little box where they keep all their incoming mail, and they say, “I’ll do it later.”, and they don’t. They don’t get around to it.

Some of us would argue that if territorial authorities elections day were held on one day and we physically had to get up and go and vote, and it was just about the council and just about the mayor, those stats would change enormously. Some would say that electronic voting is going to cure it all and fix it all. Well, I guess that’s what select committee process is all about. So I’d simply say to the select committee, good luck with your deliberations. Please listen to the submissions. Please analyse. Please apply some real common sense and think about the day that you go and vote in the general election and compare that to what we are confronted with in the territorial authority elections, and come back with an answer for us all. Because everybody across the entire House, I know, is keen to improve those unacceptable figures of 40 percent turnouts, but nobody that I’ve spoken to believes, including myself, that they have the full answer themselves. I say to the select committee—

I apologise to the member; your time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise in support of this bill, and I do agree with the principles of this bill and the discussion that it seeks to encourage, but that’s not entirely the foundation of my support, and indeed my party’s support. Instead, the support of this bill, as my colleagues before me have explained so well, is because the changes proposed in this bill are so minute, so unnecessary, and so uncontroversial that there’s no principled way that we couldn’t support this bill. The most significant changes proposed in this bill are in Part 1 of the bill, which seeks to better enable trials of internet voting, and in this context the word “significant” has a very loose meaning. It’s the 21st century and electoral systems around the world are having to adapt to the changing times, changing technology, and discussion around that are already happening, are they not?

Now if this bill was introducing a new system that allowed local bodies to trial online voting, it would be quite a significant change—but, no. The systems are already in place to let local government trial online alternative methods. The major change that this bill is proposing is to allow these changes to take place in a local ward rather than a whole district. Is that it? Six months into this new Government and all they offer in terms of change to local government is changing from a whole district to a ward. Like so many other bills that have been introduced by this Government, it makes such minor legislative changes that it’s a shame we’ve got to dedicate so much of Parliament’s time to not debating more pressing issues. But it is a discussion that we are having here late this afternoon, so I just want to make a few points in regards to the shift towards online voting and what this bill looks to encourage.

As I said before, it is a sign of the times that we having this discussion, and in principle we here on the side of the House are not opposed to the shift. However, there have been recent international examples of online voting that have not had great results. So we must keep in mind that the integrity of our voting system should be always to the fore and priority for us. There may be some unintended consequences or vulnerabilities that come with online voting, and we have to be very careful around that. It’s not clear that online voting will substantially increase voter turnout and engagement, so we have to have that absolute confidence that it will both increase participation and will be secure and so therefore we need to proceed with caution.

The fundamental question—and I’ll just elaborate some of the points that the previous speaker, Ron Mark, has made, actually, in regard to participation in local government. Some of the reasons for that participation rate being so low are not just around the idea or the concept that postal votes are onerous. That’s putting things far too simplistically. There are wider issues at play. The previous speaker is right, there’s a few of us sitting right here in the House—a few of us standing right here in the House—who have come from a local government background, and we’d know only too acutely the issues of complex voting systems. So when you get that ballot there are multiple voting systems at play: first past the post and single transferable vote all in the one spot. Ron Mark is also correct in regards to that very big fat election booklet. You do need several pairs of eyeglasses to get through that. As much as everyone’s bio notes are fantastic and very personalised, they’re also very long. That very thick booklet is immediately a turnoff.

We also have trust levels in terms of apathy towards local government and voting. I come from an Auckland Council background. By Auckland Council’s own admission and own polling, ways in which governance has been undertaken have undermined the trust levels of the public. It’s not just about onerous postal voting; there are other wider issues at play. So what we’re doing here on this side of the House is supporting this through to select committee so that we can further, and in a more detailed way, scrutinise the concept of—well, actually, we’ll only be scrutinising the concept of it opening up to wards, not just whole districts. But online voting itself needs a lot of scrutiny so that we get things right, the integrity of the system remains, and we can be secure in adapting changes going forward. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. We look forward to this going to scrutiny at the select committee process.

Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I feel like I might be the only one in this debate who hasn’t been in local government, but it sounds like a pretty great place and a great way to make a difference for your community. Given we’ve got a school group, I believe, or a sports group in the House, I think it is important to note the importance of local government to our community. This is where rates are paid, but what we as citizens get in return, of course, are roads and parks and plumbing and water. When it comes to our regional councils, they deal with where a factory can be built or what happens with the state of our environment or pollution in our rivers. So it’s a really important part of our community and our country. It’s different, of course, from where we are today, which is central government in Parliament, where laws are made, and central government deals with tax and police and education. So I hope you’re having a great time here at Parliament.

Now, it’s really important that we see more people participate in Government, and I mean both central, here in Parliament, but also local. At the last election, what we saw nationally was around 80 percent participation of enrolled voters cast a vote on election day. Compare that, though, with local government, which was 43 percent in 2016. That’s down from 57 percent in 1989. So what we’ve seen is a steady decline in the amount of people voting for those key, important issues, from roads to parks to forests to rivers.

Online voting has been presented as a potential solution. Now, I don’t think anyone in this House has suggested, or is suggesting, that it’s a silver bullet, but what we have seen overseas is that trials have been successful in increasing participation. Now, what people know is, of course, we trialled postal voting—instead of voting on election day like we do for Parliament, voting over a period through the postal system. That was effective as a short-term bump up, but it hasn’t been effective in the long term, obviously, with those declining participation rates.

This bill establishes a regime which allows trials of online voting for local government to occur. It also helps make it possible, through allowing date of birth information to be provided and, also, analysis of that information in age bands or age cohorts. So we welcome the bill. We think it’s an important thing to trial. I think it’s incredibly rich of the last speaker, Denise Lee, to be criticising this bill as too modest when, in fact, it was her Government and her colleague the Hon Louise Upston who stopped the trial back in 2016, which was a great opportunity to see if it could work across the country for those councils who chose it—terrible shame that it didn’t go ahead. So it’s incredibly unfair and deeply rich to be criticised by that member for a more modest bill when their Government actually stopped it.

So, look, I’ve been a big supporter of online voting in my career in Parliament. I’ve seen it work overseas. I’ve always noted the concerns, though. Now, I know Hillary Clinton’s been in the country recently, and she’d be quite a prominent advocate of the ability of Governments to influence elections being a critical issue that democracies and Parliaments and Governments need to face. What we must have is the integrity of our voting system. We can’t have certain individuals or certain foreign Governments influence elections through unfair means by, essentially, hacking the system. Other members such as Ron Mark have talked about the ability currently, through using a postal system, to have serious integrity questions raised.

So we support the trial. We want to make sure that it is secure. It appears that age or date of birth information is a critical requirement. We’re not like many European countries, which have a unique citizen identifier. I don’t think that’s something which is in line with New Zealand’s values or that many Governments would ever want to see here, so the security requirements are more difficult. We see potential solutions—for example, RealMe being adopted by the Government—so I’m really interested in hearing further from the Privacy Commissioner, who I note has raised serious concerns with this legislation, in the select committee. What we want is something that works but also, most importantly, is something which is safe and secure so all New Zealanders have confidence in their voting system.

Now, when we talk about online voting, no member has raised it as a silver bullet. It’s something which, hopefully, will encourage it. It isn’t a panacea for the problems. Now, what I would suggest and agree with some of the debate on is there probably are, potentially, more significant issues we as politicians, we as a country and as a democracy, could be raising to encourage democratic engagement. The engagement of you as New Zealanders in our country making those critical decisions—not you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.

I meant the future generations of New Zealanders. What we heard, in fact, in my select committee this morning was from the Children’s Commissioner, who was talking about the role of children’s advocacy in policy development in New Zealand. He told us what he had heard from New Zealand kids: that if it’s just consultation, it’s in fact not a true representation of children’s voices in the policy development. He said, “If it’s something about us that’s not with us, it’s done to us.” That was a strong message we heard. “If it’s just consulting, it’s insulting.” was a phrase we heard from some of the kids.

What we need to make sure of, I think, within local government and central government, is that when we are consulting, there is a genuine development process. I’ve, sadly, seen it in this Parliament, where literally 99 percent of submissions, including thousands of submissions, have been ignored by the majority on select committees. I’ve seen submitters disrespectfully treated in committee. What this House and what local government should be encouraging is genuine participation; respecting those voices. We want more people engaged in the political system, not just on election day or during the election week; across the whole system. We want to make sure that we’re taking advantage of new technology. In this case, it’s online voting, but in this House of Parliament we could be taking advantage of new technology to stream our select committees, for example, which is some work that the Office of the Clerk has been leading on, and I support that going further. We want more people being able to participate and see the work of this Parliament.

