PAUL QUINN (National) Link to this
I move, That the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. We are in the final stage of considering this bill. I have listened with care and intent to the arguments—or should I say the lack of arguments—that have been discussed in this House. I think I can best sum up the Opposition’s contribution to the debate as being spurious rhetoric. From the shrill rantings of Lianne Dalziel to the terminological inexactitudes of Trevor Mallard, from the clamouring diatribe of Grant Robertson to the bellowing tirade of Clayton Cosgrove in the first reading, their contribution is, as I said, best summed up as a show of ineptitude.
The starting point for consideration of this bill is the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System. I will quote that commission. It said: “Punishment for serious crimes properly involves the forfeiture of the right to vote.” Unfortunately it then undersold itself by suggesting that people go to prison for misdemeanours. The truth of the matter is that this goes to the nub of the issue. People do not go to prison for misdemeanours—it is as simple as that. I noticed that the Attorney-General said in his regulations review report—which, I might say, we actually do, without fear or favour—that people may go to prison for not paying a fine. The fact is only serial fine defaulters go to prison.
I will quote from a Minister of Corrections in the previous administration, the Hon Rick Barker. In answer to an oral question in which he was asked about this matter, he said a decision to sentence a fines defaulter to a custodial sentence is one made by a judge when he or she is satisfied that all other methods of enforcing the fines have been ineffective. I see the member for Rimutaka across the aisle. Only last month in the Upper Hutt District Court, Donnie Cliburn, after numerous opportunities to pay off his unpaid fines of $42,000, and after snubbing the opportunity to work them off with 160 hours of community work, was finally remanded. He had $42,000 of unpaid fines; how long might it have taken him to pay them off? That is a classic example of what that Minister of Corrections was referring to.
There are any number of laws on our statute book whereby people can go to prison. Under a 1920s Act people can go to prison for swearing. Has anyone been to prison for swearing? No. One person was charged, in about 1929, but the case never went anywhere. I tell Opposition members to live in the real world. The difference between members on this side of the House and members on the other side of the House is that we are prepared to deal with reality, not to mould reality to fit a purpose. The truth is that people go to prison only for committing serious crimes. Over 70 percent of all inmates have at least 10 convictions before they serve their first term in prison.
I know that Opposition members do not like talking about real examples, because they do not like reality, but let us talk about some. I refer to Richard Rowe, who had 20 previous drink-driving convictions before receiving a first custodial sentence of 16 months. Alison Downer had three previous drink-driving convictions before killing a cyclist and incurring her fourth conviction. Harley McKenzie specialised in torturing animals. After having been convicted of numerous acts of cruelty against animals, he was finally given a custodial sentence of 4 months for beating nearly to death a protected seal. This followed an incident 3 months earlier when he had cut off the ears and tail of a pig. Isaiah Tai, notwithstanding that Justice Potter called his offence “unprovoked gratuitous violence”, was sentenced to 2 years and 10 months for the manslaughter of Hāwea Vercoe. Under the current law, he would be able to vote. I say that is a scourge on this society and it is an outrage. I say to my colleagues that this bill will right the injustice and the outrage that have occurred since 1996.
I know that the Green Party will quote other jurisdictions, which I have already commented on. I find it ironic that those members spend most of their lives in here telling us that we should do our own thing. That was their argument on the Hobbit issue—let us be world leaders; let us be at the front of the pack. But on this matter, because it suits them, they quote other jurisdictions and say we are way out of kilter. I can tell them that the two biggest democracies in the world do not allow their prisoners to vote. Britain was always of that view. As Mr Robertson knows, although the overwhelming majority of the British people are against prisoners’ voting, they have had to accept change simply because the EC has forced them to do so—otherwise, they would face fines.
I thank my colleagues on this side of the House, my own National colleagues, for supporting me in bringing justice on this matter. I thank my Government colleagues in the ACT Party for supporting me. Notwithstanding the wailings of the taxpayer-funded boffins who closet themselves in our ivory towers, and the whimpering of the chardonnay socialists who masquerade as independent advisers, the passing of this bill will be a triumph for the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders. Thank you.
