Sitting date: 16 December 2025

ELECTORAL AMENDMENT BILL

Third Reading

Hon JAMES MEAGER (Minister for Youth) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call on this, the third reading of the Electoral Amendment Bill. Of course, before I begin, I would like to present a legislative statement to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon JAMES MEAGER: Madam Speaker, apologies. I got so enthusiastic about making this third reading speech I neglected to present the legislative statement.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's all right. We're all back sorted now. Thank you.

Hon JAMES MEAGER: Of course, as we traversed last week, in a late night at Parliament, this bill is a bill to make sure that our electoral laws are modern and fit for purpose.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You actually move the third reading as well, after you've read the legislative statement. You may have—sorry if I've missed it, but I'm just checking.

Hon JAMES MEAGER: Apologies, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Carry on. Thank you.

Hon JAMES MEAGER: And third time's a charm for my speech. This bill aims to make sure that our electoral rules are modern and fit for purpose. Our election laws have a long history—and I'm sure my colleagues in front of me are very enthusiastic to listen to this speech—which means that they can sometimes become outdated. While the core principles guiding elections endure, the "how" of their delivery needs to adapt over time to keep up with changing trends, new challenges, and new technologies. It's important that these are continuously reviewed, and we review the settings to check that they are working well and to act when they are not.

The changes in this bill are intended to support timely and efficient elections to uphold integrity in our election rules. A key focus of this bill is, of course, timeliness. Over the past few elections, we have seen a dramatic increase in later enrolments and in special votes. These pressures to the system mean it is taking longer and longer and longer to complete the official vote count. It used to take two weeks; now it takes three. If we don't make changes, it will take even longer in the future.

This bill makes several changes to respond to these trends, including closing enrolment 13 days before election day and enabling automatic enrolment updates, something that has been called for by many, many submitters for many years.

These changes generally seek to reduce the number of enrolment transactions and special votes and to allow post-election processes to begin earlier where possible. The earlier enrolment deadline will reduce immediate pressures on the vote count by allowing special vote processing to begin right after election day. This change is necessary to meet the current time frames for the vote count. Automatic enrolment updates will use Government data to update address details on the electoral rolls when an elector has moved. This policy will be implemented over the next few electoral cycles, and over time it should result in more enrolment details being kept up to date between elections, resulting in fewer enrolment transactions during the election period, fewer special votes, and faster completion of our electoral process.

Another significant proposal in this bill is to ban sentenced prisoners from voting. Following a recommendation from the Justice Committee for prisoners sentenced to fewer than three years, it will only apply for crimes committed after commencement. When people show disregard for the law, then there should be consequences for that disregard, including the temporary loss of the right to vote and influence those laws, as endorsed, of course, by the previous Government, who also prevented prisoners from voting.

People are only sentenced to prison in New Zealand for serious, and often multiple, offending. This Government believes those offenders need to be held to account for their actions in order to uphold public confidence in our justice and our electoral systems. Once prisoners have served their time, they will be able to enrol to vote again.

In the committee of the whole House stage, we amended the settings in the bill for people convicted or suspected of a criminal offence who are detained in a hospital or secure facility instead of prison under mental health grounds. The bill now retains the current settings in the Electoral Act last passed by the previous Government, where people in these circumstances are only disqualified after being detained for three years or more. On reflection, we consider these settings should be retained instead of broadening the eligibility.

This bill will help to improve the integrity of our elections and improve public trust in our elections by making sure the rules are clear. For example, the bill makes it an offence to provide free food, drink, or entertainment near voting places. This change will resolve the confusion which currently exists around the current treating offence by making it crystal clear that you can't give someone food or drink as they are going to vote. Free giveaways have no place near the ballot box if they could lead to improper influence of voters.

Some other changes in the bill include formalising a 12-day advanced voting period to ensure voters have access to this widely used way of voting; removing outdated and costly requirements to send enrolment notifications by post; allowing more flexibility around the contact details that can be included on promoter statements in response to security and safety concerns, something that I would hope that all members across the House could get in behind; and changing the deadline for parties to register to the start of the regulated period to make registration processes more efficient and to provide greater certainty to voters about which parties are eligible to contest the election.

This is a substantial bill containing more than 30 different policy proposals. I want to acknowledge the work involved in getting it through to this stage, particularly the Justice Committee's contribution, both through the formulation of this bill and, of course, its excellent inquiry into the 2023 election, which was undertaken later last year, and to the members of the Justice Committee who as a whole worked very diligently on that inquiry. I want to also acknowledge the members of the public who submitted both on the bill and the inquiry, which has led to the formulation of those more than 30 policy conclusions.

This bill will support a more efficient and timely vote count, a more cost-effective and modern way of communicating with voters, more certainty around advance voting, more clarity around election rules regarding free food and drink, and a more streamlined and fit for purpose electoral administration. I commend the bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The Government should be ashamed of this bill. They should be ashamed of this bill, because what it does is it makes it harder for New Zealanders to vote, pure and simple. That's the truth. The process to be able to enrol and vote in the next election will be made harder by this legislation we're debating right now. Even more to the point, a lot of this passed through under urgency, and it is even more reprehensible that a bill that takes away people's rights to vote is being passed under such haste. Democracy is being undermined by this bill. At a time in the world where we want more people's voices, we want more engagement, we want more of the world to be having a part in democracy, this Government takes it upon themselves to make voting even harder for a whole lot of New Zealanders.