A constant criticism I hear from the public and many young people in New Zealand is that when they come to Parliament or when they watch it on telly, they see politicians fighting, butting heads, and trying to score petty political points rather than talking about the substantive issues. Now, what I often say is that it’s sad that people only see this side of the parliamentary or the legislative process. They don’t see us working around the select committee table—where MPs actually agree, where MPs try to find consensus, and where MPs collaborate. That’s why I’m a big supporter of live streaming—or one reason why: because people actually see us working together, coming up with the solutions, which is what I think they expect from their lawmakers; not just scoring points and acting the theatre of Parliament.

I guess one serious point I’d like to raise to all MPs is a challenge to us to also take responsibility for declining participation in New Zealand. It’s our behaviour, the way that we interact with the media, and the way that politics and our democracy is covered. We have a responsibility. We can’t just blame youth, for example, which I’ve heard often in this House, for being somewhat apathetic and for not being involved in their civic duty. We have a responsibility to act with integrity, to encourage those voices and people to participate.

Likewise with the way Government runs. I note that this Government has a goal of being the most open and transparent Government in our country’s history. I believe we could aim to reimagine the way that Governments, Parliaments, and lawmaking works. I was proud, many years ago, to be the first member to crowdsource a member’s bill, which related to internet rights and freedoms. This is a tool I think Governments could be taking more advantage of, actively involving a wide diversity of voices earlier on, and I think, actually, what we will get is better laws as a result.

So I look forward to hearing from the Privacy Commissioner, local government officials and representatives, and all New Zealanders in the select committee. It’s a really important debate to have: how we can achieve a trial of online voting while ensuring its integrity and the security of our democratic voice. It’s a step forward in our democracy that this bill is going through, I believe, unanimously tonight. I look forward to more Kiwis playing a role in their local government so that we get more playgrounds in our towns and cities—eh? Kia ora, kids.

This bill addresses, basically, the new voting methods for local elections and addresses the design, the trial, and also the analysis of new voting methods. It makes changes—minor changes—to both the Local Electoral Act and the main Electoral Act. This is not a huge bill. It’s focused on some small changes. It attempts to make it easier to trial new voting methods, mainly electronic voting.

Now, electronic voting, of course, is getting increasingly popular or important, simply because we are living in an increasingly digitised world. Just like people do online shopping, so people now go online to do many other things. I understand, now, half of the New Zealand population are doing online shopping, so people would believe that online voting will become increasingly popular or increasingly important. For that reason, the National Party will support the bill to select committee, to see more details.

However, on the other hand, we need to be a bit more cautious with regard to online voting, because in some countries, the Governments tried online voting, but then reverted back to traditional voting like postal voting. So online voting may not be almighty and may not be the best practice in some cases. As I mentioned, there are examples there in other countries, like in Norway, but also because we believe this bill could enable—enable—the trial of various voting methods. Now, there is a concern there because when you have various kinds of voting methods, people may get confused. It will then reduce turnout, instead of helping or increasing turnout, in local elections.

Turnout for local elections has been low, and we all know that, but is the traditional postal voting the main reason for the low turnout? I think that is an issue we can debate on, but, generally speaking, we believe that there are many reasons why people do not go to vote in the local elections. For example, some other speakers have mentioned that people do not know these candidates and, therefore, they do not feel connected. I think that’s perhaps one of the key reasons why people do not really go to vote in their local elections.

There are some other reasons. For example, people may not know the functions of local governments or local organisations. They may not feel that it’s important for them to participate—so that can be another reason—and some other people may feel that there is so much information that they can’t simply digest it and, therefore, they simply give up, like many other previous speakers have mentioned. And you may say that to new immigrants, it can be a challenge, because they are not used to the political situation and the political environment in New Zealand and, therefore, they may need more time to adjust and may need more help or assistance in getting them to better know the situation or the political system in New Zealand. Language can be another barrier, for example, because the information is largely in English and is in such a hefty booklet, people feel that it’s very hard for those who do not have a good mastery of English to understand the information.