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) Link to this
I have to say that that speech will be a hard act to follow. I judged the calibre of that speech via the eminent National folk who have come to the Chamber to support Mr Quinn. We can look at Aaron Gilmore, a genius in his own lifetime! It is a pity his CV did not match. [ Interruption] Hang on! He has come out of his cave. We can look at Mr Quinn, who was described in that eminent report in Trans Tasman as follows: “Media-loathing misfit. Rude and arrogant.” That is a bit rough, I think. “National should start wondering whether this list MP is a waste of space.” That is what his mates said about him in the Trans Tasman report. Then we have Melissa Lee and the chairman of the parliamentary branch of Toastmasters, Cam Calder.
Somewhere in the Chamber, I know, is the chair of the Law and Order Committee—she has just arrived—Sandra Goudie. She will go down in history for voting down a resolution in the select committee on this bill, the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, that was put forward by Labour colleagues. They thought it would be a good idea, when we get a bill on a justice matter, or on any other matter, that we get the specialist agency responsible for administering it to come and advise us. She voted against that resolution. That is her claim to fame.
Let us address the bill. The only thing that has changed about this bill since I last spoke about it is that it has been amended to patch up the stupidity of Paul Quinn. He is a man who will live in infamy and go down in history in this House for putting forward a bill to stop prisoners from voting, and had it returned to the House, thanks to Sandra Goudie and the great National geniuses on the Law and Order Committee, in a form that gave people like William Bell and Graeme Burton, the worst criminals in our prisons, the right to vote. Judith Collins, the Minister of Corrections, ran a mile; she sprinted from it. The only other thing that has changed in this bill is that two other pages, which are basically blank, have been added to the other 2½ pages that are before us.
There is no analysis on this bill. We heard a speech from that member, which said nothing. He has an iPad. I am not very au fait with technology—although I am sure you are, Mr Assistant Speaker Barker—but it is a fancy piece of technology. Somebody has loaded the notes on it, but I think they might have done a Coleman and got the speech wrong. There was not one fact in it. For every example Mr Quinn used, such as the drink-driver and the person stealing, one would think that as of tonight, when this bill is passed, it will all change. The person who wants to burgle a house will stop at the front door and think: “Hang on. Paul Quinn, whoever he may be, has had a bill passed so that if I burgle Mr Smith’s home I will lose my vote. I had better walk away and be a good little boy.”
The truth about this stupid legislation is that it is no more than a political pamphlet that no submitter supported, apart from David Farrar, and we know where his politics lie. Even David Farrar agreed, like every other submitter did, that there was no international or domestic evidence anywhere that taking away a vote from a prisoner would change behaviour, stop recidivism, deter crime, or, most important, aid in the healing of victims.
This bill is so bankrupt that even that discredited hypocrite Garth McVicar did not bother to put in a submission on it. He recently attacked our top policeman Howard Broad for having the audacity to even ponder that it may be better to stop crime and stop creating victims, rather than simply going down the track that we do now, in respect of the Department of Corrections. He was grossly attacked on the day of the Pike River memorial service. Even the Sensible Sentencing Trust crew and Mr McVicar, who has no moral authority to represent victims any more after the David Garrett affair, did not bother to put in a submission on this bill.
Aaron GilmoreHon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this
I see the great genius opposite! It will be interesting to see whether Mr Gilmore gets up to speak. He has a million degrees from all over the world, I am told, including PhDs, both honorary and genuine, from all over the world—
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this
—from the best Weet-Bix packets in the world, my colleague says. I invite Mr Gilmore, rather than clucking from the sidelines, to show some guts, get on his feet, and make a cogent argument in support of this bill. I say to that member to get on his feet. No, he likes to sit there on the sidelines and have a wee squawk.
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Under the Standing Orders I request the member to yield so that I can carry on and finish his speech in the time remaining.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) Link to this
If a member asks to yield, it is for the member who is speaking to yield. It is not the Chairperson’s role to do that.
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this
That says it all, does it not? I will not yield. He can take his turn like a normal member of Parliament. I ask that member to get up after me, make a speech, and make an argument, but he will not do it. No one in this House—
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not having that. You heard that interjection. Saying a person is too scared, and calling their character into question, is out of order.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) Link to this
I am on my feet. If the member wants his point of order dealt with, he will be quiet. The member says something was said that was offensive. He took offence to it. Did any member say something that was offensive? If they did, I ask them to withdraw and apologise.