It is really concerning that this bill is, probably, I think, one of the worst that this Government has passed in their time. They've done a lot. They've scrapped pay equity—33 pay equity claims gone—but the right to vote is fundamental. It's right up there with some of the worst things this Government has done. Number two on my list is the Treaty principles bill; so bad that National wouldn't even sign up to it, but they still took the country through division up and down the country, and caused division and anger in our country. I think this one here, by making it harder for people to vote, is right up there with that one, as well.

Number three, I'll put the Regulatory Standards Bill. This one is so bad that National's going to repeal it. That's how bad it is—the Government's going to repeal the legislation it passed. But I still think that stopping people from enrolling to be able to vote in the early voting period is such a fundamental right that it's worse than the Regulatory Standards Bill. On the same day this Government disestablished the Māori Health Authority, they repealed smoke-free legislation. That was a big day; I remember that day. I think, actually, the damage done on that one—comparable to this one, as well.

Then we've got repealing fair pay agreements in a cost of living crisis, when Kiwis can't afford with their wages to pay for food and rent, for shoes, for Christmas presents. This Government repealed the ability for getting fair pay—but here, taking away the ability for people to vote once they've enrolled in that early voting period, is going to be a big impact. We know that there's close to 100,000 New Zealanders who, in the last election, bowled up to be able to enrol and vote in that period. The point has been made, which I think is incredibly important: the whole premise of that first speech we heard was that, somehow, timeliness was more important than democracy; that, somehow, we've all been held up by the fact that people want to vote and we have to address this alarming problem that so many people want to vote, and this is the answer to that. We heard from the Electoral Commission in select committee that it will not make a lick of difference. The changes present in this bill will make no difference in the time to count those votes. The Electoral Commission themselves did not recommend the option adopted by this Government. So this is not even going to make a difference.

I think it's important that we note that the people who are impacted the most by this change—the people who are going to be impacted the most by not being able to enrol and vote in that early voting period—will be some of the people who have been directly impacted by this Government's policies. Those people who have lost a job; those people who have had to shift and move in with someone else because they can't afford their rent; those people who are so focused on the day, the here and now, being able to feed their kids, being able to get some shoes on their feet, to pay for a bus, to pay for petrol—all those day-to-day pressures; those are the things that people are going to be focused on instead of filling out their forms. For that, they get called a "drop-kick". People in New Zealand who are struggling to be able to put food on their table, and this Government calls them "drop-kicks" for not being able to enrol 13 days before voting. The fact that that happens means they can't vote in the upcoming election.

I think this begs the question: why is this Government taking the action it is today? Why is it, if we've heard from the Electoral Commission that this will make no real difference in speeding up the vote count—what is the purpose of this legislation today? My concern is that it's because it tilts the playing field in their favour. We know that it is those people who have lost their jobs, who have had big changes to their lives from the bad decisions of this Government—they're the ones least likely to vote for this Government. They are the ones that will be taking action to vote out the bad decisions and the sad choices that this Government has taken. It is for that reason, we think, that this measure is being taken to prevent those people from exercising their democratic right to vote out a Government that is heartless and is only serving those who are like themselves and not the rest of New Zealand.

I think it's also important to note that this is, actually, an underhand piece of work. It is screwing the scrum in terms of tilting that in the favour of the Government, and it is absolutely undermining that fundamental right of being able to get out and vote. We should—we should—have a Government here in New Zealand that says, "We're going to do everything it is we can to make it easier for people to vote. We like democracy. We like the fact that people vote. We're not into a small group of people who are making decisions on behalf of everyone else that favour those in power and entrenching their power. We actually want to open it up and make sure it's able to be accessible for everyone." But no, that's not what we have today. We have someone who's saying, "Unless you can get your paperwork in order two weeks before the election date, you're a drop-kick and you can't vote." That's exactly what this Government has said, word for word.

The impact this has is going to have an impact for years to come—years to come—because, out of the information that we've looked through over this and some of the research in terms of voting behaviour, the number one factor, what keeps people voting, what keeps people engaged in our democratic process: if they vote in their first election, they are most likely to keep voting for the rest of their lives. For an 18-year-old who has turned 18 and hasn't filled out their paperwork and hasn't got the memo from whoever sent it in the post—if that person has not received the information and doesn't know that they need all of that to be in place before they turn up to vote, their very first experience of voting in New Zealand will be being told by an official voting booth that they're not eligible to vote. That is a real concern for undermining the legitimacy of our democracy. A Government that is taking action that makes it harder for first-time voters in the next election to be able to get out and have their say—what message does that send to our people? What message does that send to the world of what New Zealand stands for? Because we have a small group of people making decisions that tilts the favour into their side, and that is not fair for those people who have suffered at the hands of this Government.

I think that we should be engaging in a programme where we look at greater options for encouraging people to vote. We should be putting it not only in our schools but encouraging people to do all of those things and making it as easy as possible. Even if it did take one, two, or three days longer, how does that compare to the amount of time negotiating a coalition agreement? The Government's quite happy to take a couple of weeks in there to negotiate, but isn't prepared to give people a couple of more days to be able to vote in that early voting period. This is a real concern, and we know, for a fact, that there are nearly 134,000 in the last election that changed electoral districts during that same time frame. That amounts, in total, to over 200,000 New Zealanders—231,000 New Zealanders who may be impacted by this change. That's about 8 percent of the voting population.

