Electoral Amendment Bill

I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

I’m heartened by the speeches from the members opposite in the last matter the House considered, because the great celebration of democracy that they expressed in their speeches actually lies at the heart of this bill. This bill is about enhancing our democracy. It is about—to use the title of a previous piece of legislation we enacted last year—electoral integrity. It brings fairness to voting across the board. So at the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill will be reported to the House by 16 December 2019.

This bill, as I said, will enhance our electoral system by making changes to make it easier to vote. So this bill does a number of things that will help New Zealanders’ voting experience. It is an obligation on this House when it is considering electoral law and the laws governing people’s right to vote to make sure that we maximise the ability and the opportunity for people to vote. That means enrolling to vote, because that is, of course, the starting point, and notwithstanding the somewhat kind of mandatory requirement to enrol to vote, actually, it’s something that a lot of people miss out on. They don’t get round to it or they leave it till too late, and we had the situation in 2017 where 19,000 people turned up to vote on election day—on the Saturday that was the nominated, designated election day—and had not enrolled, and they could not vote. They actually did vote, but their votes didn’t count. Here’s the thing; here’s the rub: in the advance voting period, a whole bunch of other people—thousands of people—who when they turned up to the voting booth had not enrolled were able to both enrol and vote.

I’ve seen some public comments from members opposite who seem to be horrified at this bill making it easier for people to cast their vote by enrolling and voting at the same time, not just in the advance voting period but on voting day itself. That’s what this bill does.

Now, I am sure I misread what I have seen in the newspapers and online. I am sure that after the speeches we’ve heard this afternoon in this House, members will be leaping up to say “That’s right, Minister of Justice. You’ve got it right. This is just what we need to add fairness to our voting system and to make sure that every voter is treated fairly.”, because, you see, here’s the other thing: as we head into the 2020 general election—which is very important for all of New Zealand—whereas in the 2017 general election we saw 47 percent of voters casting their vote ahead of the designated election day, we are now projecting that up to 65 percent of voters will cast their vote in the advance voting period, leaving 35 percent to cast their vote on election day. So it is no longer defensible to have one rule for the 65 percent who vote before the designated election day and a separate rule for the 35 percent who vote on election day.

I am pretty sure, given the speeches we’ve heard this afternoon, that members opposite will of course have to say that that’s right, because if a voting system is going to be credible and if it has integrity, we cannot have different rules for different voters, depending on what day they vote. That is indefensible. That is wrong. So this bill seeks to remedy that particular mischief.

It does other things as well. It actually enables the Electoral Commission to put polling booths in places where currently they cannot. So places that sell liquor on election day, like supermarkets, cannot be used for voting, and yet, actually, on Saturdays, which is still the designated voting day, that is where hundreds of thousands of people go, because doing your grocery shopping on a Saturday is a pretty common thing for most Kiwis to do. So why wouldn’t we make it easier for them to vote by shifting voting booths to where they are in their hundreds of thousands?

Of course people will turn up to the school hall—and if you have kids at the particular school you’ll be used to it, but a lot of people aren’t—and of course we will still have voting booths in the community halls, but not a lot of people go to community halls in their routine weekly endeavours these days. But they do go to the supermarket, so why wouldn’t we make it easier for voters to be able to cast their vote and do so at a supermarket or at a place that would sell liquor? Now, there is a restraint on that. It has to be a place that even though it sells liquor, liquor cannot be consumed there, which makes it ideal for malls and supermarkets and the like.

So this bill is about enhancing our democracy. It makes it easier for voters to enrol and also to vote.

I did hear an argument in the public dispatches, and I don’t know whether it came from a member opposite. I’m pretty sure after I’ve heard the speeches this afternoon that it wouldn’t have done, but I did hear an argument that said “Well, what is it that Labour’s trying to get? If they’re trying to introduce this fairness measure, are they trying to get more people to vote?”, as if it was something that was wrong. It was as if the system that we’ve got at the moment that is shutting people out—19,000 people in 2017—from casting their democratic right was somehow OK, and, of course, it’s not. We have to remedy that, and that’s what this bill does.

So I think it is great that we are getting to grips with modern changes in people’s patterns of life. This is the way people are—they don’t get round to enrolling. I mean, it doesn’t help, of course, that with the prisoner voting legislation that the previous Government passed, some people are not just denied the opportunity to vote but they are struck off the roll completely, which is the problem.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Oh!

That was a National Party initiative—that was a National Party initiative. The National Party—unfortunately—historically, typically did not care about some people’s right to vote. I know they’ve turned the page on that. I know they’ve turned a new leaf. When you heard them this afternoon, it was very clear that this current generation of National MPs have abandoned their historical past and they actually want to enhance democracy, and I welcome that. I welcome that. I am so looking forward to the great speeches they are going to give this afternoon, because they are going to be amazing—amazing—celebrations of democracy, because they are well rehearsed now. They’ve had a good run at it. Nick Smith’s got his blood pressure up. He’ll have a great performance this afternoon, and that will be very good.

So this legislation makes it easier to vote by changing the enrolment and voting processes—particularly for election day—but also by making sure that there are more venues where people can cast their vote.

There are a couple of other technical changes too, that are in relation to the liquor licensing. As long as the place sells alcohol but you can’t consumer it there, then that’s a place where you can vote, but it also has to provide for the counting of votes for those booths because, typically, they cannot be counted on site. So the bill provides for the Electoral Commission and the Chief Electoral Officer themselves or to mandate others to take the votes that have been cast in the ballot box—under security, no doubt—and move them to another place for the counting, and I think that will be very helpful, as well.

The other thing the bill does that is very important is it updates and upgrades the current provisions on handling an emergency—a civil emergency or a weather emergency or call it what you like. There are provisions at the moment, but it means that the electoral officer for the particular electorate has to make a variety of decisions, and if you have a civil emergency like a weather emergency—a mass flooding or something that disrupts multiple electorates—you’ve got to line up all the electoral officers in each of those areas to make a decision. This allows the Chief Electoral Officer to make decisions dealing with emergencies that arise that have an impact on people’s ability to vote.

What it says is that if there is a major emergency that requires perhaps closing voting booths and voting places or shifting them around, then the Chief Electoral Officer can do that, and there is a consultation process with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. It is not for them to veto it and not for them to make the decision, but as a kind of a courtesy at least and to make sure that everybody is plugged in to the fact that when emergencies are of a significant nature and size and changes have to be made, then the Chief Electoral Officer will consult those two. It’s got to be even-handed, it’s non-political, it’s neutral, but it means that everybody gets to know what is going on. So it does that.

There are a couple of other technical changes in it about pushing out the vote count, because if we’re going to have enrolment and election on the same day, then we need to push out the period in which the returning officers can conduct the vote and make their return of the writ. So it does that, as well.

So this is about thinking very carefully about changes that are happening, changes about people’s patterns of life, and changes in the weather. The risk of weather events now interrupting an election is very high, and we need to be able to provide for it by giving the Chief Electoral Officer the power to make relevant decisions. So all that is there.

It goes to the select committee and it will be scrutinised very carefully, I know. These changes are very important for the integrity of the 2020 general election and the elections beyond. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is another shonky chapter in the very poor process that this Government has had in respect of electoral law. If we take the first issue around process, every Government electoral bill that was introduced in the last nine years of the previous Government, or in the nine years of the Bolger-Shipley Government, involved consultation with all parties. This is not the first; this is not the second; this is the third time the Minister of Justice has introduced electoral law changes without any consultation with the Opposition at all.

Now, we could take from the speech that we just heard from Shane Jones that this Government’s view of electoral law can be summed up by Shane Jones with these words: “We won, you lost, eat that.” That’s their constitutional priority around electoral law. If we want to cheat and screw the scrum to win the next election by changing the electoral law to advantage ourselves, well that’s what we’re entitled to do, because we have a majority in the Parliament. Then we even heard worse from Tracey Martin from New Zealand First, who said these words: “You cannot trust the Parliament.”—you can trust the Government, but you cannot trust the Parliament. What sort of arrogance and anti-democratic views we now have in the Government that purports to represent New Zealand.

When we come to electoral law, here are the important considerations that we on this side of the House sign up to. The first of those is that we want to maximise the participation. We want to ensure that every New Zealander who’s eligible to vote is able to vote. Equally so, we would argue that we want an electoral system with integrity. We want to make sure that people can’t cheat, that people that aren’t eligible to vote aren’t able to get into the electoral system. Then the third key priority for National is that we have an efficient and fair electoral law.

Now, I want to draw attention to the process around this bill and the conventions of this Parliament. After every election, we have a Justice Committee inquiry, and the normal process—the process that’s been adopted in the previous Parliaments all the way back to World War II—is that after an election, there’s a select committee inquiry where we work cooperatively across the Parliament as to how we can improve electoral law. We make recommendations to the Parliament, and the Government then brings a bill to the House. None of that process has been followed. All of the issues in this bill are currently before the Justice Committee. The Government has jumped the gun ahead of that Justice Committee process.