So there are various reasons why people do not participate in local elections. Having said that, we believe it is important for us to enable people to vote and to make it easier for people to vote. For that reason, we support the bill to the select committee. Thank you.

I understand this is a split call—five minutes.

Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I think this has been a really interesting and really useful debate—the debate on this bill, which does a few things but has mainly focused on the merits of online voting. I want to make a couple of comments with a couple of different hats on, because this is, on the face of it, a logical, important modernising step in how our electoral system operates. You know, people have touched on the importance of civic engagement, breaking down the barriers to voting, the modernisation and use of new technologies in giving people options in how they cast their vote. What this bill does is it is not the introduction. I just want people out there listening to this to be clear.

This bill isn’t actually the introduction of an online voting scheme for New Zealand. It provides that opportunity to design, trial, and do analysis of new voting methods, and any next steps would require regulations and possibly other legislation. So this is an important step. I think the reason why I’ve stressed that is because in 2016 when there was a proposed trial of online voting in a number of local authorities throughout New Zealand, which seemed to be going to go ahead, that fell over and there were a number of reasons for that. I’m not as across as some members are of all of the detailed reasons for that, but security issues basically resulted in a pulling back from that. I think that’s an important point, and that’s where I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about that.

Participation in our electoral system is a key issue and a key reason for us to go down this track and to look at it. As Gareth Hughes pointed out, you know, New Zealand does have a reputation as being an open democracy, as being at the forefront of some participatory democracy—measures this Government is absolutely committed to—and with 21 percent of the population not participating in voting, people not participating in census and other democratic processes, it’s absolutely critical that we are looking really closely at this. We’ve also got the digital divides as well, where people have low participation or no digital engagement, so this is not something that’s going to work necessarily for them.

So there are some really good reasons to do it, but there are also some really good reasons to take care. For all of those techie people out there who are listening and saying “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” because of the security issues that they’ve raised before, again and again—and this goes to the “what happens” between when you cast your vote and when it gets counted and the potential for interruption in that process. We have to do it well. Blockchain technology may provide the opportunity for that.

I also want to stress to those people listening that no voting system is perfect—no voting system. Whether it’s postal, whether it’s casting your vote in a ballot box, whatever your system is of voting, it’s not perfect. But this is a logical step and I think it’s incumbent on us as a Parliament to be going down this track. I really value the contributions from across the House on this. I know there’s been a lot of thinking and I really value the contributions already at local government level in thinking about this, because it’s local government where there is a lot of the issue around participation and how we can get more people to engage with that.

To all you young people up there [Addresses the public gallery], listening to this debate, this is about your future. This is about how you can participate and make change happen in New Zealand, and your vote is so precious and so important. So we have to make sure that we’re doing it for you, that we’re doing all of the thinking for you. I urge there to be really well-thought-out contributions on this in the select committee process. It’s absolutely vital that we get all sides of this debate and that we really nut this out once and for all.

I’m thrilled, actually, to stand and talk on the Local Electoral Matters Bill. The National Party will be supporting it, as you’ve heard, going to the next stage of select committee.

I put it to members of this House that, really, what we’re dealing with is an evolution in the voting process to the next stage. We started off with polling booths, and we actually still have those for general elections—they’re still there—then we migrated to postal voting, and now we are looking at online in the mix. Now in the middle of that, we’re not saying that it’s one or the other; we’re providing a series of options for people to participate in democracy.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Louise Upston and the Hon Jacqui Dean for the work they did in the previous Government to look at this, and if it was simple and if it was easy, it would have been advanced further than it has been to date. As a former president of Local Government New Zealand, I had many discussions with those Ministers, and a fundamental part of that was actually around the integrity and security of the voting system.

If we get it wrong and if there is widespread corruption or fraud in the voting system, people actually lose confidence in that very same voting system. I agree with the member from New Zealand First the Hon Ron Mark that this is not a panacea, and nor is it likely to dramatically change the level of voter turnout, but what it is is giving—particularly, young people—an option to participate in democracy in a way that they may be more familiar with.