I think it is absolutely obscene, the fact that this Government tries to say that it is achieving "a more efficient system", "a more time-factored-in approach." "We're all going to be much better off by having a time-efficient process."—when the reality is that the truth of what this bill does is it makes it harder for New Zealanders to get out and vote. I think this is probably the worst piece of legislation that this sad Government has passed, taking power out of the hands of the very people that have the ability to vote. A fundamental part of our democracy is being compromised today by this wrong piece of legislation.

CELIA WADE-BROWN (Green): I rise to speak in the third reading of this appalling piece of legislation. This bill could affect the next election in less than 12 months. I say the sooner the better. If voting didn't matter, then there wouldn't be so many people trying to influence it. If voting didn't matter, we wouldn't have some shadowy figures trying to influence elections from America to Aotearoa. And if voting didn't matter, perhaps this coalition Government would not be rolling back the franchise, reducing the ease and simplicity of voting when people have got used to being able to change their details at the last minute.

Who is this democracy for, or who is this economy for? And are they related? With the increasing employment that we have seen in the most recent fact sheet, unemployment is going up—still up; there doesn't seem to be a corner in this roundabout; 5.3 percent on average. Māori unemployment up to 10.5 percent; youth not in employment, education, or training at a whopping 13.8 percent. The economy isn't working for these people. It might be working for the one percent, but these people are eligible voters who probably won't be voting for the other side of the House.

Justice officials said that closing enrolments ahead of advance voting would result in lower turn-out and reduce confidence in the electoral system. Electoral law experts are questioning why the changes need to stretch to the whole advance voting period. I want to quote from the Human Rights Commission: "The right to vote is a foundational right under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." It is a "cornerstone of democratic participation" and "the Bill proposes significant limitations on the right to vote." How you can cast a vote on behalf of the Attorney-General, the Hon Judith Collins, who said that this breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights in four different ways, I don't know.

So just in case you hadn't realised, the Green Party strongly opposes this bill. We think you are taking voting away from the unemployed, away from prisoners, away from people who are transient, and advantaging those who are wealthy and sorted and don't move from emergency housing to cars to council housing to other places as often.

The Electoral Commission, as the previous speaker said, advised that the earlier deadline will not necessarily enable quicker vote count for the 2026 general election. I note that the Minister, when he introduced—I think at the second reading—talked about how much worse it might be in 2029 or 2032 or further ahead. But one of the few good things that this bill does is that it allows automatic enrolment updates. So why don't we just breeze through 2026 and watch for those updates improving the timeliness of the special vote count afterwards? That would be one answer. You could extend the period after which there needs to be a decision by the Governor-General on what would constitute the new Government. You can make it five days longer, or 10 days longer. If you actually look at other countries that have a more mature MMP system, sometimes their coalition discussions do take a little longer. That might not meet the managerial ambitions of this Government, but it would be perfectly reasonable from a democratic point of view.

I want to touch on a couple of other things. We also tried through the select committee and then the committee stage here in the House to make some changes. First of all, there were several recommendations from the Independent Electoral Review. One is very solid: that 17- and 18-year- olds ought to be able to vote. It was agreed by the Supreme Court of New Zealand that it is age discrimination not to allow them to vote. The clear evidence shows that if people vote in that 16- and 17-year-old age group they are more likely to continue to vote. We heard that from Scotland in clear evidence, so we wanted to change that. We also wanted to change and make an exception for providing food and drink at a marae. Manaakitanga has been going longer than the Westminster voting style. We think it's unreasonable. Nobody's saying, "Oh, you can only get a sausage roll or you can only get some hummus or you can only get some very healthy food if you vote for the Greens or Te Pāti Māori or National." or anything. They're just saying, "Come, be part of the day, be appreciated for actually taking your democratic right." So we tried to change that.

Then, the last thing that we tried to change was the disclosure: the $6,000 secret donation. Six thousand dollars might not seem a lot to the wealthy and sorted, but $6,000 is a lot of money to the average New Zealander. We think that the disclosure regime should be reduced significantly. We proposed $1,000, but frankly, I'd be happy with $200 disclosure. Why are people scared of putting their mouth where their money is—to turn it around?

We also wanted to limit who can make donations so that it is corporations that are not able to make donations. If you actually look at companies, particularly but not only extractive companies, and unions—sometimes they say they're unions and I would doubt it; sometimes they're real unions—but why don't we just limit the donations to real human voters? I feel like I should be doing a capture thing: when you do your vote, when you do your donation, should you be filling in that capture thing where you say which picture is a bus or which picture is a bicycle, just to prove you are a real human being? But I think that democracy is best served by making sure that more people can vote, that prisoners do not suffer double jeopardy, that transient people are not discriminated against, and that people are not bought by large, undisclosed donations. Thank you, Madam Chair.

TODD STEPHENSON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak in the third reading of the Electoral Amendment Bill. Can I just start by saying, please, members, go and actually google what "double jeopardy" is, because it was misused in the House tonight and it was misused a number of times in the select committee. Please don't use a term if you're not sure what it means—it's probably better you don't.