The part that had me choking on my Kornies was when the Minister said that the reason the Justice Committee has not completed its inquiry into the 2017 election is National’s fault. Well, let me put the record very clear. The Justice Committee, of which Raymond Huo was the chair, did not even start the inquiry until September of 2018. Whose fault was it that nothing was done for the first year? The Labour chair of the committee did not put the item on the agenda. Then we’ve had six changes in the chair of the Justice Committee. We’ve got the fiasco of the Justice Committee having a chair of the committee who has not heard a single submission. [Interruption] Mr Greg O’Connor disputes that. It is absolutely true that we are now on to the sixth chair of the inquiry into the 2017 election.

Then I say to the House, in respect of that inquiry, the Minister, who accused us after of going too slow, writes to the committee in December last year and extends its terms of reference. Then the ultimate bad faith from members of the Government on that select committee inquiry into the 2017 election was the decision for Labour to substitute one of its members for Jami-Lee Ross, whose sole purpose is to carry out—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry to interrupt the member, but it would be very advantageous if he could speak to the bill.

It is the longstanding practice that electoral reform bills follow the Justice Committee. The Minister has said that the reason this bill is being introduced to pre-empt that process is because of that Justice Committee process, and that is why it is entirely appropriate that I address that.

Now, the first provision of this bill takes an exception to what is the practice in other democracies such as Australia, such as the United Kingdom, such as the European community. In all of those democracies, people are required to enrol before polling day. The question that I have for members opposite is: why does New Zealand want to step away from the electoral norm? What is the point in having a law that requires people to enrol if we say with this bill that you can enrol and vote at the same time? There’s a very simple incentive that goes with this bill, and that is if you can enrol and vote at the same time, why would any New Zealander bother to enrol in advance?

The second point on the provisions around same-day enrolment and voting is that the Electoral Commission has said that they cannot provide the writ and the result of the elections for another 10 days. It’s only been mentioned by the Minister today—he never mentioned it when he put his press release out. The implication of same-day enrolment is that the writ for the election results is going to be delayed by 10 days. That is 10 days less in which we have a Government. That’s 10 days more that we have bureaucrats twiddling their thumbs at a cost of tens of millions of dollars each day. Why should the formation of Government be delayed because people are not meeting their legal requirement to enrol prior to voting day?

I also want to say there’s a dual right that goes with elections. As candidates in this Parliament have a right to be known by the voters in advance of an election, equally candidates have a right to be able to make contact, to be able to write to voters, and to be able to communicate with them. How can candidates communicate with voters if they are not required to enrol?

Then we come to the second provision of the bill, which National members support and are quite relaxed about, and that is in respect of allowing premises that have an alcohol licence—to give a greater flexibility for those places being able to be polling booths. We have no difficulty in that regard. We do want to scrutinise at select committee the issue around votes not being counted at the polling place. It is a longstanding provision that the votes are counted in the same place in which the polling results actually occur. Then in the bill, the bill gives very wide powers for returning officers to be able to override other provisions in the Electoral Act in respect of issues of where there is disruption from a storm or event or something else. It is our view that the Leader of the Opposition should be consulted, and that is not provided for in this bill.

New Zealand is very unusual. You couldn’t introduce a bill like this into the Australian, the American, or many other Parliaments. We don’t have a constitution. We run our electoral system on conventions, and those conventions are that we work on a cross-party basis to try and develop the very best of electoral law. What this Government has done once with the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill, secondly with the Electoral Referendum Bill, and now with this Electoral Amendment Bill is to provide absolutely zero consultation with the largest party in this Parliament. I’ve a simple message for members opposite: electoral law is not a plaything for the Government of the day. You don’t get to pick and choose the Electoral Commission recommendations that might advance your own re-election. We need to have some respect for electoral law and ensure that we have an electoral system that serves our country well—

I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but the time for his contribution has ended.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call and be part of the fiery debate that’s been going in the House this afternoon. Of course, this is the first reading of the Electoral Amendment Bill, and, like the Hon Andrew Little—I was going to call him his Māori name, but Andrew Little—laid out, it has four parts. I want to address the four parts, but I want to just reply to some of the challenges that that particular member, Nick Smith—an experienced member in this House—raised.

Can I just say, this Thursday will be a week since I’ve been the chair of the Justice Committee, and I’m proud of the work that previous members have done and the amount of work that they’ve put through this House in terms of the 19 bills that have come through this House. We’re not a committee that is shy of hard work. So this particular bill, the Electoral Amendment Bill—I’m pleased that as part of the coalition Government, we tackle the big issues, and voter participation is a big issue. It is an issue that this side of the House thinks is important for not just next year’s general election but beyond that. We are talking about improving our electoral system in this country, which goes beyond the three-year cycle.

The Minister outlined there are four key components of this bill. He talked about the election day—vote and register on the same day. I have a story of my own 19-year-old son going to vote in an advance vote, only to find out that he wasn’t registered. So we thought that we could register and he cast his vote. We got told that his party vote was accepted but not his candidate vote, so him and I have this kind of joke that he wasn’t able to vote for his mum in the last 2017 vote. But it goes to show there are sectors of our community that do miss out, and this bill is attempting to make that experience of rocking on up to the election poll on election day and find that you haven’t registered to not only vote but to also cast your vote, and that’s what this bill is attempting to do. I’m surprised that all members of this House don’t see value in allowing all voters in this country who are eligible—18 years and over—to have the ability to vote and register on election day.

The bill also talks about the extra places that the Minister canvassed—he talked about, obviously, supermarkets, but we’ve got community halls—to give the Electoral Commission the flexibility to have venues that are fit for purpose for a voter experience, and so this bill talks about expanding the range of premises that can be used as voting places. Of course, the other area is improving voter issuing and return processes, like a register, and we talk in parts in this bill about the ongoing work that the Electoral Commission is doing by 2023 of instituting an electronic register. But in this election for 2020, we want to make sure that we are ensuring that the ordinary vote that’s issued is found on the electoral roll at the time and allows, again, those first-time voters, or voters who thought they were registered, the mechanisms in which they can turn up and vote and have their register, electronically or likewise, acknowledged.

The fourth area is the disruptive powers given to the commission. For me personally, I’m keen when we go out for consultation on this bill that submitters actually have an input into the width and the breadth of the powers that we are updating for the Chief Electoral Officer in terms of what constitutes a disruption to, obviously, voting day and how that is managed. So there is a whole list of provisions in this bill that talks about the disruption to the voting experience and the role that the Chief Electoral Officer will play in either moving or making decisions.

Now, on that side of the House, we had the Hon Nick Smith talk about the involvement of the Opposition leader in that decision making. Well, you know, we could put that to the select committee and hear from people, New Zealanders, about whether they think that’s practical or whether that will work. In terms of some of the other comments that Dr Smith talked about in terms of process, when I reference in my contribution to this particular debate, I’m using the departmental disclosure statement. Obviously, we’ve all got that in the House. But the first question talks about what available inquiries or reviews or reports have gone in to inform this particular bill, and there’s not one report, there’s not two reports, but there’s actually three.

There’s three reports that have gone in to inform this bill. They are the Report of the Electoral Commission on the 2014 General Election, Electoral Commission, April 2015; there’s the Inquiry into the 2014 General Election, Justice and Electoral Committee, which was chaired by Jacqui Dean, in April 2016; and then the third report was the Report of the Electoral Commission on the 2017 General Election, Electoral Commission, April 2018. So the concerns on that side of the House that this bill has been put together without any information from outside reports, I guess, by the study in this departmental—it completely nullifies those statements, because clearly it says that there have been three reports that have gone into this particular bill. It also has come up, and Dr Smith raised it, that the Minister wrote to the Justice Committee in December last year, inviting them to examine the Electoral Commission’s report, and, of course, we’ve heard that nothing came back.

So this is a Government that is committed to doing the right thing, that takes action, and that wants to ensure that our electoral system is voter-friendly and that all people, no matter where they are in this country, can participate in our general election in 2020 but beyond. This bill, in its simplicity, does address those key areas, like we said: vote and registration on the same day, the fact that we can expand where we’re going to hold elections, and, of course, the electoral registration, and, of course, the disruptive powers that I’ve mentioned earlier. It is a piece of legislation that I thought all parties in this House would agree allows participation of our voters.

Like I said in my opening stance, this is a very hard-working select committee. I am sure that we will scrutinise it in the time that we’ve been allocated. We will ensure that it goes far and wide. I know that this committee is a very diligent committee, that every submission will be scrutinised and debated on, and that’s good because when the bills come back into this House from that particular select committee, they have been thoroughly scrutinised and thoroughly tested.

Without prolonging this first speech, I’m really supportive that it is being made in this House and that it is going off to our select committee. We’ve been tasked to report back in December—I think it was December, December later this year. Obviously, it will give the Electoral Commission great clarity and steer in terms of expectations for next year’s general election. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker, and if I haven’t done so already, congratulations on your promotion to that prestigious position.