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this
We will carry on with the debate, and if the member wants to take a call and make a cogent argument in favour of this bill, we will be interested.
The people of New Zealand want real solutions to real problems. Mr Quinn said that he lives in the real world. It is a bit like Judith Collins with the boy-racer stuff. A year ago, almost to the day, we heard that we would have cars crushed all over Christendom. It would be carnage, in the metallic sense. Not one car has been crushed. As I said in the second reading debate, Mr Quinn woke up one day, lifted the wet towel from his head, and thought he would get a headline in the New Zealand Herald. Well, he has made history in this House, and maybe Trans Tasman is right about him.
This bill has no analysis. It has no evidence attached to it. In the third reading debate he could not even make an argument in favour of it. At the select committee we saw Ministry of Justice officials barred from being anywhere near this bill. Why? Because—as we know with the “three strikes” legislation, when Ministry of Justice officials were barred—the select committee and the Government did not want those officials coming in, even though they are empowered, experienced, and skilled specialists in running elections and all matters electoral. Members opposite did not want Ministry of Justice officials to come to the select committee, because they knew those officials—people whom Mr Quinn calls, I think, “woolly thinkers” or something—would say that the bill would make no difference.
I say to a victim out there that, sadly, this bill will tug at their heartstrings. I ask any member to give me an example that shows how it will heal a victim or aid in that healing process. I ask any member to give me an example of where this bill will discourage recidivism, or aid in changing prisoner behaviour so that people do not offend again and do not create another victim. Despite Garth McVicar’s blustering I would have thought that behaviour change in a prison is a civic duty of this House, so that a prisoner goes out of prison having had their behaviour changed, thereby not creating a further victim in our society. This bill is a political pamphlet.
Sandra Goudie, who chaired the select committee, truncated and shut down every debate she could, but she could not shut down the question that we asked every submitter. We asked whether there was any domestic or international evidence that this bill would have any effect in helping victims, reducing recidivism, changing behaviour, or reducing reoffending. To a man and a woman—even including the one person, David Farrar, who supported the bill; he is a current National Party person—they were genuine enough to say that there was no evidence.
I put to the committee that if we wanted to get really Draconian, and maybe this is the next step for National—I put this to Mr Young, because I think Mr Young has a background in religion—we should attack the religious beliefs of people and prevent, say, believers from exercising their religion in a prison. I suspect that that would be of higher value to them, and come at a greater cost to them. This certainly will not. I am not suggesting that we should do that, of course. I say for the record that I am not suggesting that, at all.
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE Link to this
Maybe that is the next member’s bill. Maybe getting back to bread and water might be the next member’s bill.
Trevor Mallard was right. This bill shows the ineptness, lack of analysis, lack of substance, and lack of gravitas that comes from the member in charge of the bill. It is another political pamphlet created so that he can run around the country saying that he stopped the prisoners voting—after it was pointed out that he had given all the bad guys the vote per se, and the bill was then patched up.
The victims we will have in the future, and the mums and dads and people he talked about earlier tonight, will sit there and laugh at this bill. It will have no effect, and deep down he knows it. He knows that, because he could not even make a cogent argument in support of it, apart from rattling off a whole lot of examples and saying that every person who is convicted of being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle will not do it because they will lose their vote. When the bill is passed and gets the Royal assent, let us see whether, within 24 hours, it changes behaviour in our communities. I suspect it will not; I know it will not. The member should really be ashamed of himself for having wasted millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in this process, and produced a political pamphlet.