What I wanted to say tonight is that on this side of the House, we actually have a positive vision for New Zealand. We actually want to lift up New Zealanders. We want to educate them. We want to deliver them high-paying jobs. What we also believe is that they're capable of enrolling to elect. It is a legal requirement—let me repeat that: it's a legal requirement to be enrolled once you turn 18 years of age. No one's rights are being removed. No one's rights are being taken away. All we are doing is clarifying that you need to be enrolled 13 days before the election, which should already be done if you have turned 18 years of age.

So, again, you can go to the select committee report, read what some of the issues were. But if you look at page 10, it talks very clearly about why the Electoral Commission is telling us that it takes 10 times—let me repeat that: 10 times—longer to process a special vote. They then go on to say about population increases, the number of special votes that are projected, saying that we could end up with a million special votes.

We are actually restoring integrity to our electoral system and making sure that people can have confidence that people are eligible to vote, they're enrolled to vote, and the vote count can be done in a timely manner. I'm very much looking forward to these changes being put in place. We can reinforce to New Zealanders their legal obligation to be enrolled when they're 18, and let's get on with these sensible changes. I commend the bill to the House.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of this legislation. This bill arises from years of debate about how to keep our electoral system fair, transparent, and more trusted. What this bill does is it strengthens the rules around enrolment—and I'll come back to that in a moment—but also around donations and advertising. During the second reading debate, I particularly referred to the situation at the Manurewa Marae, which this bill directly addresses, which is to say we cannot have people treating—providing food, drink, whatever—within a few metres of a voting booth, because that is something which undermines the integrity of the voting system, because it suggests that people's votes can influenced or bought by the treating. That's why we don't allow for that and that is why this bill makes a change to that particular situation.

We were lectured in the early part of this debate by the Hon Ginny Andersen, who talked about disenfranchising people, and it didn't seem to matter to her how long it takes to get a result. We've heard from Todd Stephenson just now, we're on track, by projection, in the next two elections, to get to a million special votes, which take more than 10 times the length of time to process. What that means is that increasingly we will not be in a position, if we don't make changes, to get a result not only on election night but possibly for a long time thereafter. That is not about making sure that New Zealanders can wake up and say "Actually, we know who our Government is.", following an election. That is something that is a really important outcome of any election.

We also heard a lot from Ginny Andersen about disenfranchising people. I think the number she said was 134,000 people would move house in sort of the two-week period before an election. Well, if you take that on the basis of taking that across a year, that equates to nearly 3.5 million New Zealanders would move house in a year. Now, I know that some of her maths is a bit sketchy at times, but that does seem a very, very far-fetched assertion.

What she said is we're disenfranchising people. Well, actually, no; if you look at the Electoral Commission's website, you can enrol on register to enrol at 17. It says, "If you're 17, you can fill out an enrolment form now, and on your 18th birthday, we'll automatically enrol you and you'll still be ready to vote." So how hard, for somebody who is 17, is it to be able to say "I'm going to register to vote a year out from election and then they'll automatically put me on there and then I can vote."? That's fine. Oh, and there's the other thing about all these people who aren't on the electoral roll. Actually, the other thing the Electoral Commission says is if you're eligible, you must enrol. In other words, those people have effectively broken the law by not enrolling for that period of time because they are over 18. So we've got 17-year-olds who can vote when they become 18—they're covered—and all the over-18s are also covered so I think that the comments which have been made about disenfranchising a lot of people, you really have to question.

I think that this is simply a good piece of legislation. It's about trying to make sure that we get a decent election result at the end of the election process, not weeks and weeks thereafter, and it gives people some confidence in the electoral system. I commend this bill to the House.

TAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): In my maiden speech, I talked about my kuia from Ngāti Pūkeko called Marian McKay, and she sat outside the steps of Parliament, petitioning the Premier to return our confiscated lands. She lost her life due to the pneumonia that she got—you'll see how this connects in a minute, Madam Speaker. She lost her life waiting to meet with the Premier because, at the time, women did not have the vote. This was her way of participating in democracy. Her obituary said, "Mrs Stewart's end may be said to have been hastened by the relentless cruelty and injustice of the Government to herself and her family." Her death warns my people of the consequences of limiting participation in democracy. Her illness and death came about not just because she was a woman who died 14 years before women had the vote but because she was also Māori. Denying a person the opportunity to shape the rules that govern their lives is oppression. Denying a person the ability to participate in choosing who their leaders are sows the seeds for dissent. Voter suppression is not always explicit, but this bill is not just voter suppression; it is a threat to our democracy.

For the first general elections in Aotearoa, there was blatant Māori voter suppression, and this bill harks back to that era. For the first general elections, large rural areas where Māori lived were not included in the electorates. There were polling places only in Pākehā settlements, and only Māori who held individual land titles were allowed to participate, despite the fact that Māori owned land collectively. In the first election, 100 Māori voted out of more than 5,000 eligible electors. That's because Māori could not vote, not because the constitution at the time explicitly barred Māori from voting but because the constitution made no space for our people and our way of life—exactly what this bill does. When they did, eventually, let us vote, they used it as a tool—a tool or maybe a weapon—to assimilate us into Pākehā culture. The reason why we didn't have the vote was because English colonists said that Māori were not civilised enough to exercise such an important responsibility. It wasn't just Māori who were disenfranchised from our democracy, but it was women too. The reason I bring up this whakapapa is because there are threads in this bill that relate back to suppression of large groups in our society, whether that be Māori or whether that be women.