There is a risk of electoral fraud, currently, in terms of people taking postal voting papers. There was an amazing fraud, or electoral breach, really, in terms of the Australian census. The Australian census was completely corrupted by online hacking, right in the middle of when these two Ministers—the previous Ministers—were considering this. So as part of that, it is wise to be cautious, and we need to be very much focused on security. I also note that if you project out, in 20 years’ time, the postal service—if it even exists—will be very different to what it is now, so the electronic mechanism of transacting business will be very different to what it is now.

This is a trial. It allows partitioning of districts. It allows wards. It allows age-related data to be collected.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

As I was saying before the dinner break, for those that weren’t here, this is actually an evolutionary process of change to go from polling booth - type voting to postal voting, and now to include electronic voting in the mix. As I previously said, international evidence would suggest it won’t dramatically change voter turnout, but what it will do is allow—particularly, young people—an access system that’s available to help them vote. Also, I expect there will be further significant changes to the postal system, so in 20 years, I imagine that postal voting will be dramatically different to what it is now.

That being said, there are some future issues that I would encourage members of the Government parties to look at. One of them is the mixed-type arrangement of voting systems at local government elections. So there can be a different type of voting system for a hospital ward, a different type of voting system for a council, and a different type of voting system for a local board or a community board—often, alcohol licensing authorities or trusts—and, actually, when people get their voting packs, it is so confusing for most people that they don’t even know half the people or what to vote for.

So I would encourage the Government to look at that as a future work programme aligned to this bill, because, in my view, there is way too much information, there are actually too many choices to be made, and people are either disengaged by that or simply don’t vote appropriately with the power they’ve been given. For me, that often means that either people don’t vote or those that have a high profile get chosen because people can’t be bothered reading all the material, and when you get a pack in your voting thing that’s this thick, it is completely off-putting.

So to the members of the Government and for members of the select committee, while it might be outside the brief, it is my view that if we want to encourage participation in local government elections, we actually need to make it as easy as possible and the least complicated it possibly can be, and I encourage the Government to look at those changes through the select committee stage. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Having listened to the contributions of members who spoke before me, I think it is fitting for me to say that a certain level of consensus has been reached that this bill is a very important first step. This bill is about how to modernise our elections. It’s about e-enabled elections. So this bill is about moving e-democracy from a hypothetical vision to a possible established mechanism for online voting.

The bill seeks to achieve two main things. The first thing is, it will enable regulations to be made so that a voting method can be developed, and, secondly, it enables a certain kind of data analysis of voter participation involving age groups and other specific data in local elections. Changes under this bill provide flexibility while designing a trial of a certain kind of new method of voting to avoid the risk of designing a trial over a larger population.

Although this bill does not propose a certain kind of particular new voting method, online voting is obviously topical and we do have high-level expectations from the general public and, conversely, we do have escalating challenges for postal voting.

Advances in technologies such as social media, e-commerce, and the digital economy have changed our lives. The rise of the internet and e-commerce, the digital economy, and social media platforms have changed and transformed business and Governments’ and, certainly, individuals’ behaviour. New technologies such as a social media platform and cloud storage have changed the way data is to be collected, stored, used, and distributed. This has created many benefits but, at the same time, many challenges as well. We have covered these kinds of issues while debating another bill, the Privacy Bill, before this sitting block.

This bill is about how to modernise our elections and how to introduce possible e-enabled elections. For its proponents, online voting is a way for us to modernise elections. I can list at least three more reasons to support such a claim. Firstly, if we go to, say, the South Island, to the Hon Damien O’Connor’s electorate, we will appreciate that New Zealand is geographically extensive. We don’t necessarily have many metropolitan cities and it is not easy for voters to travel, and that’s certainly the case for Kiwis working or living overseas when coming to each election cycle. Secondly, it helps to facilitate access to the ballot box for those with difficulties accessing the station. Thirdly, as many members touched upon previously, online voting as a new method will definitely help engage more with young voters, although it is a big ask for us to say that online voting will be the silver bullet and it will be the solution to sort out all the problems or to help reverse the declining turnout in legislative elections worldwide.

It is important for us to have this bill to be introduced as the first step. Through the progress of this bill, and particularly through select committee progress where we will be able to look into the submissions, we would be better placed to understand the impact of online voting on young voters or generally on voting behaviour, especially among young voters. We would be better placed to understand the relationship between online voting, e-democracy, actual participation, and socio-economic factors such as age, gender, income, and education, etc. At the moment, we don’t have the necessary data to help guide us in that direction.