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) Link to this
I am delighted to rise and speak on the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I applaud my colleague Paul Quinn for bringing this bill to the House. I will just set a few matters on the record. The fact of the matter is that any prisoner convicted for 3 years or more is disqualified from voting. That situation has not changed for a number of years, including the 9 long years of Government by the Labour Party. Labour members were quite happy when they were last in Government for prisoners who had been convicted for 3 years or more to be disqualified from voting. They were happy enough with that situation, so I just wonder what all their arguments are about in respect of making sure that all prisoners who have been convicted are disqualified. Why should we discriminate on the basis of the term of the conviction? I think this bill levels out the playing field. Yes, the majority of submitters opposed the bill, but they wanted to give all prisoners the vote. They wanted to do away with the existing prohibition of those who were convicted for 3 years or more. They wanted to give all prisoners the vote. They were not just opposed to this particular bill; they took it a step further, in the main. Essentially we now have prisoners who are convicted for 3 years or more denied the vote. My colleague Paul Quinn quite rightly said that that is a bit unfair. Anyone who is convicted should be deprived of the vote, not only those who have a conviction of 3 years or more, and that is pretty sensible. The rationale for having that prohibition in the first place still stands. I am proud to stand beside my colleague Paul Quinn and support this bill through the House. I also say that the legislation on seizure of boy-racer vehicles is working, because cars are not being crushed. If those young fellas and “fellesses” were transgressing the law, their cars would go under. I will make one other point: the Law and Order Committee is run in accordance with the Standing Orders, and if a decision is made, it is made by the majority. Unfortunately, Mr Cosgrove cannot handle that.
CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour) Link to this
I stand to speak on the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I paused at the beginning of my speech because I was speechless, for a second, at the speech from the member who just resumed her seat, Sandra Goudie. Given that she is the chairperson of the Law and Order Committee, I thought she might have had a little more substance in what she was speaking about, and might have been able to extend her speech to the full 10 minutes. If the bill really is of as much significance as that, I am sure it would not be so difficult for Ms Goudie to fill up the 10 minutes of speech time. Obviously, as we already knew, there is very little to speak about, because this is rather an insignificant bill. I follow the earlier speech of the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, and I support each and every word that he said in his speech. When I say that this is an insignificant bill, I say that in light of an event I attended at lunchtime, which was a demonstration out the front of Parliament, when we stood together in solidarity to support the women and children across the Pacific—
—who are victims, I say to Sandra Goudie, and I hope she cares about the victims, of domestic violence.
I look at the Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill and think that it is so incredibly trivial and insignificant. The bill will bring about no change, and no positive repercussions, for New Zealand society. Yet at the bottom of the Order Paper is the Domestic Violence Reform Bill, and it is languishing there because that Government chooses to prioritise such trivial matters as the one we are discussing tonight, rather than things that should matter, like the domestic violence that is committed against women and children in this country. It really shows that that side of the House has major problems with regard to prioritising what the real issues are that we should be discussing in this Parliament.
The one question that I have to ask when I look at this bill, given that it is a law and order bill, which has gone through the Law and Order Committee, is whether this bill will act as a deterrent to crime. I think the answer is actually no. I cannot envisage any person who is incarcerated, or any person who is on the verge of committing a crime, thinking: “Oh, I had better not commit this burglary; otherwise I will go to prison and lose my right to vote!”. The reality is that for all of us in this House to vote is a right, and for many other people around the world it is an absolute privilege to have the right to vote. But I assume that many of the people who are incarcerated may not actually see voting as being one of the priorities in their lives. In fact, I wonder how many of those people who are incarcerated who actually exercise the right to vote have actually felt a sense of loss when they have been incarcerated and lost that right to vote. This bill seems rather insignificant and almost a complete waste of time in regard to what that member, Paul Quinn, was attempting to do.
When we look at whether it could act as a deterrent to crime, we see that obvious common-sense dictates that actually, no, it probably will not. There is no analysis in the explanatory note of what harm this bill is designed to remedy by returning to the pre-1993 situation. The Electoral Commission and the Solicitor-General had sound reasons for recommending the change. The member promoting this bill has not provided any compelling reason for why this change is needed or wanted, and the select committee considering the bill did not receive any such evidence either. The reality is, I say to every member of the House, that this bill will not make New Zealanders any safer, and it will not reduce crime or recidivism, at all. So why is that member doing it? Unfortunately we can only assume, because his explanation is rather weak, that it is an attempt to try to make National again look hard-line on issues of law and order.