Women were meant to stay home and look after the kids while leaving politics to the men. Women was told that political involvement would "unsex" women and destroy their lovableness. The right to vote is something that we have fought hard for, both women and Māori, and it is something that we should never ever take for granted. The right to vote is not something that was won overnight. It was not something that was simply given to us. It is something that we had to take for ourselves. Therefore, we in this House, have an obligation to fight for those who will be disenfranchised by this bill.

Now, I want to talk about voting as a human right, because this bill reinstates a blanket ban for people in prison from voting. This quote says, "If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights, then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights." Besides the point that a blanket ban totally contradicts the principles of rehabilitation and reintegration, which is what our correctional system supposes it's about, it also sets up a responsibility framework in order to vote. The thing about human rights is that you aren't rewarded human rights based on good behaviour; you have human rights by virtue of being a human being. It becomes extremely dangerous when you have a person, in this case Paul Goldsmith, who is the arbiter of who is and isn't allowed access to their human rights. The first thing I learnt about human rights in university is that they are universal, they are indivisible, and they are interdependent on each other. You can't pick and choose which human rights some people have and some people don't. We all have them because we are all the same thing—human beings. You can't weaken any human right without expecting there to be a flow-on weakening effect on other human rights. A right is not what someone gives you. It is something that nobody can take away from you. In other countries around the world, people will be shot for going to the ballot box, and here we are, today, where we should be enhancing people's participation and making voting more accessible, yet we are denying 58,000-plus people, including rangatahi Māori, from voting, and that is a shame on this House.

HANA-RAWHITI MAIPI-CLARKE (Te Pāti Māori—Hauraki-Waikato):

[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

That is what me and Tamatha represent in this House, is young Māori wāhine, and who—for ourselves and who we represent—are unfortunately kept out of these democracy processes. We represent our constituents, that I've had engagements with across the motu, who—I guess those stories that I wouldn't want to share in here, but stories of "If you two are in here, I feel like I have a voice in this Parliament.", and making sure that they still have accessibility to voting.

Essentially, this bill makes it harder for rangatahi, for wāhine, for people who feel like they don't feel a part of these democracy system processes. This bill shuts down enrolment and updates 13 days before election day, right when many people finally engage, finally get organised, and finally make time. We already know who that hits. In the 2023 general election, the Electoral Commission reported official turnout was 78.2 percent. Turnout for voters of Māori descent across general and Māori rolls was 70.3 percent, and turnout for voters on the Māori roll was 68 percent. Those are not lazy voters; those are voters navigating structural barriers, poverty, unstable housing, shift work, caregiving, digital exclusion, and systems that were never designed around Māori realities.

The kicker is the Government is using backlog from special votes as its excuse, yet the reason special votes were high in 2023 is because over 230,000 people enrolled or changed details during that election period. That's not a problem to punish; that's democracy in action. We have seen a huge turnover, especially young voters under 40—70 percent of the Māori population is under 40—actually changed to the Māori role. Even the Attorney-General warned that 100,000 or more people could be directly or indirectly disenfranchised by these changes.

Just as Tamatha was talking about her kuia coming to bring a petition here to Parliament, so also did my kuia Hana Te Hemara in the te reo Māori petition in 1972. It comes as huge responsibility to make sure that we represent those who are voiceless outside of this House, and who we represent to make sure those barriers are not in place for them, and making sure that they are able to participate in our democracy. So when I'm talking about women, when I'm talking about young people, and when I'm talking about Māori, Pasifika, Asian, this is the bill that directly affects them.

When I also think of young people left out, the Electoral Commission found that for 18- to 24-year-olds in 2023, turnout was 74.2 percent, and turnout for 18- to 24-year-old voters of Māori descent was 70.3 percent. So spare us the stereotypes about rangatahi not caring; they do care when we invite them in and when they see themselves in these spaces. So there's going to be more of me and Tamathas, come 2026.

Māori are already underserved by the system. Wāhine fought to be recognised in the system, and rangatahi are told to care about the future but denied a say in it. The choice in front of the House is that democracy is not a—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member's time has expired.

KATIE NIMON (National—Napier): Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on this bill in the third reading. I want to say something, too: it's very important, these changes we are making to restore integrity to the voting process. People of this country vote for a Government, not a three-week – plus holding pattern. Actually, they vote for the change they want to see, and the longer we take, the slower it is for them to see that. This is very important. We heard a lot around the House about people saying, "We need the chance, we need the chance." If you know that you have to enrol before the two-week cut off, you will do it. Give people an inch, they'll take a mile. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. If you had a responsible Government, the very last thing they would change would be restricting the voting right. They would take every other opportunity to rectify a situation using every other methodology because they would know that that's where they get their legitimacy. But this seems to be a Government that feels that it is not accountable to people.

Well, we see them and the people of New Zealand see them. They are fooling nobody. They're fooling nobody because they can stand in this House and say what they will, but we have advice from the Electoral Commission on paper—that the people of New Zealand can read and that I'll walk through today—that shows that they had other options which could have rectified the problem. They didn't choose to see those other options through; they chose this. They chose; they are choosing to limit the vote. It is not the only thing available for them to rectify this problem.