Previously, data sourced internationally would offer some further grim reading. For example, turnout for European Parliament elections has decreased each cycle, from a high of 61 percent in 1979 to close to 42 percent in 2014. However, increased turnout was observed following the introduction of online voting in the 2000 Arizona Democratic primary elections in the United States, in the 2012 Budget referendum in Brazil, and in Estonian local elections for the period of 2005 and 2009. In the Republic of Estonia, an online voting method known as i-voting provides a unique solution that simply and conveniently helps to engage with younger voters. In 2005, Estonia became the first country in the world to hold nationwide elections using online voting, and in 2007—

💬 Simon O’Connor: Which country?

Estonia. It made headlines as the first country to use the i-voting system in parliamentary elections. I-voting is a kind of system that enables voters to cast their votes from any internet-connected computer anywhere in the world. During the designated pre-voting period, the voter logs on using an ID card and casts a ballot. The system allows voters to vote as many times as they want, and since each vote cancels the last, the voter always has the option of updating his or her preference. The voter’s identity is removed from the ballot before it reaches the national electoral commission for counting, thereby ensuring anonymity, and that leads us to the second major issue under this bill, involving data analysis in terms of age groups and other factors such as voter participation.

While on this particular point, there are some ideas floated that it probably is about time for us to consider some ideas involving a unified national identification document. Now we have all sorts of identity documents, ranging from driver licences to passports. Arguments for identity documents are that it helps to avoid mismatching people and to fight against fraud, and arguments against such a kind of mechanism are, understandably, data privacy and associated costs.

New Zealand, together with Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, does not have such kinds of unified national identity documents. In Singapore, every citizen and permanent resident aged over 15 is required to register for such a kind of ID card. The card is necessary not only for procedures of State but also for day-to-day transactions. In Singapore, they use the ID cards at schools, for instance, to identify students, both online and in exams.

So this is a very important step. I look forward to the progress of this bill, and especially the submissions to the extraordinarily busy Justice Committee. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m very pleased to be standing here tonight to speak to the Local Electoral Matters Bill as part of its first reading. I have a history in local government, having spent 15 years on the Westland District Council, down in the great part of this country in the South Island, but I’m sure we’re all in agreement here in this House that our democracy is really only as effective as those who chose to participate make it. So it’s beholden on us to ensure that the system that it operates in is accessible and that people do participate in our democracy.

The figures from the Department of Internal Affairs show that voter turnout does continue to be higher for district councils than for city or regional councils, but all councils have seen a decline since 1989, which was when the local government reforms happened. One encouraging statistic in this year, when we celebrate 125 years of women’s suffrage here in New Zealand, is that the proportion of women who participate in the election process in local authorities is rising, and has been rising since 1989. So in 2016, in the last local government elections, the results show that it was the highest percentage of women candidates, which was 35 percent, and women elected, which was 38 percent, in the last 28 years, and I think that’s something to be quite proud of—that we are still managing to encourage women to participate in local democracy.

But what was also clear when I was researching some of the statistics was that rural councils tend to be much more engaged in the local democratic process than their metropolitan counterparts or their provincial counterparts. When I thought about it, I thought it’s probably more to do with those high-impact local issues that encourage people to get out and take part in their local democracy. I also found that in the years where there was a mayoral election, rather than when a mayor had been elected unopposed, it tended to bring out more participation in that local democratic process. So there were other factors that influenced whether people participated in their local body elections.

But whether or not people do engage, we should still be looking to the future and making it more accessible and evolving the process, as people in communities and technology evolve with us. But it does seem a bit ironic that the postal voting, which was brought in, seems to be the most passive way of casting your vote in local authorities. The information is delivered to you, you get to scrutinise the candidates in the candidate profiles that come out, and you cast your vote on your ballot paper and put it in an envelope, all at your leisure. So you have quite a time period in which to do that and to make your assessment and to do any research that you want. So it’s not an onerous process as we already have it, but I think, as I said, we still need to evolve with our electoral system as technology evolves.

There are some other stats that I thought I would show off about in the House tonight. In the great electorate of West Coast - Tasman, since—

💬 Hon Members: Fine electorate.

