No Labels

On-Demand Content:

		No Labels January 30th janaury 2012   30 min
		No Labels January 2nd 2012   30 min
		No Labels December 2011   28 min
		No Labels 7th November 2011   28 min
		No Labels 10th Oct 2011   29 min
		You can drag this RSS icon into your pod-casting software.
		• Play this programme from your website - learn how

About the Programme

Email No Labels here 

Transcript of interview with Robert Pedon, Chief Electoral Officer.

Broadcast on Monday 10th October, 2011 at 3pm during the No Labels Radio Show.

For more info on the general elections and voting for disabled people, see this link: www.elections.org.nz/study/disability-resources

-----
ROBERT = Robert Pedon
BRENDON = Brendon Fitzgibbon
-----

BRENDON : Good afternoon everybody. It’s my great pleasure to talk to Robert Pedon, who’s the chief electoral commissioner, is that right?
ROBERT : The chief electoral officer with the electoral Commission.
BRENDON : ..with the electoral commission, OK. Now today we’re going to talk about voting for the folks with disabilities, and really just voting in general to be honest with you, with the general election coming up. Now I guess we need to start off talking about enrolment.
ROBERT : I think that’s the place to start, Brendon, yes.
BRENDON : You can’t vote unless you’re enrolled?
ROBERT : That’s absolutely right and so it’s, it’s really important if you’re not on the roll yet, get on the roll now. You really want to be enrolled before October the 26th because that’s when the writ is issued, and that’s when the rolls close for printing so if you’re enrolled before that point, when you go to a polling place, you’ll be on the roll at that polling place and voting will be much simpler. If you ENROL after writ day, you can, you can still enrol up into the day before election day but you have to make what’s called a special vote, and that takes longer.
BRENDON : Righto, so you can vote if you’re not enrolled but you’ll have to make a special vote?
ROBERT : Well no, if you go to a polling place and you’re not enrolled, you’ll be issued with a vote but it won’t count. You need to be on the roll for your vote to count. And what I’m saying is, if you enrol before October the 26th it will be simpler for you when you go to vote. If you enrol between that date, October the 26th, and election day, you’ll be able to vote, it’ll be a special vote, it’ll take you much longer, it’s much more difficult. So really the time to get on the roll is now. It’s very simple. If you use text you can text your name and address to 3676 or you can call the 0800 number. If you have access to the internet you can do it on our website, you can apply to enrol on our web site.
BRENDON : The web site is elections dot govt dot nz?
ROBERT : It’s elections.org.nz.
BRENDON : So don’t go to the dot govt site the way I did the other night and it told me it was the wrong place to go.
ROBERT : Yeah, and if it’s helpful, our 0800 number is 0800-36-76-56.
BRENDON : 0800-36-76-56?
ROBERT : yeah.
BRENDON : That’s fantastic. Now when you say it will be more difficult, that basically means more paperwork?
ROBERT : Absolutely, you have to complete a declaration which sets out your name, your address and why you’re making a special vote, and it will take you about five times longer to make a special vote than it is to make an ordinary vote. So it’s really important to enrol now. The other thing is that if you enrol now, we will send, the Electoral commission will send out to every voter who’s enrolled before writ day an EasyVote pack which includes their EasyVote card, and that helps to make the process really simple. You’ll get that about a week before election day.
BRENDON : All right, I’m just thinking, I’m fairly sure I’m enrolled. I’ve received notification from the electoral Commission, and I’m pretty sure everyone else in my building has. It seems to be all done very efficiently but what I’m thinking of is some of the folks who listen to this programme, and people generally I suspect, have a bit of trouble interacting with paperwork so the urge is really generally, go out there and make sure that you’re all worked out. Now can I just ask you about the contents of the EasyVote pack. I’m particularly interested in the referendum but if you can just tell us what’s in there en toto.
ROBERT : Sure, the EasyVote information pack has all the information that a voter needs to be able to take part in the election. So it’s got your EasyVote card which you should take when you go to vote, whether in advance or on election day, it’s got the candidates standing in your electorate, it’s got the party lists. It’s also got a list of the polling places and the advance voting places for your electorate, and their accessibility details. It also has information on the referendum which will be held with the general election.