Look, the National Party opposes this bill, and I want to make two points in my contribution to this debate. The first is to start about the process. It is hard to find or hard to think of a worse process than what the Government has conducted on this very important piece of electoral legislation, and my colleague and friend Dr Nick Smith has gone through the appalling way the Government has gone about introducing this bill to the Parliament and now referring it to the select committee.

For time immemorial, after an election the Justice Committee holds an inquiry. They go through all the things that happened in the election. Generally, that’s done on a pretty bipartisan basis, and committee hears the submissions and then the Justice Committee makes a report to the Parliament—again, done reasonably collegially, on a bipartisan basis. The Government then picks up a piece of legislation and introduces any amendment bill to the House. Critically, that bill is consulted on between the Government and the Opposition, because our electoral law should never become the plaything of politicians. It’s too important for that—too important an issue.

Now, I’ve only been a member of Parliament for 4½ years—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Too long.

—but I had the privilege of—ha, ha! “Too long.”, says my fellow parliamentary co-captain, Kieran McAnulty. Well, we’ll let the voters decide. But I’ve only had the privilege of being an MP for 4½ years, but I have served on the Justice Committee, and that’s exactly the process that we went through after the 2014 election. The now Prime Minister sat on that committee. She well knows the process that members of Parliament go through, and it worked really well. The Hon Amy Adams was the Minister of Justice after the 2014 election. She accepted the report of the parliamentary select committee. The Minister worked with the Opposition front-bencher who had responsibility for the justice portfolio, and there were a series of very sensible changes made and the Electoral Amendment Bill went through the previous Parliament, the 50th Parliament, I think unanimously, and passed the Parliament—no worries with that.

What we have here is a Government, firstly, acting in advance of that select committee inquiry. Now, the Minister Andrew Little says that the committee has taken too long. Well, actually, we’re in July 2019. The committee is, as I understand it—I’m no longer a member—reasonably soon to report back. There is more than enough time to listen to what the committee has to say. Critically—and this is the second point—the Government has not consulted with the Opposition. The Government has not consulted with the Opposition, and some of the changes here are controversial. Frankly, I think it is a disgrace.

Now, Minister Shane Jones was here before. He pretty much summed up the Government’s approach to electoral law matters, echoing Michael Cullen, that famous dictum after the 1999 election: “We won, you lost, eat that.” Well, actually, I’ve got to say that is an atrocious way to treat electoral law, which should be far above the normal, sort of, dictates of political process. It should be something that is far more important.

So we object to the way in which this bill has been put together from the start. Sadly, it is all too common with Labour Governments. I remember working here in the 2005 to 2008 Parliament when the last Labour Government rammed through Parliament the constitutionally objectionable Electoral Finance Bill against massive opposition from not just the National Party Opposition sitting on this side but the Human Rights Commission, the New Zealand Law Society—a range of august bodies that told the Labour Government of the day not to ram through a bill that stifled free speech. They did it anyway despite all injunctions to them to not do so, and, sadly, here we are again, and, of course, we’ve already had the debacle of the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill earlier on in the life of this Parliament. So I really just do plead with members opposite: just consider the damage you are doing to our unwritten constitution when it is the case that the Labour Party can win Government and act without even consulting the Opposition to introduce electoral amendment bills. I think it is genuinely appalling, and we object to the process.

Let me talk to the second issue to do with the bill, which is the issue of same-day enrolment. Now, there is a case to be made for same-day enrolment, but there is also a strong case to be made in opposition to it. Let me outline some of the reasons why we in the National Party are concerned about this. The first thing to note is, as part of the inquiry, the Electoral Commission came before the Parliament and told us that if Parliament wanted to do this and if we wanted to implement it for a general election, we should do it for the 2023 general election, not for the 2020 election. That’s the Electoral Commission. That’s the advice from the experts. It would be fair to say they strongly implored the Parliament to only implement it for the 2023 election. Why is that? Well, actually, there are quite significant implications to election day from what the Government is proposing.

The second thing to say is I encourage members opposite, who clearly haven’t done this, and I encourage all members of the House to go and read the regulatory impact statement provided by the Ministry of Justice. It is a warning to the Parliament and to the Government about implementing this in time for the 2020 election. I noticed that Andrew Little, the Minister, has not really advertised the fact, which I think members will be interested in, that the result of the election is now going to be delayed for 10 days as a result of this piece of legislation, because the bill quite neatly inserts into it a provision to allow the return of the writs to 60 days after its issue. I’m just quoting from the general policy statement of the bill: “This change is necessary to support the Electoral Commission to manage the introduction of enrolment on election day and provide more time to process the increased numbers of enrolment and update forms before the official count”.

Now, members opposite may not know a lot about how our elections work. In 2017, 17 percent of all votes counted were special votes—17 percent. Almost one in five votes cast at the election were special votes. Special votes take 10 times longer—it’s not my words; these are the words of the Ministry of Justice in their regulatory impact statement—to process than ordinary votes. One of the effects of this piece of legislation will be a very large increase in the number of special votes. So that’s exactly why the Electoral Commission said to the parliamentary select committee considering this: “Don’t do it necessarily for 2020. If you are going to do it, do it for 2023.”, but yet we have the Government saying “No, no, we’re going to do it for 2020.” in, I believe, contravention of all the advice provided by the experts.

There are good reasons to ask people to get on to the rolls. There are very good reasons to get people on to the rolls. When you’re on the roll, you can be sent information from the Electoral Commission about voting. You can be sent information by political parties. Remember, jury service is dictated by who’s on the electoral roll. It’s actually very important that we have our rolls as up to date as possible. What does this bill do? It sends the message that enrolment is optional, actually, that enrolment is something you don’t necessarily need to do until election day. What we will see is far more people rocking up on election day and enrolling, and they won’t be doing it in advance. So, yes, it will increase participation. Yes, it will increase the number of votes cast, but we need to be careful about the practical implementation of same-day enrolment and same-day voting. Members opposite I don’t think are aware of the extension of the writs that will be required, of the 10-day extension of the election results being declared, of the massive increase in special votes that will be required to be counted. I encourage members to go and read the regulatory impact statement, which outlines a range of risks to the integrity of the election because of this.

We support many of the other changes in the bill, as my colleague Nick Smith has mentioned. We support expanding the range of premises that can be used as voting places. I think that’s a sensible change. There’s some changes around improving the way vote issuing and returns are done. Polling day disruptions—they seem like generally sensible changes. But to have a Government turn up here and arrogantly arrogate to itself the right to force through Parliament a bill that makes fundamental changes to our electoral system, without consulting the Opposition and in advance of the Justice Committee inquiry, is disgraceful in the extreme.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What we just heard from Chris Bishop in the last 30 seconds—probably less—was he rattled off a few things that they agree with in the bill. The first five minutes of his speech, literally, were about one thing: obviously, trying to convey to us why the National Party and he in particular doesn’t support this bill. I listened to Nick Smith prior to that and couldn’t figure out whether he supported or didn’t support this bill. I’m glad that Chris Bishop actually said, “I don’t support this bill.” What Chris Bishop said in the first five minutes is that the main reason—obviously it’s the main reason, because it took half his speech—was that they weren’t consulted, that the Opposition wasn’t consulted on a piece of legislation—“Therefore, that’s our main reason to oppose it.” He spent more than five minutes of his 10-minute allocation complaining about not being consulted on a piece of legislation going through this House about electoral issues, right?

Then his second main point was that it’s going to delay things by 10 days—it’s going to delay things by 10 days—but in the same breath, he said, yes, this will increase voter turnout. This will increase access to people to ensure that they can vote, but it’s going to delay it by another 10 days. That’s the second reason why they’re going to not support this bill, and then, like I said, he used 30 seconds or so to list the majority of the bill that they agree with but they’re voting against. The National Party can’t have it both ways. They can’t agree with the majority of the bill and the intent of the bill and then have two pathetic reasons why they’re not going to support it and then vote no at the first reading.

What I want to get on to is what Nick Smith said. There’s one thing in particular he said that stood out for me. I was getting a glass of water over there on the floor, and I almost dropped it. The main reason why he’s not supporting this bill—he said, “The Government is trying to win the next election by screwing it in the Government’s favour. The Government’s trying to screw the scrum”, I think he said—“screw the scrum”. So the Government is going to win the election, going to screw it in our favour. Now, what he’s just said is that more people who vote, the more people who have access to vote, is going to make the Government win the election.

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Worked for the Republicans.

Is that what the member said?

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Yes.

Is the member going to deny that? I’m not sure that he actually understood what he said—I don’t think he understood what he said. So what’s the opposite to that? That National don’t want more people to go out to vote, that National don’t want more people to have access to vote, because that will mean that they’ll have favour in the election. If people are empowered in this country, like Nick Smith says, they’re going to vote for the sitting Government. That’s what Nick Smith has just said, and I hope people are watching, because what he’s just admitted—so there’s three things for the public of this country to understand, the three main reasons why the National Party is not supporting this bill to give more access, and to get more people to vote: because the National Party think that it’s going to make the Government win the election, that they weren’t consulted about it in the first place, and it’s going to delay things by 10 days. That’s why the National Party is not going to support this bill.