It would be inappropriate of me not to sing the praises of such a wonderful place. In the great West Coast - Tasman electorate, since the 2010 elections, we’ve gone from 62 percent voter turnout down to 50.9 percent—

💬 Greg O’Connor: In the mighty Buller?

—in the Buller—and in Grey, it has gone from 47.8 percent to 49.1 percent. That flies in the face of what I’ve just said about a mayoral election, because that mayor has been elected unopposed five times, but it still manages to get close to 50 percent voter turnout. And in Westland, it’s gone from 62.4 percent to 59 percent, and they’re great stats compared to some of our metropolitan and provincial councils.

But if there is a champion of local government elections turnout, that prize clearly goes to a small council in the electorate of my good friend and colleague the Hon Chris Finlayson, who is the list MP in Rongotai, and he looks after the Chathams. So the Chathams win the prize for the best local government turnout, where, in 2016—

💬 Tamati Coffey: No, Paul does. He’s the MP.

—I said “the list MP”—71.9 percent of voters in the Chathams sent in their votes.

Now I take the point that my former mayoral colleague Ron Mark made earlier in the night about the complication of electoral voting that you get in some of those bigger councils like Auckland—and I have been blessed with never having to have to deal with it. But I can imagine the size of the book that comes, the number of people that you have to review and assess. In the Chathams, it’s not such an onerous process. So I imagine that because it’s so simple and because there is less choice because they know everybody over there intimately, they vote. So 71.9 percent is a fantastic turnout in any democracy.

But we do need to keep evolving, and this bill does provide some ideas about how we bring about those changes. I’ve just attended the science forum in the Grand Hall tonight, and they were talking about some of the processes around transport and the transport infrastructure and planning. You know, we can plan so far, but we simply don’t know what we don’t know about where technology is going to take us. But this small step in the electoral process is going to be fairly painless. It is only a trial that will break down to a small component of a ward inside a local body area, so that we can test an online system. This bill is an omnibus bill, and it will amend the Local Electoral Act of 2001 so that the trial of online voting can go ahead. That is actually allowed under the existing Act, but it can’t be broken down to the size of a ward—rather, it’s allowed across a whole district. The omnibus bill also amends the Electoral Act of 1993, where it will enable the date of birth information to be used when designing future voting systems and the analysis of the participation by age group to be used.

The other clear stat that I’d like to share is around the level of engagement by people aged 18 to 35 years old. They are woefully under-represented, and we do need to find ways of encouraging them to vote. It is a little ironic that two weeks ago today, I believe, we were all celebrating with reverence Anzac Day and the sacrifice that our returned servicemen and women made to this country in defence of democracy. The participation by our young people over the years in Anzac Day services has been increasingly amazing to me, and the reverence with which they treat that day, but the very thing that our soldiers went off to defend for us—to enable us to have our democracy—is a little bit lost on them, I believe.

Some of us on this side of the House are a little cautious about the use of the internet for voting, and I certainly do, with my colleagues, share that caution, but I look forward to the debate going further into select committee about how we will preserve the privacy of the information that is used and the security of that information that is used. I know that the Justice and Electoral Committee, after the 2014 general election, did discuss online voting, and it was disregarded at that time, but it’s clearly here for us to debate tonight, and I have pleasure in commending the bill to the House. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is certainly a pleasure to have the final speaking slot for the Local Electoral Matters Bill this evening, and can I just start by acknowledging the Minister of Local Government, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, for her passion in the sector, but also for the start of, I guess, a suite of reforms, minor or otherwise, that are focused on assisting local government. It’s certainly a pleasure to know that this is the second piece of work, after the four well-beings that have been amended. However small, I believe this will have far-reaching positive outcomes.

I want to thank members of the Opposition—first and foremost those who have been a part of developing this, but also for their speeches, even though right at the beginning I was bit nervous. I’ve seen all of the speeches, and I was bit nervous that the member for Nelson was getting a little hysterical around what this bill was about, so it was a pleasure to see those who were in local government speaking this afternoon and this evening on the bill, saying, “Yes, we’re going to support it.” We’re going to acknowledge them and some of the work they did, and this Government will certainly finish off.