The reality is that the bill means nothing. It looks like the Government is doing something, but, actually, the general public of New Zealand want to know that there is substance to the legislation that we are pushing through. They want to know that while we are paid to be here in the House we are actually doing things that are worthwhile for the citizens of New Zealand. Unfortunately, this bill does not achieve that, at all.
When I was going through this bill and listening to some of the arguments for and against it—I and the honourable members Steve Chadwick and Rajen Prasad were just having a discussion—I thought that this bill is probably as insignificant as the Military Manoeuvres Act Repeal Bill, which is also being put out by the National Government. It really impresses on us the type of legislation, the type of agenda, that the National Government has. This bill aims to punish prisoners by denying them the right to vote as if it is a right or a privilege, but voting can also be seen as a civic duty. The one concern I do have—because in the past the right has been taken away from those who have committed serious offences—is that many of those who are incarcerated have never ever exercised that right, and in many ways never engaged in that civic duty, at all. I do wonder, when they commit a crime for which they get a sentence of 3 years or less, whether that might actually be a good time to try to engage them with what is happening in terms of politics, in terms of the way the country runs, in terms of actually caring about what goes on around them, and in terms of knowing about legislation and the way in which Parliament can impact on their lives. A number of them are disengaged altogether. I do wonder whether this should be part of the rehabilitation—part of the work that goes on to ensure that they can come out and be contributing citizens of our country. We do want to have hope that they will be rehabilitated and be able to contribute. Part of that rehabilitation would be actually supporting them and helping them to understand what that civic duty is and how much of a privilege it is to vote.
As it stands, this bill will mean that prisoners cannot register as electors. On this side of the House, we often have problems making sure that all of our people are on the electoral roll. It is hard enough to keep people enrolled in the best of circumstances. This bill will basically result in the mass disenfranchisement of many of the people who go to prison, because they are unlikely to re-enrol on release. They will be even less engaged than perhaps they were before they went in. With lesser offences and shorter periods of incarceration, there are much better prospects of rehabilitation, which is why the argument was put forward that perhaps we do not need to take away this right from those who are incarcerated for short terms. Reinforcing a responsible attitude and a sense of civic duty is actually undermined by removing the ability to vote.
This bill would create anomalies—and that came up through the select committee process—and it was something that was unforeseen by the person who put the bill forward, and also by the person whom one would rely on to run the select committee and see any problems down the line, the chairperson of the select committee, Sandra Goudie. The select committee process of this bill has been referred to as a sham and a complete waste of time. As this bill amends electoral law, it would have been far more appropriate for it to have been referred to the Electoral Legislation Committee, or at least the Justice and Electoral Committee, in the first place. This is another instance where it does not look like the Minister of Justice wanted to have anything to do with it. As Clayton Cosgrove said, just like the “three strikes” bill, we wonder whether the Minister of Justice realises that this is a bill that is insignificant and something that he does not want to put his name to, hence why it ended up going through the Law and Order Committee.
We on this side of the House will not be supporting this bill. We encourage all of our parliamentary colleagues to vote against it, as well. Mr Quinn will not go down in history as a top-rate famous parliamentarian for this legislation. No one will be patting him on the back for it. Thank you very much.
DAVID CLENDON (Green) Link to this
Kia ora koutou. I was asked a few days ago whether I would be speaking to the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill and, if so, what I would be saying. I said that in essence I would be saying the same things that I have said in earlier readings.
Frankly, having heard the member who introduced this bill, Paul Quinn, I think I could be quite justified in simply rereading a speech from an earlier reading of this bill. I am quite sure that that is what the gentleman did in his initial speech. We heard the same old clichés. We heard about the opposition to this bill coming from chardonnay socialists, from people who dwell in ivory towers. We heard exactly the same language from the speeches of members who spoke earlier. We heard him once again fail to persuade anybody that all prisoners are guilty of serious offences, which immediately puts that member at odds with the analysis of the Attorney-General, in whose report the word “irrational” appears a number of times in relation to this bill.
The Attorney-General, of course, found this bill “unjustifiably inconsistent” with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and the word “irrational” popped up in the analysis. The Attorney-General said: “The objective of the Bill is not rationally linked to the blanket ban on prisoner voting.” He made the point that fines defaulters, for example, whom most people would not deem to be serious offenders, would nevertheless be caught up, in a 3-month sentence, and would lose the right to vote.