BRENDON : Right, now what can you tell us, just a little bit more about that, the referendum, because it doesn’t happen every election.
ROBERT : No, indeed it doesn’t. With this general election there will also be a referendum on our voting system. So when you go to vote you’ll get two papers, an orange paper for the Parliamentary election and a purple paper for the referendum. On the referendum paper you’ll be asked two questions; do you want to keep MMP, which is our current voting system, or change. Then the second question is, should New Zealand decide to change, which alternative voting system would you choose? There are four options. Now we will be providing information to new Zealanders about the referendum and the options, between now and the election.
BRENDON : OK, that’s good, but as far as the actual casting of the votes goes, it’s exactly the same story...?
ROBERT : Absolutely.
BRENDON : Where you can go in there and vote and you can deal with it as part of the special voting process.
ROBERT : that’s right, if you’re on the printed roll and you get your Parliamentary paper and your referendum paper, you go behind the booth, and if you need help, you take the person behind with you and they can help you both with the Parliamentary paper and the referendum paper. If you can complete the papers yourself, you do so. The Parliamentary paper goes in the orange ballot box and the referendum paper goes in the purple box. You need two ticks on your Parliamentary paper and you need two ticks on your referendum paper.
BRENDON : ...on the purple paper, and there’ll be plenty of staff there to help out?
ROBERT : Absolutely.
BRENDON : Great, now just to the mechanics of voting on the day. I’m a blind person and in the previous elections what I’ve done is taken someone into the booth with me.
ROBERT : yes.
BRENDON : Either a member of the staff or in one case, a carer. That’s all kosher?
ROBERT : That’s absolutely kosher. You can take a friend or a relative, any person you wish to, along with you to help you vote. If you don’t’ have anybody to take to the polling place or to an advance voting place, then you can ask an official to help you, an electoral official, and they’re very happy to help. Any person who’s blind or has trouble reading, or has some mobility issue which makes it difficult for them to complete the paper themselves can be helped.
BRENDON : OK, all right, so there are staff there, they are clued up on what’s going to happen?
ROBERT : Absolutely, the staff, we’re very careful in the training to make clear to our staff that people who need assistance to vote are entitled to be helped to complete their vote, and that people that, it’s the voter’s choice as to who they have to help them. It can be a friend or a relative or, if they wish, it can be an electoral official. The other thing is that if you’re a blind voter and, having had your paper marked for you by the person you’ve asked to mark it, you can ask somebody else to check to make sure that your choice has been given effect.
BRENDON : OK so you could theoretically take a carer with you, they mark the form and then you can get a staff member to double-check that everything is tickety-boo?
ROBERT : Yes, or vice versa. One of the questions would be about getting to the polling place. See if you have mobility issues, then the EasyVote pack includes information about the polling places and whether they are fully accessible, by which we mean somebody in a wheelchair would be able to gain access to the polling places without any assistance, or whether they’re accessible with assistance. So every, in the EasyVote pack there is a list of all the polling places in your electorate, and there’s a symbol by each one that says whether it’s accessible, fully accessible, accessible with assistance or not accessible.
BRENDON : OK so there would be a list of that in any given electorate?
ROBERT : yes, so the information on the accessibility of polling places is available in your EasyVote pack or, if you can’t find your EasyVote pack, you can get your information from our web site www.elections.org.nz or again from calling the 0800 number, 0800-36-76-56.
BRENDON : now continuing on...
ROBERT : I should say that information will be available from November the 2nd on our web site.
BRENDON : Excellent.
ROBERT : So that’s if, if you can’t easily get to a polling place on election day, you can vote in advance.
BRENDON : Now that was going to be the next question. This is the thing when you’re blind, you have to memorise these things and every so often the memory decides not to work. What I’m thinking of is, if people can’t get to the voting place on the day, what’s the exact sequence for them casting a special vote beforehand?