I want to acknowledge, also, Local Government New Zealand and SOLGM, the Society of Local Government Managers, who really are the interface between central and local government. It’s always hard hauling together local government into a room and saying, “Hey, what do you think?”, because that view isn’t a unified voice at all times.

I just want to start by reflecting on the legislation itself. When you look carefully, it certainly does talk about postal voting, and for those who have—look, we’ve heard it this evening, when several members have talked about their personal experiences about that: everything from not having, I guess, a postbox in your local street or neighbourhood any more to be able to post the form, to others who reflected on possible fraud, about people being able to take the voting papers out of the letterbox, sign them away for the candidate they’d like to see in, and find the post office or postbox to be able to post the form off. One of the improvements that I thought was great at the last local government elections was the ability to do some advance voting. Sometimes the practice defies the legislation and produces something that’s decent and practical.

The legislation also talks about polling booth voting, and this is where others have talked about the experiences that they have had when they’re in the local government elections and piling through that handbook of biographies—the best-written biographies you’ll ever read, because I know that candidates take a long, long time to put them together. But when it comes to central government, you’re back to the advance voting, yes, but you’re looking for the orange person to find your polling booth, and away you go. Many still treasure the experience of being able to really practise their democratic right to be able to vote, and they save up their big moment and still physically walk into the polling booth and make their vote. They did reduce. I know when I stood I was not struggling to find them, but I certainly noticed a reduction in polling booths around too.

So I think, really, the legislation envisaged and made provision for other methods, so it’s really only natural that methods such as electronic or online voting were always going to arrive for people to consider. I think it really picks up on those councils—there are several—who put their hand up to trial it, and that didn’t go ahead. I actually put my hand up to say no to the trial that the Wellington City Council put before elected members, because I was not confident that the trial would be robust enough, and several of you have talked about the great thing with what’s being proposed being that this trial will be able to develop regulations from that. We will be able to address the security issues, but also we will be able to ensure that those local bodies who choose to implement it can bring that work back and say, “Hey, this is what worked, and this is what didn’t work.”

I was saying to the Hon Ron Mark that one of my nervousnesses about the trial, and the reason I voted no then, was that if it went wrong, I was very nervous that the capital city of this country would be known, and googled away, and that, despite the great things in this city and region, it would be known for one thing only, and that was the corrupt or failed local council election of 2016. So, look, it didn’t go ahead. I won’t say the techies were right, but they certainly had their voice heard to say, “Hey, not right now.” The time is right now, because the process for doing this has changed, and therefore I think we will see the learnings implemented.

I love hearing stats, and we heard the previous speaker, Maureen Pugh, talk them through. Those are reality, because it is 41 percent here in the capital city. You would have thought that the political arousal that this place gives its residents and visitors would mean that more people would vote, but actually, no, it’s no better. But can I say I admire that little pocket of the Rongotai electorate which stands tall, and thanks to the member who said it’s got the highest voting population. There are only 600 people on that little wee island, but none the less those voters are important. I’d just like them to swing a little more to me next time, but there are still a few more years and a few more votes—

💬 Hon Member: They will.

—thank you—that I will be able to woo from them in my several trips down, and I will bring back not only fish and other seafood but votes as well, hopefully. [Looks at clock] I’m still ticking here—there we are.

One of the things that I do pick up from the trial is a real enthusiasm, because it’s tinged with that comment that lots of people have made too—that there’s no silver bullet. Part of this is not only about modernising the voting system; it’s also about improving civic participation and that democratic right. Minister Mahuta made that clear in her opening speech right at the start. That’s what underpins this piece of work and is driving the outcome from this bill going through the House.

I think it’s really key to note, actually, that this may spark a suite of initiatives through our education system that I think is needed, and that should complement the actual experience of voting. Once we see that, and the successes, I think we’ll see this become the norm. I’m certainly looking forward to my local council maybe even using the ward that I live in. It is full of controversy and residents that love speaking out about everything from, I don’t know, cycleways and anything else that they can get their teeth into.

💬 Hon Member: Don’t mention the war.

Don’t mention the “c” word. But look, it certainly would be a tool, and in fact they have used that tool now in other projects—such as cycleways—to get a steer on where to go.

This will be a piece of work that, when implemented at the next local government elections, will really define the future of how I think Kiwis will vote. It’s a pleasure to commend the bill. Kia ora.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.