One more time, let's go through the problem statement. The issue here doesn't relate to the 2026 election. The problem, as outlined to us on the committee, is that when we get to 2032, we will have 1 million special votes. But the important thing to know is we'll have 1 million special votes if we do nothing, and that will be too hard to count within that time frame. The problem statement for the Government was: how do we either limit the number of specials or count the vote quickly or do both of those things and still protect the right to vote? The big question is: is there any way they could do that by 2032 without making the changes that they're proposing in terms of restricting the time that people get to register?

Clearly it is the case that there are other options. That was put to us by the Electoral Commission. We're debating it in this House, but it was put to us very clearly that we could make those two changes. We received a letter from the Electoral Commission on 16 October that is worth a read for members of the public. They set out three scenarios. The first was that we do nothing at all. The second is that we make the changes the Government proposed. The third was that we make every other change that's proposed in this bill except for that change of restricting the right to register.

If we did nothing at all, we'd have a million specials. If we did everything in the bill by 2032, we'd have 727,000 specials. Now here's the telling comparator; the third scenario: if we did the other things they advised us to do within the bill, except for restricting the right to register, we would have 740,000 specials by 2032. Those numbers are very similar—727,000 versus 740,000. In other words, that's 13,000 votes' difference in terms of specials.

The point that the Electoral Commission were making is that once you see and embed these changes, the number of specials will drop. You just need to give it the time to do that. Again, this is a choice. This is a choice and the members of the Justice Committee especially know this. Appalling that you stood and spoke to this today. You knew we had a choice—you know we had a choice. We were advised that we have a choice and yet you're making the decision to restrict the vote, and that is the pure and simple truth.

Let me quote from the Electoral Commission themselves. They said at paragraph 24 of the letter of 16 October: "Initiatives like automatic enrolment update will ensure over time that more voters are enrolled by writ day. The Commission also received funding this year to develop a business case to modernise election delivery, including new technologies that may be able to reduce the period for the official count in future elections, including technologies such as live roll mark-off, but they cannot be implemented for 2026. These require a business case in early 2027 … New election technologies, if funded, could start from 2029 and be scaled up in 2032."

They list other measures that are included in this bill. They list measures that are not yet included in legislation that could get us to the target without impacting the period of registration. If there's a problem for the 2023 election—which Government members might argue—the simple temporary fix is to change the period of the writ temporarily. We've done it before. We've changed it from 50 to 60 days. You could up it by three to five days for a short period until the technology caught up. There is a fix around this that was given to us, but this is a Government who has chosen not to take it. I said in the committee stage that any person in this room—there are many who've been managers—any manager who was given this advice would say there is a fix here that doesn't need to touch the right to vote and they would take that on its own.

Now, the bizarre thing in this case is not only is there a fix that doesn't touch on the right to vote, but it's the least best financial option the Government have chosen as well. The Electoral Commission are about to pour a lot of money into setting up a system and telling people that their vote is about to be harder in terms of registering to vote. We will rectify that. We will restore the vote. It is a waste of money. It's also a waste of money because people are going to bring legal challenges to defend their vote. The Electoral Commission themselves said that they are making the system more robust at the tail end because it's going to be harder to work out which are valid votes and which aren't. Guess what? Litigation results because of that.

The other piece of litigation—and I call this the "boomerang bill" because we will see it back in the House. The Attorney-General has already given us the bones of a Supreme Court decision on this. We will see this back in the House, but not until Crown Law has spent an awful lot of public time and money defending this case in the court. This is the most financially irresponsible thing I have seen this term, and to the Government: this is not going away—boomerang bill. This is front and centre for every voter next year. This is front and centre for us for several years now. This will come back and back and back.

You have also created a state in New Zealand's democracy where there will be confusion at the voting booth—confusion at the voting booth. This role might feel very political to you, but it's also a governance role—it's also a governance role. You have a responsibility to democracy to ensure that you are not confusing people on voting day.

This Government should be extremely ashamed. I called on our New Zealand First colleagues last time to cross the floor and vote in accordance with their morals. It's because in 2019-20 they voted with us to make the change so that people could vote on election day. I wanted to quote the words of Ron Mark, who spoke at the third reading. He said, "We will continue to support measures that enhance the opportunity for people to exercise their democratic right. We will support measures that enhance participation on election day." It's not too late. New Zealand First: cross the floor; vote in line with your values.

In my final minute, I want to go back to what I see are the headlines that are around the corner for New Zealand as we see this bill passed—if New Zealand First doesn't cross the floor. There are headlines like "Anger across the country as mass numbers of specials are deemed invalid"; "Lawyers engaged as angry voters seek to hold their franchise"; "Greatest number of excluded votes are for individuals who would have been first-time voters"; "Women offenders, unfairly disenfranchised, eligible for home detention but no facilities available"; "The curse of the dormant roll drop-off"; "Professionals angry and shocked they lost the right to vote in 2026"; and, finally, from perhaps Transparency International in the future, "New Zealand rankings plummet in response to voting debacle". You should be absolutely ashamed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Before I call the next speaker, I'd just like to remind everybody in the House not to bring the Speaker into your debates or your heckling across the House.