The Attorney-General pointed out that the bill would “introduce irrational inconsistencies in the law where mentally impaired prisoners detained in a hospital or a secure facility for less than three years could vote while all prisoners serving sentences of less than three years in prisons would be disenfranchised.” I ask where the logic is in that. The Attorney-General said: “The blanket ban on prisoner voting is both under and over inclusive.” People convicted and sentenced for 2½ years will lose the right to vote. Someone convicted for a 3-month period that happens to straddle an election would lose the right to vote. The point is made again by the Attorney-General: “The irrational effects of the Bill also cause it to be disproportionate to its objective.”
That is quite strong, severe language coming from the Attorney-General, who is generally a relatively moderately spoken person, and it cuts to the nub. This is wholly irrational legislation. It has no value. It wastes the time of this House to even debate it at a time when we have a crisis in corrections in this country.
This bill is a misguided attempt to appeal to the perceived populist groundswell of support for the short-sighted view that locking up people for longer and giving them more punishment in prison is somehow desirable. There is no evidence that there is a popular groundswell for, or a popular belief in, that perception. All of the evidence shows that people will and do support solutions that make our society safer, that keep people out of prison, and that reduce crime and recidivism, despite the nonsensical extremism of vocal pro-prison groups such as the Sensible Sentencing Trust, which it seems is more interested in manipulating the victims of crimes, and perpetuating their grief and their anger in the interest of continuing to fuel this falsehood that New Zealanders are calling for longer and tougher sentences, rather than taking positive actions to try to heal that anger or to relieve some of that grief.
We are wasting our time with this nonsense bill. Not even its author can make a sound and rational argument for it. This is at a time when, despite a steadily declining crime rate, the reporting of crime is increasing, and is therefore feeding the perception that we are in a worse state than we are.
We recently have heard bragging from the Government that it has doubled the number of places available for prisoners to receive treatment for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. We will now treat perhaps 1,000 people per year rather than 500. We know that the real need is something like six or seven times that number. While we continue to spend 70 percent of the $1.2 billion a year allocated to corrections on keeping people locked away inside concrete and steel jungles, and spend about 12c in the dollar on practices that would actually serve to reduce their offending and to break that cycle of reoffending, we are doomed to be on the same track.
We know from the 2010 National Health Committee report that almost nine out of 10 inmates have substance abuse issues. Over half of the prison population have psychotic, mood, or anxiety disorders. Only a handful of these can expect to get any mental health treatment while they are in prison. Perhaps one in 20 will receive any treatment for their mental health issues. Instead of dealing with those very real and very treatable problems, we are dealing with nonsense like this supposed solution, which will not reduce crime. It will not serve the interests of any one offender, and it will not make anybody in society safer, or make them feel safer.
The failed corrections policies of this and previous Governments are burning up vast amounts of money, destroying social cohesion, and reducing human potential. Nothing in this bill will do any positive good. A vote for this bill is a vote for pursuing failed policies. It is a vote for looking back to a 19th century mindset. Instead of doing real work in this House and assigning some of that $1.2 billion to positive solutions, that work is being left to the volunteers sector, the community sector—those organisations and volunteers who know what the solutions are, as do many of us in this House, and who are applying those situations.
I was privileged to be at an event in Ruakākā recently where I met a gentleman who was a former gang member who had done his time in jail. He had come out the other side, and he understood that his role from here, for the rest of his life, was to try to stop other people from offending, to keep others out of jail, and to heal those who were unwell and who were committing crimes. I saw a man stand up and come very near to tears in admitting that he had been guilty of violence against his family, that he had abused them verbally, and that he had intimidated them. That man has now turned round and will not reoffend, because he has been involved in a community-based programme driven and led by volunteers.
It is to the shame of this House, and to the people who perpetuate this sort of policy nonsense, that we are not supporting and we are not contributing more to those real community-based solutions, which in the longer term are the only solutions that will contribute to breaking the cycle of offending and reoffending, and remove the stain on our nation’s pride: the fact that we are the second highest in terms of incarcerating people in the developed world. It is one area where we have not only caught up with Australia but exceeded Australia, despite some people’s fondness for referring to Australia’s background and the history of the settlement of that country.