There’s a couple of things that I’d like to mention. The first is that I had the tremendous honour, actually, as a parliamentarian to go over and have a look at and observe the recent Fijian election, and the election in the Solomons as well. The—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Do they allow same-day enrolment?

See, look at this—I mean, this is pathetic. This is ridiculous—this is ridiculous.

It was a tremendous honour for me to do that, and one thing that I learnt is that we take for granted in this country our democratic process, we take for granted the trust that we have in our system and Electoral Commission, and we take for granted the access that we have to vote, the access to our MPs, and the ability for us to get out and vote. What, ironically, Dr Nick Smith was waxing lyrical about on the bill prior to this was all about the fairness of the electoral system. Well, if he took just an ounce of his own advice, then he would be voting for this bill and wouldn’t be complaining that we are increasing the fairness, with this bill, of the electoral system by giving access, by allowing more people to vote.

But here’s the more important thing, and it was made clear by the Minister: that because of the advance voting that is allowed in this country, it is estimated that approximately 65 percent of all people, of all voters that will vote in the 2020 election, will be doing it prior to the election day. What those 65 percent of all of those voters are able to do are to enrol and vote on the same day. When they decide to go and vote, they can enrol on the same day. For the fairness of the electoral process, we need to be able to do that on the election day itself. Otherwise, we’re going to have—and it was 19,000 people last election that wanted to exercise their democratic right to vote, but they were denied that ability to do that. Now, if Nick Smith and his colleagues in the National Party are saying that’s fair, and they want to take an ounce of their own advice from their speeches on the previous bill about the importance of the fairness of the vote and the ability to vote, then they will vote for this piece of legislation.

What I want to do in the last couple of minutes is just outline the main aims and intent that the National Party are voting against in this bill. The first is to “improve the enrolment and voting processes to better enfranchise voters”. The National Party are voting against that in the first reading. To “uphold the integrity of the electoral system by ensuring that elections are conducted efficiently and securely”—the National Party are voting against that intent, and against that aim. They are also voting against giving “support [to] the effective conduct of future elections.” They are voting against those aims and intents.

New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. We would like to have this bill go through to select committee for its scrutiny that the select committee does. We have a few questions about the practicality of what we want to implement and what we agree with in regards to the intent of this bill—around the ability for supermarkets, for example, to hold voting booths. We agree with the fact that, as written in the legislation and as the Minister outlined, venues such as supermarkets and sports clubs, etc., should have the ability to be able to hold voting booths, and ensure that people can vote there, because they are where people go to as hubs, and they do that on election days, and why would we not give them the ability to vote at the same time. But we’d like to see the practicalities in regards to that, as well as any issues that fall out in regards to possibility of electioneering issues within supermarkets as well.

But I think that there’s one point I’d like to make. In a robust democracy, there’s responsibility on both Parliament and on the public to ensure that we both play parts in maintaining the robustness of democracy and our democratic process. The Government needs to ensure there’s access to that system, that the maximum number of people are out there and voting, and also that the information is out there for them to make informed votes. But the people need to go there too, need to understand they have a responsibility and obligation to vote, first and foremost, but also to make an informed vote, and to make the effort to vote. So we’ve got that expectation as well in the people of this country. We look forward to the committee stage, where we will see more detail about how this will be implemented, but we’ll be supporting it through this first reading.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, Darroch Ball, who’s just resumed his seat, has endeavoured to suggest that the National Party is opposed to all measures in this bill. That isn’t the case, but of course we have to oppose it, because there are important aspects of this bill that are objectionable, and we have no option but to oppose the bill in its entirety while those objectionable provisions are there.

I want to make the point to the member that one of the practical outcomes of the enactment of this legislation, if indeed it is enacted, is that it will push out by about 10 days the period which will be available even for the commencement of coalition negotiations. Now, I know that New Zealand First has a proud track record of delaying the formation of a Government as long as possible, but the voters don’t like that, and it’s worth noting that during that period of uncertainty, business confidence and markets tend to get spooked. They don’t like the uncertainty that comes with not knowing what the shape of a future Government is going to be. So there are some practical implications of delaying that. That’s just a point I’d make to him.

I think far more important is the fact that we’re halfway through this debate and not a single member of the Government has yet acknowledged the very important objection that the Opposition is putting forward, and that is that we have had, in the main, a very proud history in this country of a bipartisan approach to changes to our electoral laws for reasons that will be patently obvious to anybody listening to the debate, and that is that no party should be able to screw the scrum by changing electoral laws to suit its own objectives. Of course, as has already been mentioned in this debate, the Labour Party attempted to do that quite spectacularly in 2007 with their far from lamented Electoral Finance Act.

I would actually argue that the Electoral Finance Act was one of the most significant final nails in the coffin of Helen Clark’s Government, and I’ve had former Labour members of Parliament confirm that to me—that they hated the Act with a passion when they realised just how bad it was. But they’d supported it, and, ironically, exactly the same parties—three parties—in this Parliament that are passing this particular bill were the ones who were responsible for that travesty: Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens.

But, even more importantly, going back several decades in this country, we have had the approach taken by, in the main, National Governments of reaching out to Oppositions led by Labour to show goodwill and a desire to get electoral law that everybody can agree with and see as being fair. It happened under the Bolger-Shipley Government. It happened under the John Key - Bill English Government. It even went back all the way to 1956, when the first National Government consulted with Labour on a set of changes that everyone could live with to end a period when things like the length of the Parliament had been mucked around with by the Government of the day. And yet Labour is reverting back to type.

We only found out about some of the sneaky changes in this particular bill when questions were asked at the Estimates hearing a few weeks ago and it became apparent that they were going about this in a sneaky way, with poor process. And, of course, we’ve had the Minister today complaining that the committee had failed to do its work and that that is why he needed to take the steps of introducing this measure. Well, that is absolutely nonsense, because it was he who wrote to the committee last December wanting the terms of reference extended, and it was Labour members who wanted local electoral law included. So the fact that the committee has taken longer to get on with its job must be laid fairly at the door of the Minister and his parliamentary colleagues in the Labour Party and the other parties.

It is unbelievable that we are here tonight debating another unjustifiable and unprincipled electoral bill immediately after the outrageous referenda frameworks bill, which preceded it—and I say “referenda” deliberately because, as my colleague the member for Helensville—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: There’s no such word.

Of course there’s a word. Referenda? My goodness, I cannot believe that the Minister of Immigration says there is no such word as “referenda”. I invite him to go back to school and discover that that is the plural of the word “referendum” and that is probably why that bill was misnamed from the outset—the title is incorrect and so are all of its provisions. But the point I wanted to make was that we had that extraordinary moment in the House during the previous debates when the Hon Tracey Martin, a Cabinet Minister in this Government, gave us the observation that Parliament cannot be trusted.

So New Zealand First, which has not a single electorate member in this Parliament, which chose two years ago not to coalesce with the largest party in the Parliament following the 2017 general election—the party which probably had the strongest mandate to be in that position, and, of course, they were thumbing their noses at the wishes of tens of thousands of New Zealanders in doing that, but that was their right to do that—and which, on recent opinion polls, has been languishing on about 3 percent, so stands very little chance of being back here—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Feel free to speak to the bill.

I am speaking to the bill, Madam Speaker. Yes, a Minister in that party was telling us that Parliament cannot be trusted, and that, I suggest, is absolutely—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Feel free to speak to the bill.

—fundamental to the bill. So this Government is advancing another obnoxious measure, this Electoral Amendment Bill, ignoring constitutional convention, ignoring parliamentary precedent, and abusing our treasured democracy.

There are three obvious main purposes for this bill, but you won’t find them in the explanatory note of the bill, which I’m holding up at the moment, because the first obvious purpose of this bill is to ignore the detailed inquiry conducted by Parliament’s Justice Committee, because this Government clearly thinks that the committee is unlikely to recommend some of the more egregious provisions of the bill. The second is clearly to bypass longstanding conventions around electoral law, which are vital to upholding and preserving our parliamentary democracy. And the third obvious purpose of this bill is to boost the chances of Labour and Green MPs being re-elected by screwing the scrum to suit their own purposes, while adding considerable difficulty to the work of the Electoral Commission and delaying the declaration of results, as I mentioned at the outset, and the commencement of expected coalition talks. Well, if time permits, I’ll return to some of those matters.

I do want to stress that there are some measures of this bill that we could, on this side of the House, support. Of course we want as many eligible people in New Zealand to enrol and to vote and to participate in our democracy. Minister Little’s silly claim to the contrary earlier was absolutely laughable. That’s why expanding the range of places in New Zealand where we can cast our votes is reasonable; we’re happy to support that. It’s hoped that that would increase voter participation. We expect that the Electoral Commission will be able to identify secure and appropriate premises, such as supermarkets—as long as they’re away from the area where alcohol is sold—conference centres, community centres, sports clubs, and so on. I don’t think that many people would disagree with that. There are some measures that could be taken to improve the electronic technology that is now available to us and the way that it is used in future elections. There probably are better ways of dealing with electoral irregularities than current procedures provide for, but I don’t want to pre-empt the possible recommendation of the Justice Committee in our yet to be completed and reported inquiry into the 2017 election.