RIMA NAKHLE (National—Takanini): Let's face it. Let's be honest with each other: the reason why Labour and the Greens are so angry and they're so livid is because we're putting victims first once again and taking away the privilege from people who have committed common assaults, that have committed injury with intent to injure, that have committed assault with an intent to injure from having the privilege of voting. I'm proud to commend this bill to the House.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I'm not angry. I'm not sure what my hoa over there is talking about.

[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

Apparently, this bill aims to improve the timeliness, efficiency, integrity, and resilience of the electoral system. What of the timeliness, efficiency, integrity, and resilience of our voters? I want to acknowledge the speakers from this side of the House, who, I think, have made very measured and reasonable arguments and contributions tonight, withholding any negative emotions.

As I've acknowledged, we've heard good arguments on this side, so I thought I'd just cut to the chase about what I see on the ground in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. We've heard that Māori participation is already low, and the members opposite know that they are the people who will be most highly impacted by this. Why, instead of enhancing and encouraging participation, would they be knowingly putting up a barrier to that participation?

The answer can only be one thing: mataku—fear. I've heard an argument from across the floor saying that if people want to get organised and they know they've got 14 days to enrol, they'll do it. They will get organised and they'll do it. And guess what! The whānau across Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and Aotearoa are so hōhā with the moumou of time legislation coming from that side of the House. That in spite of these efforts, they will.

One of the aunties sent me a message not too long ago. She said that our whānau are hōhā with all this legislation, as I've just said. They feel disenfranchised. There was once a time when whānau used to vote by household, and we need to go back to those days. So to all the whānau out there feeing disenfranchised and feeling hōhā, you do have some power. Talk to your whānau. We will rise above this, and, as my esteemed colleague Vanushi Walters said, this will come back before this House because this is unjust. This is not here to fulfil the aims that this Government purports that it will. It will not.

Then, when you're hearing the kind of games we're going to make from this, we're quibbling over days. We're wasting the time of this House and we're wasting the money of taxpayers to save a couple of days. We are also putting barriers in front of people who already experience voter apathy in this country. We're putting another barrier in front of them at a cost of them—to themselves. Taxpayers are paying for the privilege of depriving themselves ease of access to their democratic right of voting.

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: They're avoiding something.

CUSHLA TANGAERE-MANUEL: Thank you. As I said, voter apathy is absolutely real. The process is hard enough. Accessibility is hard enough. And for the people throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti I can speak for, the environment is often quite sterile. Often, getting enrolled and showing up to vote is already quite an achievement for a lot of our whānau, so I really don't understand why we're doing this at a time where our whānau are struggling to buy the bread and Marmite with which the Prime Minister recommends they should so easily be making their sandwiches for lunch. These are the real issues Aotearoa is dealing with, but instead of empowering them to make sure they are part of naming the next Government of this country, this Government keeps on hacking away at the morale and the rights of this country. So, once again, I say:

[Authorised reo Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

[Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

, and make sure that this is a one-term Government. I do not commend this bill to the House.

PAULO GARCIA (National—New Lynn): Madam Speaker, thank you. I'm pleased to be able to stand and contribute to this debate. I would like to come from a different angle, and that is that the vote in a democracy is so valuable and so important and so unique compared to many other countries around the world where people may not be able to vote or could not vote or their votes might not be counted. In New Zealand, their votes are counted; people's votes are counted.

I go across the country trying to tell people the value of their vote, that that unique democracy that we live in, in New Zealand, values the vote of people. The object of that is to let them understand that their vote will be counted and it matters and does affect what happens after an election. But that uniqueness, that value of the vote, comes with a very special responsibility, and people have to exercise that responsibility.

What is happening with this amendment bill, by making advance voting 12 days and putting a limit to enrolment is just an example of putting personal responsibility to the vote and the value of the vote in a democracy such as New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it's interesting to hear Rima Nakhle's speech, wasn't it? Because she talked a lot about privilege; she repeated the word "privilege" about six or seven times, possibly more. Do you know why? Because that's all they know about on that side of the House: that is the party of privilege, and this bill shows that.

For the first time in living memory, we are going to retreat the franchise. Here we stand on the precipice of a Jim Crow - style law, making it harder for people to vote. I was interested to hear the speeches of all of our wāhine Māori here tonight, because they spoke to something: they spoke to how hard it is to vote. You know what? This bill actually speaks to a lot more than just the franchise; it speaks to how the National Party, in particular, approaches questions of equity generally.

Because you know what? They sit over there on their privileged bench, and they say, "If people can't get their admin right, they don't deserve to have the privilege of voting." They sit on their high horse, and they pretend that everyone's got it as good as them. Well, as we heard from a number of speakers tonight, not everyone has their lives entirely in order. Some people are juggling three jobs to make ends meet, and it's not real easy to get to the enrolment form; it's not top of the mind. Top of the mind is getting home in time to feed the kids, you know, and the fact of the matter is that despite what those people think, not everyone's thinking about them all of the time. Not everyone's thinking about whether they're going to vote red or blue or green or any other colour. They're far too busy caring for a sick child.

You know what? Maybe they only realise a couple of days out. They see the billboards out and they go, "Oh, crikey, is there an election on? I want to vote." It's all here in black and white. The Attorney-General's report is one of the best documents that the Opposition could have written because it sets it out there how many people are affected: up to 200,000 people are affected. Do you know what? The parties on this side of the House want to come to people to help them, to make it as easy as possible to participate, to make it as easy as possible for healthcare to come to them, for education to come to them, and for democracy to come to them.