ROBERT : Well advance voting is available from November the 9th, that’s a Wednesday, and so if for any reason you’re not going to be able to get to a polling place in your electorate on election day, then you should vote in advance. There will be advance voting places in every electorate and you can find out where advance voting places are from our web site from the 2nd of November, or it will be in your EasyVote information pack which you will receive about a week before election day.
BRENDON : OK so there’s all the info on casting a special vote beforehand if you have to?
ROBERT : Yes, and basically it’s the same process as for going to vote in a polling place. It’s just that you’re able to do it for two-and-a-half weeks before election day. Some people with disabilities find it easier to go to an advance voting place, and so if that’s what they wish to do, they’re able to do it.
BRENDON : Now in the unlikely event that you’re all teed up and you’re ready to go but you can’t make it on the day because you have some sort of condition, some relapse, something like that, is there the possibility of voting after the actual day?
ROBERT : No, voting stops at 7PM.
BRENDON : Right.
ROBERT : so if for some reason your housebound on election day, then you can ask a friend or a relative to go and obtain voting papers for you. They’ll bring them back. You can tick your papers and they take them to a polling place or to the returning officer. If you can’t find anybody to help you, call the 0800 number and they’ll put you in touch with the returning officer who will see what they can do to help.
BRENDON : All right, there may be something that can be done in some circumstances?
ROBERT : Absolutely, yes, yes. If getting to a polling booth on election day is likely to be difficult for you, then you should really think about voting in advance and that will help take some of the stress out of it.
BRENDON : Now people who are in hospitals or, say, in a retirement village, that sort of thing, now do you extend services to them
ROBERT : We do. Returning officers will visit hospitals and rest homes in their electorate with teams of issuing officers to issue votes to the people in those places.
BRENDON : So there will be people coming around at some point to take in the EasyVotes?
ROBERT : Yes, but it usually happens in the week and a half, two weeks before election day.
BRENDON : So those folks are effectively casting special votes?
ROBERT : Yes, although when we talk about a special vote there though, we need to understand that there are, technically it’s a special vote but it’s the same process as voting on election day. So long as you’re voting within your electorate and you’re on the printed roll, you’ve enrolled before writ day, October the 26th, then you’ll be marked off the roll, you’ll be given a ballot paper and a referendum paper and you’ll put them in the ballot box. It’s a very simple process. If you’re not enrolled by October the 26th, you won’t appear on that printed roll and you’ll need to complete a declaration which takes longer whether you vote on election day or whether you vote in advance.
BRENDON : Right, OK, now we won’t talk about the counting, that’s a whole other thing that happens.
ROBERT : yes, yes.
BRENDON : But has it got easier to get all this together over the years?
ROBERT : Well it’s a massive exercise. We will, on the day we will be employing twenty-two thousand staff across the country, and it takes basically we start preparing for a general election as soon as we’ve finished the last general election. It’s a three-year project. I think it’s fair to say that we review, after every election, how things have gone and what we learned from the lessons, and to improve for each one.
BRENDON : What have you learned about, say, getting votes to the disabled over the years?
ROBERT : Well I think one of the things is to make sure we have information in the right places and in the right formats for people, to cater for any need. So for persons who are blind, we have information available in a variety of formats through the Blind foundation, and on their Telephone Information Service. We’ve got information available in new Zealand Sign language and we’ve got information available in video format and on DVD, available through our web site and on the 0800 number.
BRENDON : OK I think, it sounds like you’ve done as much covering as you can. Robert, thank you very much for joining us this afternoon.
ROBERT : It’s been an absolute pleasure, Brendon.
BRENDON : And I can just wish you luck in this election.
ROBERT : thank you very much.
BRENDON : that’s great, Robert Pedon, who is the chief electoral officer with the electoral commission. Thanks very much to the people over at the Electoral commission for organising the interview with Robert.