Therein lies one of the great failings of this bill. It renders almost pointless the work that the Justice Committee has been doing in its inquiry into the 2017 general election by rushing measures of this nature through that haven’t been fully scrutinised by that committee or recommended to the House by the committee in their report. Not only is the Justice Committee being ignored; so too is the Opposition despite the time-honoured and vital convention, as I mentioned earlier, that Governments consult Opposition parties on all such matters before proposing changes to electoral laws—for reasons that I’m sure are obvious to people listening to this debate at home, even if they are understood and not considered significant by Government members. Well, I say shame on them for that. Shame on those Government members. A Government that rams through controversial changes to electoral laws to suit themselves, as those same three parties did with the Electoral Finance Act 2007, cannot be trusted to govern. And, as I said, I believe that when they made that mistake in 2007, it was a big factor in their defeat the following year.

It isn’t difficult to enrol in New Zealand; doing so in good time is made very easy by the Electoral Commission and, I would suggest, is a responsibility of all New Zealanders who take seriously our democratic freedoms, which we should all treasure. I accept that it’s their right not to be interested in the election, but I do not accept it as their right to frustrate the will of the people and delay our democracy.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to begin by congratulating the Minister of Justice on this bill, which demonstrates his commitment to democracy and to strengthening the access of all New Zealanders to their democracy. This bill is an investment in the accessibility of all voters to our system of Government. It removes arbitrary bars to voting that we’ve seen have frightening effect on the health of any democracy. We’ve seen this overseas. We’ve seen that these types of arbitrary bars can be utilised in other systems to, effectively, disenfranchise entire segments of society. We’ve seen it in particular in the United States, where the requirements to have certain types of ID to enrol to vote and to travel distances to polling or voting stations have, effectively, disenfranchised those who can’t afford that type of access. So this bill, importantly, makes it easier to enrol to vote by allowing for that to happen on the day of election.

Now, the types of people who might find it difficult to enrol before that day might be people who don’t have a fixed abode—people who have to move around because rental properties are not yet all that secure here. The types of people that are busy, that have more than one job, that have families—these are the kinds of people that the National Party says are more likely to vote for Labour and the Greens or for the Government, indeed, and less likely to vote for them.

Next, the bill allows for voting in more types of places—like malls, like supermarkets. It makes it easier for people to go in and vote while they’re doing other things that they need to do in their busy lives. What kind of people would find that more useful? Busy families, again, people with multiple jobs, and people who don’t work regular hours.

It’s extraordinary to have the Opposition say that these are the types of people who would prevent them from getting into Government if they were able to more easily cast their vote. It’s extraordinary to hear politicians admit that their success was predicated on the lack of access to voting by ordinary people in this country.

At the last election, 19,000 people—equivalent to the population of Queenstown—tried to vote, and they were prevented by this totally obscure, arbitrary rule. That was just the people who tried to vote. All the people who stayed home because they’d run out of time—that is the health of our democracy at stake. It may seem like it’s just a formality and people should just get themselves in order and do it, but the idea is that it should be possible for everyone to vote on election day. It should be possible for everyone to pop into a voting station and not have to travel specifically to a particular place in the middle of their busy lives. Voting is for everyone, and this bill tries to make it more possible for more New Zealanders to engage in our democracy.

Now, if we’re going to look at constitutional conventions in terms of the way that electoral law is made, as the Opposition has constantly referred to, we do want to take party politics out of substantive electoral reform. That’s why we have an Electoral Commission. That’s why the Electoral Commission, in 2012, conducted a thorough consultation, two-step consultation, with thousands of New Zealanders engaged. It made recommendations to reform our MMP system, and yet that side of the House buried those recommendations. They had an opportunity to do it the way they say it’s meant to be done, and those were substantive changes. Why were they buried? Because the National Party needed to do a dirty deal with ACT to prop up its bare majority Government, and part of those recommendations were that the electorate entry into Parliament should be abolished, because it is unfair and it is undemocratic. So when our independent system for electoral reform was engaged, the National Party didn’t like the result and they buried it. Now that we’re making it easier for people to vote, they’re upset. So I do agree that electoral reform should be done in a way that is fair and that isn’t led by party politics, but that can never be said of reform that actually engages more people in our democracy.

I would like to see, however—and perhaps this is the National Party saying that they would now support it—the implementation of the MMP review recommendations, and I think that I do want to talk about this bill as a first step to electoral reform in New Zealand, because making our democracy more accessible has to go beyond just these technical changes, as important as they are. So I would like to see the Government pick up my member’s bill implementing the MMP review recommendations. I would like us, in a further step, to look at the way that political donations and the transparency around those work in our democracy. I would like more New Zealanders to have access to their democracy in a way that’s not impeded by their lack of ability to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to political parties, and I’d like us all to know who is in fact donating to our political parties. We do want to see an end to political interference from abroad but also political interference by big money. We do want to see everyone be able to vote, as the Supreme Court has told us we must do, by abolishing the ban on prisoner voting, and we do want to see a change so that those who qualify for the Māori roll are able to change rolls at any time.

So this is a first step. It is about accessibility to our system. It’s about an open government and open democracy for all on equal terms, and for that I do commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Electoral Amendment Bill. I would like to speak on six different aspects of the bill that we find objectionable in this House, all referring to the same-day enrolment provisions.

But let me get out of the way first, as others have said on the side—for the sake of the record—that there are positive changes in this bill that we do support. Accessibility to the act of voting, as part of the democratic participation that we all believe in, should be encouraged, to the extent that that doesn’t allow the manipulation of the system and the voting. So that much we can and do support, so I state that clearly up front for the record.

As for the provisions relating to same-day enrolment, though, it’s important to note the following half-dozen points—six of the best, if I may say. I’ll be going through each of those in turn but just setting out fairly initially: first, just to understand, I’ll be talking about the fact that these are very different things, the act of enrolment versus the act of voting for a particular political party and particular candidates; second, the fact that it’s currently an offence not to be enrolled but that doesn’t apply to the act of voting; third, that no one should be a judge in their own matter, so that will go to the applicability of these rules for the 2020 election that the Government of the day is setting in place, perhaps for their own benefit; fourth, the effects of uncertainty caused by delay of the election result being known; fifth, the breaching of conventions in the electoral law space, as relevant to this particular bill; and, sixth and finally, the failure of the analogy that’s been made by the Green member Golriz Ghahraman in relation to how this might relate to trends or phenomena in the US that she’s identified.

So first then, on the subject of enrolment on voting day, they are two different things in our electoral system. Of course, there’s a connection whereby it’s only by being enrolled that one can vote, but enrolment is an act of participation in democracy. It’s an act that legitimises a citizen or other person who’s entitled to vote, and, as such, it stands alone from the particular act of voting in which one is obviously exercising one’s judgment or preference at a particular place and time.

This can be seen clearly in what I’ve observed even in my relatively short period—the couple of elections that I’ve stood in: one unsuccessfully; one successfully, ultimately—where candidates arrive at schools and give speeches at election time, often as part of a debate panel. What I think is really positive is often on these occasions we have candidates from all parties emphasising to the young people the importance of being engaged, the importance of participating and exercising that right to vote, whoever they might vote for. Of course, each of the candidates takes the opportunity to seek the party vote and the electorate vote for themselves, but that’s almost secondary to the very responsible message that’s often given to young people simply to get involved, to be enrolled and to vote, and to participate in whatever way, in terms of voting preference, they might choose.

This then takes me to my second point, which I alluded to before in passing, which is that it’s an offence not to be enrolled in New Zealand but it’s not an offence not to vote—whereas, obviously, in other countries that is the case. But here in New Zealand it’s a choice that we have to turn up to the ballot box or not as we wish, but to be enrolled is to be a participatory member of the democracy in which we live, and it allows, for example, for voting in referenda and in local government elections and so on at times other than in general elections for the Parliament.

So, in fact, implicitly, counterintuitive as it might seem, it is encouraging non-compliance with this law—this requirement that actually applies to us all, all the time, to be enrolled, to be on the electoral roll—and so for a whole three years within a term, other than election day itself, this is something that we need to do.

We have, by my calculation, roughly speaking, 1,094 days in which we can do that, currently, and one day in which we cannot. For the sake of spelling out my back-of-the-envelope calculation, that would be exactly three years between elections, not including leap years and so forth. So, anyway, the point is, really, that it’s about 1,000 days that you can enrol to vote and only one that you can’t. So to be encouraging those who can’t be bothered to enrol to vote on 1,000 days, why they should be able to rock up on the last day and complicate things for everyone else seems to me an extraordinary thing that the Government is proposing.