But over on that side, what do they say? "If you want democracy, come to us. If you want democracy, do it our way. We are not going to make accommodations for your busy lives, for your illness or your disability, for your language barriers." No. They simply say, "If you can't get your lives in order 13 days before the election, you're a drop kick." On that privileged side of the House: "We don't think you should be entitled to vote."

So, for the first time I can remember, we are, in a significant way, making it harder for people to vote. The Attorney-General, in this document, said who this will affect most significantly: Māori, Pasifika, and Asians, because they're the people who struggle most in engaging with Government generally, and that Government doesn't care. They are making a choice.

Vanushi Walters gave an outstanding speech. She went through it in a detail that was comprehensive; that it doesn't make any difference. I will make this prediction: the vote count this election will be not one iota faster than the last election, even though you're making this change, even though you are taking away the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of people who won't manage to enrol 13 days before. That is truly shameful.

But you know what? We're no fools over here; we know you've thought about it. We know that this is intentional. We know that you think that these people won't be voting for your Government anyway. That's right. This is gerrymandering. I'll call it out; I'll call it for what it is: you are suppressing the vote. You are making it harder for people to vote who won't vote for you, and it is absolutely shameful, Madam Speaker. Oh, I take your point, Madam Speaker. It is that Government is making it harder for people to vote who won't vote for them, and it is absolutely shameful—

Todd Stephenson: You're talking New Zealanders down. You're talking the country down—disgusting.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Look, the justification for it—and the member who is barracking there was in the select committee when the direct question was put to the Electoral Commission: how much faster will the vote be this time round? None—none, not a day. The proof in the pudding; we'll be here to see.

As Vanessa Walters so clearly expressed, sure, there might be a longer counting period in another electoral term, but there's two things to say about that. First of all, this is the most injurious step to seek to mitigate that, and the least effective. It doesn't even work. We totally support automatic enrolment. Yes, that's a good idea, has been a good idea for a long time, but the Electoral Commission can't get it in place for this election. That will be felt when it really counts: at the next election.

Of course, the other thing is this: that if you did all of those other things but not cut off people's right to vote, you'd actually address 95 percent of the problem. Let's remember what this is for. All of this so-called necessity is for a few fewer days in counting the vote. What was the biggest delay in forming a Government after the last election, other than the fact that we didn't win? It was actually coalition negotiations. We knew the rough shape of the Government. There was no impediment to the parties talking about what kind of arrangements that they might make. The Electoral Commission took a few extra days to give it out in black and white and in absolute numbers. But the real delay was trying to string their coalition of chaos together, and to be perfectly honest, they probably needed a few more weeks to get a decent coalition agreement or two in place as well.

But at the end of the day, what we have here is the Government, a po-faced Government that sits there and takes the votes away; not from everybody but from ordinary people, from people who the leader of the ACT Party called "drop kicks", and people like me who sometimes forget to get their warrant. People who, sometimes, perhaps, don't pay their bills exactly on time; people who can't keep on top of everything all the time; people who aren't as self-obsessed with themselves and with politics as they are.

If we want to have a country which is cohesive and where everyone feels listened to, we need to have a country where people feel they have a stake in the democracy. I can tell you what would be a most alienating experience: to turn up to a polling booth and come and want to have your say in the Government and be told you didn't fill out a form on time. What kind of Kafkaesque world is that, when we say it's a democracy but "I'm sorry, you didn't fill out a form on time, so you can't have a say on who governs you and what your future is."?

I say this to the Government: stop telling ordinary New Zealanders, "Come to us; fit in with our expectations of how you are entitled to a benefit or to participate in Government." Why don't you take a moment and cross the bridge—te arawhiti—to the other side. Go to the people. Don't expect them to come to you. Let's build a democracy not just for your people but for all people. That's not what this bill does.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Well, we've heard a lot of crocodile tears about the electoral changes that this bill introduces and the fact that we're requiring people to be enrolled 13 days before the election. This, according to Duncan Webb and everybody else, is near the end of the world. I will just remind people who are tuning in that, in Australia, you need to be enrolled 26 days before the election, and the world hasn't come to an end.

Hon Members: Compulsory voting.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: In the UK, it's about 13 days. They say, "Oh, that's because enrolment is compulsory." Enrolment is compulsory in New Zealand as well.

When the Government changed the rules and allowed same-day electoral enrolment, the advice from the officials back in 2020 was that that is going to lead to a longer vote count. Lo and behold, that's precisely what happened. We went from two weeks to three weeks, and the advice that I had was that, if we did nothing, it would be four weeks before we knew it. New Zealanders need to get an outcome, so what we're doing is we're fixing the basics and we're giving people a year to get themselves enrolled. We're very confident that they will be able to do that because we have no doubt that the Electoral Commission, which has a big budget and has a big focus—it is their focus to get as many people enrolled by writ day, and, therefore, we can have a fast and efficient count and get on with the next Government. I'd reject any of the suggestions that when Labour changes the electoral rules, everything's fine, but when National changes them, it's terrible, because that is a misrepresentation of what's going on. On that basis, I commend this bill to our House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Home Page | Parliament | Previous Story | Next Story

Copyright (c) Scoop Media