End

Transcript of interview with Chandrika Kumaran, National Public Education Manager, Ministry of Civil Defence.

Aired on Wellington Access Radio on Monday March 28th 2011 at 3PM during the No Labels Radio Show

BRENDON: Brendon Fitzgibbon.

------
BRENDON: Good afternoon everybody, It’s now Wednesday the 23rd as we’re taping this. We set this interview up a few days ago little realizing what would happen on the afternoon of Tuesday the 22nd. Now I’m talking to Chandrika Kumaran, who is the director, the public information manager, is that right.
CHANDRIKA: The national public Education manager.
BRENDON : And you’re with the Civil Defence Ministry. Now we’re talking to you today because back on the 7th of February the ministry and the Foundation of the Blind, and I believe you’ve also done this with the Deaf Association (sic), put out an initiative targeting disabled people.
CHANDRIKA: Absolutely. We have information that’s been available in written form as well as on the web site, which tries to improve understanding of the kinds of hazards that we have to be aware of here in New Zealand, so everything from earthquakes and tsunamis, volcanoes, flooding et cetera, firstly to understand what it is that they are, what causes them and, most importantly, what to do when they happen, and also information on what people need to do to be prepared, to get ready for these events before they happen. It was really an important next step for us to make sure that that information was available in formats that can be accessed by as many people as possible. So last year, working with Deaf Aotearoa, we developed a DVD of that information that had sign language as well as captioning. We’ve been working with the New Zealand Foundation Of The Blind to develop audio resources which were launched on the 7th of February in Auckland.
BRENDON: Now I’ve been to the web site and checked out the audio resource. Now you can download it from the site and listen to it there, and I believe it’s been made available, you can get it as a CD or a cassette?
CHANDRIKA: Yes, certainly what we would expect was if there was someone out there who was blind that they would borrow the DVD from their local Foundation OF The Blind office because the DVD and the CDs come with a whole range of features, and to access some of those features you need special players. For example there’s the Daisy software, so you need a daisy player.
BRENDON: Yes.
CHANDRIKA: So while you can download the files from our website, that’s just the standard audio file. So we’d really encourage people to contact their local Foundation Of the Blind office because they will then get it in the format that offers more features than the one that they can download off the net.
BRENDON: All right, because you’ve also made the text available as a Word document people can download.
CHANDRIKA: Yes.
BRENDON: So the people who use Jaws or ZoomText or something like that can access it that way, the machinery will read it to them. But you’re saying that really it’s best to go to the local branch and get the DVD or the Daisy?
CHANDRIKA: The Foundation is in the process of making more of those Daisy players available. We do understand at the moment they probably don’t have enough to provide those special players for everyone. So they also have it as a cassette, as a standard CD that can be played on the...
BRENDON: ON the standard CD player that we’ve all got tucked away somewhere.
CHANDRIKA: So I mean, I guess when we started, we weren’t, I suppose, that clear on what were the different formats that would be useful for someone who was blind or had vision impairment. But working with the Foundation, we’re just absolutely delighted with how much they have supported us to make it available. Pretty much every format is available at the moment. We’ve also done it in Braille for those who use Braille, and we also have it on the Telephone Information Service, so somebody can ring in and get specific information that they want.
BRENDON: OK, that’s very handy.
CHANDRIKA: And one of the plusses with the Daisy software is it allowed people to, I think they call them talking books, it’s, just as someone who is sighted would bookmark or mark a favourite page and go to a specific section of a book, this allows people to do all of that so that you don’t actually have to scroll through certain headings. You can mark bits that you want to go to and find it quite easily.
BRENDON: If there was one particular checklist you wanted to go back to, you wouldn’t have to keep going back to the heading and finding your way back from there?
CHANDRIKA: Yeah, so just as we would use, you know, a contents list for instance, it allows you to just go from a contents list or index to the specific section that you want.
BRENDON: All right, OK I haven’t actually used a Daisy but I can remember in the old days we used to have the cassettes with the tones on them. You could find your way through the cassettes that way. I imagine this is a better version of that.
CHANDRIKA: They demonstrated how they will use it and I was just absolutely amazed at the features that the system seemed to offer. Also those who have the Jaws software on their browsers, just being able to, I gather that not everyone is as comfortable with some of that technology but for those who do want it, it does seem to offer such amazing features.
BRENDON: That’s good. Now we should talk about the nuts and bolts of it all. The message that I’ve got out of the content is basically be prepared, as they used to tell me in the boy Scouts.
CHANDRIKA: Yes (laughs).
BRENDON: That’s really the idea, and not just be prepared at home but also be prepared at work. I use a cane and one of the things I noticed was they said a good idea is to have a spare cane at work.