My third point is about the fact that it’s proposed these changes will come into effect for the 2020 election. So it’s the Government of the day setting rules that will apply to itself in a way that enables them to—well, I would characterise it as an unseemly rush by an unholy alliance. Others might quibble on the characterisation of that, but—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m sorry to interrupt the member. The time has come for the House to adjourn for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30 this evening.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I resume my call on the Electoral Amendment Bill. For your benefit, Madam Speaker, and any of those who weren’t glued to their television immediately prior to the dinner break, I’ll just recap by saying briefly, if I may, that, first of all, we support most of the provisions of the bill—certainly those that make sensible amendments to allow greater accessibility, and my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith has outlined those, leading the charge on this side of the House.

There’s some pretty sensible stuff around voting places and so forth. But what I did set out before the dinner break was some areas in which we have reservations, to put it mildly, regarding the enrolment on voting day provision. I touched briefly on the difference between the act of enrolment versus the act of voting—one being a democratic right and indeed responsibility, as a matter of course, for which there are a thousand days available, roughly speaking, between elections, as opposed to the one day on which you can’t currently enrol.

I was just getting on to the matter of how a person shouldn’t be the judge in their own cause. In this country, we tend to like rugby analogies, so we talk about the “screwing of the scrum”, but once upon a time, I suppose, you might have said in Latin: nemo iudex in causa sua—no one should be the judge in his or her own cause. So it is that we’ve got the Government of the day, today, this Government, setting in place rules that will apply in seeking its own re-election, effectively—the cynics might say—as well as setting out the rules of the game by which all players must play.

My next point was around the uncertainty and the delay that will be generated following election day itself by the need for the processing of enrolments as well as the processing—that is, the counting—of votes. So a further 10 days following the election, we understand from official advice, will be caused by such a move. The practical effects of that in terms of uncertainty and confidence of the nation have been spelt out, including by the Hon Tim Macindoe, to which I would add that anything that gives the public less confidence in MMP than it already enjoys, in particular around the predictability or otherwise of election results, is no good thing and we should tread very carefully lest we further erode confidence in our democratic institutions and systems.

My final two points regard the breaching of electoral law conventions in the sense of having the Opposition buy-in. That’s not just a convention for its own sake—it’s sort of a constitutional nicety—but rather a very practical measure that’s likely, when observed, to ensure that law, going forward, that operates to the benefit ultimately of all the people in the democracy and all the parties as well will be robust and remain in place for elections and generations to come, rather than being the plaything of one Government of the day and leaving open the possibility that the next Government or the next Parliament, I suppose in three years’ time, would have a different view altogether, and so we would end up with a regime changing in respect of electoral law every three or six or nine years, as the case may be.

Finally, on a slightly lighter note, the Green Party speaker on the bill so far has talked about voter suppression tactics in the US, rather darkly. But I’d say that the analogy with the United States of America is not apt. That is a country that thinks that baseball is an interesting sport, thinks that Pop-Tarts are a nutritious or delicious food—I’d probably take issue with even the “food” bit, let alone the “delicious” bit—and that the word “aluminium” has only four syllables. So we can’t rely on looking overseas to the US for trends in informing our own electoral conventions. We have those already. We have a good democracy. We shouldn’t trifle with it in this way, Madam Speaker.

This is a split call. I call the Hon Clare Curran.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In a couple of months, in October, I will be attending, along with a number of my parliamentary women colleagues, a breakfast function for the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians, celebrating the 100th anniversary of women being able to stand for Parliament in New Zealand, which is a pretty amazing thing to be celebrating.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Absolutely right.

It is. So what better demonstration is there of a Government’s true commitment to improving and strengthening our democracy than a bill before this Parliament which enfranchises more voters in this country and enables them to participate in our democracy? So I’m actually pretty proud to be standing here today celebrating the fact that this Parliament, in 2019, has finally got round to passing legislation to enable more people to vote, to be able to access our voting system in New Zealand. That is truly something to be proud of.

I wanted to take the conversation up a little bit, because there’s been lots of high dudgeon thrown around in this debate and in the debate around the previous piece of legislation, and the crux of the Opposition’s argument against this bill seems to rest on a constitutional crisis of some description and a lack of consultation. You know, it’s a valid thing if it’s true. But I do say, particularly to the member Dr Nick Smith, who has been running this argument on this bill and the previous bill, that he really does need to get his facts right and do his homework. His high dudgeon act is just that: it is just an act.

I wanted to actually provide the House tonight with some clear evidence of that, because Dr Smith—and he was followed by Chris Bishop—came to the House this afternoon and pronounced that there had been no consultation on this bill and there was a constitutionally appalling situation as a result. “Outrage” was the word that seemed to be used; it had a lot of currency and was used a lot. I want to refer Dr Smith—and he’s been sitting on that Justice Committee and he had a few criticisms of that select committee about the number of chairs, etc.—to a letter that was written by the Minister, the justice Minister, Andrew Little on 4 December last year to the select committee, and it’s headed “Amendments to the Electoral Act 1993”, and I’ll—

💬 Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: December?

December 2018. “This is to advise you that I’m considering proposing an Electoral Amendment Bill be included on the Government’s 2019 legislative programme. The bill would progress minor or technical amendments to electoral law, for example, to help manage the logistical requirements of general elections by making voting and voting places more accessible.” He went on to outline: “removing the prohibition on designating a licensed premises selling alcohol as a polling place, enabling ballots to be counted away from the polling place, enabling the special vote declaration to be able to be treated as an application to enrol or update enrolment details. I have also asked my officials to look at enrolment on election day and whether this could be made available for the 2020 election. In order for any changes to the Electoral Act or the electoral regulations to be implemented for the 2020 election, they’d need to be made by the end of 2019. For this reason I need to develop these changes alongside rather than after your committee’s inquiry into the 2017 general election. If there is a bill, and depending on the progress of your inquiry, there may be an opportunity to add some of your recommended legislative changes during the parliamentary process.”

Dr Smith, that letter was at your select committee. There was no response. There was consultation; you were reached out to. You didn’t respond—not you, Madam Speaker. I rest the case that—I’m sorry, but it’s a straw man argument. You can’t argue there has been no consultation. This is—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Who’s the letter addressed to?

It was addressed to the select committee.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry, but the member’s time has expired.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to table the letter that was sent to the Justice Committee on 4 December 2018—

I think we do know the document that you are reading from. I trust it has been released from the select committee.

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Well, it clearly hasn’t been read by the members on that side. I seek leave to table it.

The member is seeking leave to table that document from the select committee—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: A point of clarification—could the member clarify for the House that the letter was to the Labour Party chair of the select committee? It was not a letter to consult with the National Party. Could the member clarify who was the letter addressed to—which member of Parliament?

Well, I think if we put the leave and the letter is tabled, we can all have a look and see that. Is there any objection to that being tabled? There appears to be none.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek the leave of the House to table the minutes of the Justice Committee on the electoral law inquiry at the time that this letter was considered, and, specifically, the issues around the extension of the terms of reference of the select committee.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’ll just take a bit of advice here.

Madam Speaker, could I be of some assistance? Because I had previously sought the advice of the Clerk. It is normal that both the minutes and the letter that you’ve just sought leave for would remain confidential to the select committee until the select committee inquiry into the election had been concluded, of which this item of correspondence—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: But the issue is that—

Having made the decision to put the leave to the House on the letter that has been sought by my colleague Clare Curran, it is only fair that you also put leave to the House for the minutes on the same issue.

I was just checking on the status of the minutes. They are available to all members through the committee system. Tabling them in the House—but they’re not publicly available. Anyway, it’s in the hands of the House. The House has decided, as Dr Smith points out, to table the letter. Is there any objection to the leave being sought to table the minutes? There is objection.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What an extraordinary last few minutes we’ve had. Objection to the tabling of the minutes—it’s almost like they want to hide something. Let me be very simple and clear: this bill is all about the Government cherry-picking electoral law changes that will improve its own chance of election in 2020—nothing more straightforward than that. The fact that they’re wanting to hide some very basic minutes does, absolutely, make you wonder.

We were not consulted, as the Opposition, on these electoral law changes. When we were in Government, we consulted with all parties on electoral law changes. That was how we ran things. That was our business as usual. However, we’re experiencing something entirely different, and for those listening and watching tonight, we’re experiencing something unprecedented in terms of the way that we deal with electoral law changes here in New Zealand. This is the third electoral law bill by the Government that has not been consulted with us, as the Opposition—no conversation whatsoever. Here we are, tonight—the third piece of legislation. Now, how did we find out about these pending changes? A question at an Estimates hearing on the Budget. That’s how we found out about what was coming down the pipeline, and finally, many weeks later, here we are tonight. It’s a dangerous precedent that the Government is choosing to set, deliberately choosing to set. Just how precarious are New Zealand’s electoral laws? That’s a legitimate question: just how precarious are our laws?

So I want to talk to, with my short call, clause 4, which amends section 60 of the principal Act, and clause 11, which amends section 139. So it’s, of course, allowing for same-day enrolment and also extending the latest day for return of the writ. The two go hand in hand. Last year’s election was 23 September and the Government was announced 19 October. That was a total of 26 days—3½ long weeks—to form New Zealand’s Government. The Government was still running under our watch—caretaking, as you will—but now this bill allows for a much longer period, 10 extra days, before the return of the writ.

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How long?

Ten extra days to form a Government. Now, I’ve got some questions for the Government as the proponents of this bill. I’d like them to answer: had they thought through the perception of MMP and what 10 extra days will do? Let’s think about the atmosphere that we experienced last year. Business confidence—what does that do for business confidence? Public Service—how are they impacted by another 10 extra days for a formation of Government? Public perception—let’s talk about voters themselves, public perceptions of politicians, wanting them just to get on with it, not wanting another Rt Hon Winston Peters wait-and-see. Even the international media were wondering about when we would wait and see the Government formed, here in New Zealand—a party of 7 percent support but 100 percent of the power. Do we want that sort of protracted, lengthened scenario again?

Let’s be practical too. With same-day enrolment, what about queues on polling day? What about the process of enrolling? [Interruption] The Government’s laughing. I’m just going to take one booth, for example. I invite them to come to the Ellerslie War Memorial Hall, one of the highest polling numbers booths in my electorate, Maungakiekie. On polling day, you could not get in there. The numbers in a very busy little village—you could not get in there on election day. Now the Government’s pushing forward same-day enrolment. There will be a practical impact for this. It will also change the nature of campaigning on election day. We know we’re not allowed to campaign, but what about passive forms of communication or campaigning on election day? What can we expect with that—a new style of E-day communications? What will happen and what form will that take? Where is the incentive to enrol in advance now?

These are issues that are legitimate. We have grave concerns and we want to stand against a dangerous precedent.

This next call is a split call.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’ve been listening to much of the debate on this bill. It seems one side says more New Zealanders will be enfranchised by this bill, and the other side says the process is bad. Many of the questions that have been raised in speeches are legitimately ones that a select committee could inquire into. I have to say, my experience in this House has been that when one side criticises only the process, it pretty much means there is no depth of argument against what is being proposed. It’s actually a very weak set of arguments to simply go, “The process is bad”.

Can we just boil it down for the House? Let’s boil it down. Effectively, this bill will mean more New Zealanders have the opportunity to vote. Is anyone actually brave enough to stand up in the House and say, “We shouldn’t have a bill which would allow more people to be able to vote.”? The reality is some people were unable to vote last election and they should have been able to vote. Yes, the process could have been better, but that’s not a good reason for opposing a bill or standing up in the House and spending speech after speech opposing a piece of legislation. Those issues that have been raised around process and around details should be looked at at the select committee.

One of the issues that has been debated as well was the fact that there is still an inquiry going on, under way. The inquiry going on, under way—the Minister referred to it in question time and says it’s taking too long. I’ve seen there’s been other arguments about who’s in charge of the inquiry and why has it taken so long. The reality is it’s almost been two years since the last election was held and we still don’t have a report back in this Parliament about possible changes. The select committee does need to hurry up. The select committee does need to come back. In fact, if the select committee had’ve come back earlier, then we probably wouldn’t have these process debates around who did something without consulting the other.

The other issue that was raised in other speeches—I know Golriz Ghahraman raised it, and I think some of the National members raised it too—was the issue around what the committee’s looking at alongside the types of issues in the inquiry that are also contained in this bill, and that’s the elements around foreign interference. We actually should have a piece of legislation right now that deals with those matters. The select committee needs to increase the speed at which it considers its inquiry into foreign interference because we must have legislation around those issues as well. I think, actually, the select committee should be empowered to consider issues alongside this bill at the same time that may be considered in the realm of foreign interference. It’s not acceptable that we may end up in a position later this term where the House has a report from the select committee and it does not have enough time to act on it. It would be an appalling set of circumstances if the Justice Committee was to report back on the election inquiry that contained recommendations around foreign interference and everyone go “Oh, we don’t have enough time to consider those matters.”

I think this House should give the Justice Committee, by way of this process and this bill, the ability and the power to consider issues alongside the other elements in this bill that relate to foreign interference, specifically around election donations. This bill does talk about supporting the effective conduct of future elections. It does talk about the security of our elections. Those are important issues, but security and conduct of elections is not solely around who can vote and how they can vote; it’s also around how political parties deal with those types of issues. So later on I intend to seek the leave of the House to be able to move an instruction to the Justice Committee. It is not possible for a member to move an instruction without seeking leave—only the Minister can move an instruction to a select committee—but I think it’s fundamentally important that the Justice Committee is given the opportunity to consider those issues around election donations alongside these wider issues around elections. So at the appropriate time, I will seek leave to be able to move an instruction. That instruction that I will move, if given leave, will read “I move, that it be an instruction to the Justice Committee that it consider and, if it thinks fit, recommend amendments relating to election donations.”

It’s fundamentally important that if we are to have proper consideration and time available for the Justice Committee to do a thorough job around changes in the sphere of foreign interference and in the sphere of closing down election donations, they have an early opportunity to do it. There is a parliamentary majority in this House to change election donation laws. Parties in this House have said they want to ban foreign donations. So by allowing an instruction to be moved, the Justice Committee will be able to do that work, and I’ll attempt to do so.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m very much looking forward to putting right many of the quite false claims and insinuations, particularly those around the Justice Committee, of which I’m a very proud member. Just to put things in perspective, the justice select committee has been a very, very busy committee, having considered 19 bills in this term alone. Of course, one of those bills was the End of Life Choice Bill, which required the justice select committee to hear thousands of submissions, written and otherwise. The Justice Committee sat over 65 percent of the time that all select committees sat added together, just to put things in perspective. So it’s a very effective and efficient committee getting through its work.

But some of the almost implied criticisms of our committee, including one from Dr Nick Smith, who talked about—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we talk about the bill, please.

Well, I am. This is a very important part of the bill, because we actually talked about—one of the criticisms of the bill was that the justice select committee, in fact, through having had a large number of chairs, somehow was rendered incapable of dealing with this issue. Au contraire, actually, Dr Smith himself, who the day that the most important material was being heard in relation to the—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, but we don’t need to know about the processes in the select committee. We are actually on a first reading of a bill before the House, so the member has only five minutes. He should be able to speak to the bill.

OK. Thank you. I will speak to the bill, of course. This bill is democracy in action, as democratic as you could possibly see. Anyone with any knowledge of elections around the world will know what happened in 2000 in the United States and Florida. Through the actions of the Republican Party and those who organise them, there was a large number of people disenfranchised, which enabled one of the Bush family to win—Jeb Bush, I understand—and that actually swayed the election. So that is living proof as to why it is so important that everyone gets the opportunity to vote.

Now, we’ve seen evolution of our electoral system, our voting system, MMP. What you’re seeing on this side of the House is an understanding of how MMP works—how it can work. Many of the speakers opposite have talked about the negotiations around the formation of a Government. Well, on this side, we did negotiate, we did form a Government, and a very effective Government that despite the predictions from many on the other side that it would be all over by Christmas is still getting stronger by the day. That strength is the type of issues that are being addressed in this bill, basically, around the ability to ensure that more people are able to vote.

If you look at the main part of this bill, the most important part about it, and that which has attracted much discussion from the Opposition, it’s a fear that by allowing people to enrol and vote on election day, somehow democracy is going to be made a mockery of—that somehow we are entering into a non-democratic process. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth. What will happen as a result of this is that those people who—and as we know with elections, as we get nearer to election day, and while pre-voting has been the new feature, pre-voting has been an effective feature. But the reality of it—and I’ve heard people here speak about the nostalgia of election day, the nicety of having morning tea, digging the garden, and heading down and voting on election day, something that I think we all agree is something that should be absolutely available to every New Zealander. Now, as a result of this, it will be. It’ll be available to those who for various reasons, distraction—we know that people don’t read newspapers these days, and we know through social media the sheer difficulty of actually getting in front of people. But, of course, it’s very hard to avoid that on election day. You can imagine, whether it be the sports club or various other places: “Have you voted?” “No, I haven’t.” “Have you enrolled?” “No.” “Well, you can now do both.” Welcome to the new democracy. Welcome to a new world that is creating a wonderful Government like this Government that I’m proud to be part of with our coalition and supply partners. Part of the next step along is to make sure that New Zealanders get to participate. So I thoroughly recommend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on this bill. There’s been a lot of debate and obviously very polarising views on the issue.

The first thing I just want to talk about is this extraordinary event that we’ve just witnessed before with the Hon Clare Curran wishing to table a letter written to the select committee. Whilst I know of many members—or all members of the House will know that until something comes out of the select committee, it is confidential to the committee. Therefore, it’s a very strong parliamentary issue around releasing that information before it has been released by the committee.