CHANDRIKA: yeah, and I guess what we are asking people to do is think about the various scenarios that could happen. Again you could be at home, you could be at work, you could be away from base on holiday, every time you’re doing that just think, what if, what if, you know, like what happened yesterday, the middle of the day, what if something happens, phones are down, roads are affected, what will I need to make sure is in place to look after myself and my close family, loved ones? Just thinking through those scenarios before something happens, we say to people, if your situation is such that you might need someone to come and help you, we encourage people to have a support network, and with that support network have a minimum of at least three people who will assist you if you might need, for instance if you have any specialist equipment, do the people who come to help you, do they know how to operate that equipment? On your street, will people know that in the event of a warning, that if you cannot hear that you might need some sort of assistance? So just making sure that you’ve got that support network at home and at work for people to give you early warning if that wasn’t the case, but also to assist you if you have to leave home in a hurry, as has happened again in Christchurch yesterday.
BRENDON: If you’re in the neighbourhood of, were a deaf person, I mean it would be a good idea if you had neighbours who will willing to tell you that, say , a tsunami warning had gone out, because they might not realise, it may not show up on the TV if they have the TV on, and it may be that they’re completely oblivious to the sirens. I know that the warning’s different depending where you are.
CHANDRIKA: We also say officially if things happen late at night, consider giving a key to a trusted neighbour so that they can come in and alert you if needed. So there’s a whole range of things like that, that if you sit down, I mean we talk quite often about having an emergency plan but basically what it boils down to is having those conversations with the people around you to work out, OK if I’m at work, the kids are at school, here are the people who will pick them up, that kind of detail. So it’s just working through the different scenarios, what is it you’re going to need? Or even if you care for somebody who has any special requirements, what are they going to need? We offer a checklist on the website and people can also get them from the Council, which actually prompts some of those questions, to write down numbers, to think about various scenarios.
BRENDON: One thing I was thinking of was that if you have a guide dog or something like that, and this is the good thing about this initiative, is it specifically notes, make sure you’ve got rover’s dog food all organised and ready to go along with your own. You know, you’ve got to lay in enough water for three days, or enough drinking water for three days and water to wash and so forth, but also you’ve got to think about dog food, medications for yourself and Rover.
CHANDRIKA: Absolutely.
BRENDON: Even vaccination sheets are noted at one point. It’s worth getting the document just because of the level of detail that it gives.
CHANDRIKA: Especially, and a lot of welfare centres would allow you to take a service animal into the shelter.
BRENDON: OK.
CHANDRIKA: So one of the things we say is find, contact your local Council and find out what arrangements are in place in the first instance, if you needed to go to the shelter, the welfare centre, also if you have to leave the property and leave animals on the property, what are the local arrangements? Where can you take your pets? But those are questions that we encourage people to ask the local Councils. Quite often we talk about making sure that you have your essential survival items at home so that you’ve got access to them when you need them. But as important is to have what we call a getaway kit, something that, you know where it is and you can grab it in a hurry if you have to evacuate at short notice, and especially if you’ve got any special kind of dietary or health requirements, we say make sure that you’ve got sufficient medication because the place you go to may not have that, even any special diet needs. In the immediate aftermath of an event, you might have trouble getting that from pharmacies et cetera. So we encourage people to think about what they need and have sufficient stocks of those in their getaway kits. Certainly if someone has a guide dog, we talk about having a little getaway kit for the dog as well, which has food for them as well.
BRENDON: Can I just emphasise here that it is vital to put these kits together. Don’t do what some of us do and go, oh I’ve got plenty of spare batteries in the drawer, because of course if you’ve got spare batteries in the drawer, then if the shake’s big enough then everything will bounce out of the cupboard and onto the floor and you might not be able to get to the drawer.
CHANDRIKA: I guess the thing is if you have to vacate in a hurry, we don’t expect you to lug quantities of food and water. I mean those things you can get either at the place that you’re going to, the shelter. But the most important thing is to have things that are absolutely essential for you to get through, you know, a couple of days, that you may not be able to get elsewhere. So things like medication, some basic toiletries and, imagine scenarios where you’re having to walk out in the dark, so having either a self-charging torch or something that requires batteries. Also we talk about the radio, so if you have to trudge through an hour so that you can get updates on what’s happening and what Civil Defence is advising you to do.