I just think it is a very dangerous precedent for a member to be doing such a thing. I’m not quite sure why the Hon Clare Curran decided to do that but that’s a very, very important precedent that I think has been set by the member, and no doubt with the view of trying to reinforce the view that she made in her speech, which was that the Minister, the Hon Andrew Little, had consulted with the National Party on these wide-ranging reforms. Time will tell whether, in fact, that letter does support that position, but all I can say is that from our perspective and from National’s perspective, it is clear that there has been no adequate consultation or even acceptable level of consultation on what is absolutely a fundamental issue of democracy. And of course everyone in this House wants to see that democracy is maintained but also wants to make sure that in doing so—in the process around how people cast their votes on election day and how those votes are counted, it is absolutely essential that that system is protected and nurtured so that we do end up with the right outcome.

Of course, this bill has these three elements. It’s got the issue around voting rights—and I will return to that shortly—but also about where voting can take place, and that again is quite a significant issue. I think I just want to really say the first thing is that this issue around voting and enabling people to enrol on the day of the election and to cast their vote in an election is a perverse outcome, because in recent times the Electoral Commission, which does a good job, has been driving people towards voting early—enrolling early, voting early. We know that with enrolling statistics, people are actually less inclined to enrol as they might have done in previous years, and the stats are showing an increase—about 7.4 percent at the last election—that did not enrol. And what we’ve also seen is that with the advance voting, that has led to a significant increase in votes being handled much earlier than election day, thereby dealing with the issue of congestion but also giving the rights to people to cast their vote when they wanted to, at the time that it was convenient to them, because often for many the election day is not a convenient time, particularly with many people working these days.

So this issue about allowing people to vote and enrol on the same day, on election day, I think is an incredibly significant step. I think the first thing around that is that that is something that should be talked about at length and agreed by Parliament; not by the Government consulting amongst itself but with all parties—all parties of this Parliament—so that we have a basis not just for this election in 2020 but successive elections, so that we all have comfort with the process that has been proposed.

But the other thing, I think—and I’m just referring here to the regulatory impact statement, which I found a fascinating document, because here is an analytical review of these proposals. I think the issue—and it states here that the electors can still apply to enrol until midnight the night before an election and there has been a noticeable acceleration in enrolments during the advance voting period. In 2017, the Electoral Commission processed 200,000 enrolment transactions during the advance voting period, and 94,000 of these were made in the last three days. And this is what’s happening: we’re seeing more people voting earlier, but allowing people to vote right up to the last moment and turn up without having enrolled is something that will drive election day considerably in terms of making it much more congested.

The regulatory impact statement looked at four aspects in terms of assessing whether, in fact, this is a good thing or not. One was reduced participation barriers, and I think we all can get the concept that if you did allow this, it would improve participation. It talked to administration feasibility, consistency, and cost administration. The first thing it notes around allowing election day enrolment is that it states that, “Allowing election day enrolment conflicts with the current messaging to the public that people should enrol early.” So that, as I said before, has been a hallmark of recent elections—trying to get people to enrol early.

It also increases the likelihood of a number of special votes being issued, and we know the issue round this. One stat is that they estimate that it will take 10 times as long to go through the process of enrolling someone and also then allowing them to vote than would otherwise be the case. And that, of course, is on election day when it’s the busiest time. It would also slow the issuing of voting papers and casting of votes on election day. And I think those are pretty significant issues.

In terms of the implementation, and here I quote, “The operational process changes needed to enable election day enrolment are substantial,”—this is in the regulatory impact statement—“with important implications for voting place services,”. And from what I understand, the Justice Committee is working its way through the review of the 2017 election—and it happens after every election, and, of course, it would be looking into these issues—and this is the committee that’s been tasked to making sure that democracy does continue to work as well as possible, and somehow these proposals have jumped over the top of them.

The other aspect they note: “The Commission estimates that election day enrolment could add as many as 100,000 election day enrolment transactions”, and it goes on to say that that would require 2,800 additional staff and an additional cost of $13.4 million. And so this is not an insignificant issue. This is a substantial administrative issue around making sure that the veracity of those who are voting is protected and we have the outcome we want.

I think what’s missing in the debate for me is that we haven’t had a clear enunciation of why this is necessary. What is the democracy issue that we’re trying to deal with that would drive this change? And even if there was one—which I haven’t heard enunciated properly, but even if there was one—I would be waiting for the Justice Committee, who’s heard submissions on it, who are in consideration or deliberation on this matter at the moment, and who have had the time since September last year to review all this and come to a firm view on what is the best going forward. And that is what happens after every election. They are the ones best charged with looking at this issue. So we’ve got a process that has come in over top of that select committee process and imposed this bill in the House without waiting for the select committee to finish its job.

I think, if you’re talking about democracy, that in itself is a very clear demonstration of how not to do things. It is only literally a couple of months away before that select committee will be reporting back to the House. We should be waiting for that outcome. That’s what New Zealanders require of MPs—to make sure that we do protect democracy—and this is cutting across it because it does not have the unanimous support of this House, and that is a very disappointing situation.

. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. First and foremost, I would like to respond to the point made by Andrew Bayly in terms of questioning what the main problem or the main issue concerning democracy in New Zealand is that this bill needs to address. And the answer to that question for Mr Bayly is that in 2017, 19,000 New Zealanders turned up to vote on election day who were not able to.

This is a Government who’s focused on tackling the big issues. This is a Government that’s prepared to make sure that every New Zealander gets a fair go, and that means every New Zealander gets a vote. Whether they’re a shift worker, whether they’ve got five kids, whether they didn’t know it was happening, or whatever the reason might be, this is a Government that favours all New Zealanders having the opportunity to vote, and we see that as being good democracy.

So I’d like to run through a few of the arguments that we’ve heard from National members tonight as to why New Zealanders should not be able to vote on election day. May I say I have been underwhelmed by these arguments, and I’m going to run through them quickly. I’ve got some favourites. The one that’s coming in at the top—I’ll do our top five of stupid arguments as to why New Zealanders should not be able to vote on election day—and the No. 1 silly reason that’s been presented tonight by the National Party is that it takes too long and that there will be additional days required to count the votes of the 19,000 people that turn up. That will be such an impediment to democracy that we should just not let them vote in the first place—love that one.

The second one, the No. 2 stupid reason raised by the National Party today as to why New Zealanders should not be able to vote on election day, is that the uncertainty of the election turnout—which was raised by Mr Penk tonight—would mean that we wouldn’t know what would happen on election day if we let all these people vote and we might get a surprise over the outcome of the election. That one really baffles me. I don’t understand the logic behind that.

The No. 4 stupid reason as to why New Zealanders should not be allowed to vote on election day is that the queues will be too long. There will be so many people just wanting to get in there and have a vote that we won’t be able to handle it. There will be halls, schools, and malls overwhelmed by democracy. We won’t be able to cope with the fact that people are so engaged with their political system that the whole country is going to shut down.

The No. 5 stupid reason raised by the National Party tonight as to why New Zealanders should not be allowed to vote on election day is that, in fact, people won’t enrol early. People won’t enrol early. It will be a disincentive. We’ll all just sit at home watching Netflix for two weeks instead of getting out and enrolling to vote, and even if we do turn up on election day and enrol and vote, somehow that’s a loss to our country’s democracy because we didn’t do it a few weeks beforehand.

So I would like to come to the point that there have been no substantial issues raised as to why this bill is an impediment to democracy or is an impediment to being able to do anything. The only reason that’s been raised tonight—which I thought was very interesting—is that the National Party members don’t support this bill going through for the next election, but it might be OK for the next one. So it’s: “Don’t rush us. It’s a bit scary. We’re just getting our heads around it, and if we do it next election and we have a chat about it, we’ll feel fine and we’ll support it then. We’re up for democracy a bit more in another three years’ time.” I don’t understand that one, either.

I would like to remind the members opposite that in December of last year, they were well-informed by the Minister of Justice at that select committee that there would be a bill coming that made the amendments that have been tabled and put down in this House today, and at that point in time no issues were raised. Not one concern was raised. We have had high drama raised and some mock and feigned excitement about the fact that this has been a travesty in the face of justice and it has been a complete constitutional outrage, when, really, underneath it all there is a fear that New Zealanders will get out and vote more than they do now. That threatens their status quo and it concerns them that they won’t maintain what has been going on for a long time, and that is that not all New Zealanders get a voice and get a vote.

We are very focused on this side of the House on making sure that we do give people those opportunities so that they can enrol. Young voters, if they’re not aware of it, can go into the shopping mall on the day and go in and take their vote. They can go in when they see the queues, the TV, and the excitement. They will see and sense that vibe. They can go and take that opportunity with that ability—that civic right to have a voice and that civic right to vote—and that is what is missing from this debate. There have been zero substantive reasons provided by those members opposite as to why New Zealanders should not be able to vote on election day. I challenge anyone on that side of the House to come up with one decent reason, because tonight that has not happened in this House, and that is why I am proud to see this bill. I commend a bill that promotes democracy in New Zealand to this House.

I seek leave of the House to move a motion without notice instructing the Justice Committee to consider out-of-scope amendments or amendments relating to electoral donations. That motion would read: I move that it would be an instruction to the Justice Committee that it consider and, if it thinks fit, recommend amendments relating to electoral donations.

So the members have heard that leave has been sought. Is there any objection to that? There is objection, so it is not granted.