BRENDON: Now it’s not just, I mean everybody’s thinking about earthquakes, I’d say the thing I’ve noticed in recent years is things like floods, and there’s explanations about tsunamis and volcanoes and so forth, I mean certainly in recent times, I recall as recently as 2004 I was in a situation where I had to check back with my household about whether or not they were being threatened by floods, and people can be a bit casual about these things. But we’ve all had a bit of a wake-up call in the last twenty-four hours, haven’t we?
CHANDRIKA: We have and we are certainly noticing that in terms of requests for information. Also people I think after the September quake, stores reporting that they’d run out of items like torches and batteries et cetera. But while we don’t want people to be panicked or worried about these things happening, I guess a big part of our programme is to say, just do some basic things so that you can be sure that yourself and your loved ones can be looked after. It’s not that difficult, what we actually ask people to do, but it’s getting over that complacency I think has been the biggest challenge.
BRENDON: Yes (laughs)
CHANDRIKA: Because people don’t think it’s going to happen, you know.
BRENDON: yes, there is that, I mean the Get Through website has been going for a wee while now.
CHANDRIKA: About four years.
BRENDON: And I have met people who said, oh gosh, I couldn’t happen, everything seems to be fine, we’ve had problems with floods in recent years and we had the mountain erupting back in the 1990’s and things like that. But it can happen to people you know, and some surprising things can happen too. I had some friends who I thought were going to Christchurch yesterday but Air Traffic Control wasn’t working so all the planes were actually grounded. Now if they hadn’t been able to, say, get home from Christchurch, and I can think of, at least one of them needs a bit of medication every once in a while, you’d have to hope they were prepared, wouldn’t you now?
CHANDRIKA: I guess the other thing too, we’ve got a lot of information on the website, also a programme that we run for schools called What’s The Plan, Stan? That’s all about making sure that kids learn about what disasters can happen and what to do, and also the importance of talking about the possible things that can happen with younger kids. So we certainly encourage people to do that as well. The whole, I suppose, basis is that if you provide people with information, while it doesn’t totally remove it, it takes away, alleviates some of that fear about what might happen.
BRENDON: One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of people, through the Christchurch earthquake, have discovered what liquefaction is and how it’s not just the fact that everything’s shifted, but there’s also this flooding and the problems with sewer lines and the contamination of the water supply, so preparedness is really the watchword.
CHANDRIKA: It is, I mean I guess when events like the Christchurch quake happen, it does bring that, you know, front-of-mind for people to think about. But I guess it’s also peace of mind if you have people who depend on you, and it could be kids or it could be an elderly person or someone who has special needs, they need assistance, its’ almost a responsibility to make sure their needs are taken care of. But quite often we sort of say, you know, just like I suppose the don’t- drink and drive, it’s not an option to do nothing, you have to do something to look after the people that you care about. So I guess that’s the other thing, while we may not do it for ourselves, I think there is quite a strong motivation for people to make sure that at least the basic steps are in place for people who are dependent on them.
BRENDON: All right, would it be worthwhile, I know that in a lot of workplaces they have fire drills, would it be worth having some kind of an earthquake drill or a flood drill or a volcano drill, tsunami drill, something like that?
CHANDRIKA: Well the councils do run major exercises and most councils will try and do at least one a year. So they would have, for example, they would advertise prior, a tsunami warning siren would be sounded et cetera just to give people the opportunity to figure out how far they have to go et cetera. I know schools will do earthquake drills. They will teach kids to drop, cover and hold.
BRENDON: Yes, that’s a skill worth acquiring I think. All right, thank you very very much for talking to us today, Chandrika.
CHANDRIKA: You’re very welcome.
BRENDON: Now we’ve been talking to, from the Ministry of Civil Defence, Chandrika Kumaran. We’re going to make this talk available online. We hope we’ll talk to you again at some point about the follow-up possibly.
CHANDRIKA: Ok, and if you could point people towards the website, that’s www.getthru.govt.nz.
BRENDON: that’s what I was trying to remember. Thank you for doing that.
CHANDRIKA: And there’s information there in nine languages, you know, to reach as many people who are living in New Zealand as possible.
BRENDON: Yes, and there are links there to the Foundation of the Blind and Deaf Aotearoa.
CHANDRIKA: yes there are.
BRENDON: And they can take instructions from those as well, and they are very helpful and there’s plenty of resources there. I’m on a bodycorp and I’ll be spreading some of it around myself.
CHANDRIKA: Thank you so much for your support.
BRENDON: that’s fantastic, thank you.
CHANDRIKA: Ok, bye bye.
(Thanks to Civil Defence, Access Radio, the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind and Deaf Aotearoa)

What's On 783AM

[Download]  Monthly Timetable

Media Help

Media Guide:		Listen
		View
		Download
		RSS Feed

Our Supporters

Become Our Friend