We are in a crisis in terms of corrections. We are in a financial crisis: we are spending $1.2 billion a year. That will soon become the single-largest cost on the public purse. There is a cultural crisis: more and more people are being confused and frightened by the belief that crime is increasing when, in fact, it is not. We have a crisis in this Government’s policy: a failure of imagination, a failure of thinking, and an unwillingness to accept and adopt real solutions. In preference, the Government would rather offer us this sort of meaningless policy, this meaningless bill without any substance, which will do no one any good. We will continue to oppose it. Kia ora.
HILARY CALVERT (ACT) Link to this
I rise to take a call on the third reading of the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I cannot pretend this bill is my favourite thing. Trevor Mallard leaving the House earlier, and not being able to vote while he was away, could count as a favourite thing. Perhaps popping a ping-pong ball in the mouth of the honourable member over there who all day keeps turning his head from side to side with his mouth open could count as my favourite thing. This bill is not my favourite thing. However, Act is supporting National on this bill.
RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) Link to this
I stand to speak on the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I come to this bill with the disproportionate over-representation of Māori in our prisons weighing heavily upon me. Māori are over-represented at every end of the criminal justice sector, both as victims and as offenders, in the areas of arrests, prosecutions, convictions, imprisonment, and reimprisonment.
This over-representation must also be viewed in the context of a ballooning prison population, a population that we believe is neither financially nor socially sustainable in our nation. A 2008 paper from Andrew Coyle from the International Centre for Prison Studies commented on Ministry of Justice forecasts that there would be a 15.6 percent increase in the prison population over the next 7 years, with an estimated population of over 9,000 people. This puts New Zealand, so said Mr Coyle, on a par with Libya, Azerbaijan, and Brazil. This information provides the context in which we come to this third reading of the bill to amend the Electoral Act 1993 by removing the right of a person serving a sentence of imprisonment of less than 3 years to register as an elector. Currently, the prison population is approximately 8,300, with Māori prisoners making up 50.66 percent—or 4,169—of that population. If we look at the possible number of prisoners serving less than 3 years, we are in the ballpark of approximately 5,000 prisoners, the majority of these being Māori and Pasifika.
These numbers and the grossly disproportionate impact on whānau Māori and Pasifika communities are serious enough in their own right, but it is the principle of democratic representation that we want to raise in our final contribution on this debate. I have to say it is deeply ironic that on the very next day after the constitutional review was announced, and when the current political environment includes debate on issues such as the MMP referendum, advance voting, and electoral finance reform, the House is doing something that is a direct attack on the right to vote. Mr Quinn in his speech referred to the hysterical rantings of members and, presumably, of submitters. I want to bring to the House once more the advice of the “hysterical” New Zealand Law Society President, Jonathan Temm, who described this legislation as retrograde legislation that would erode the free and democratic nature of New Zealand society, and without justification.
I want to focus on this issue of justification. What is the justification that substantiates such a harsh and punitive bill? Is the vote of an inmate worth less than the vote of someone who is an offender but who has not yet been caught? What is the judgment that is being made when we deem it appropriate to remove the right to vote from prisoners? Will we see such an abuse of power similarly applied to a person who enters the voting booth under the influence of alcohol or an illicit substance? Will we cast that same judgment upon a voter who was a known paedophile, a fraudster, or a recidivist sexual offender? Quite frankly, the gates would be flung wide open if we continued down this track of arbitrarily targeting certain sectors of our population that we consider undesirable.
Like Mr Clendon, we looked at what the Attorney-General thought. He himself believes that the bill is “unjustifiably inconsistent with the electoral rights affirmed by section 12 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. But it was not just our domestic legal context that the Attorney-General looked at; he also considered article 25 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which New Zealand is a signatory and which relates to blanket restrictions on the right of prisoners to vote. So let us have another look at it. The Attorney-General is the chief law officer and primary legal adviser of the New Zealand Government. The Attorney-General has departmental responsibility for the Crown Law Office, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and the Serious Fraud Office. It makes sense, then, that when the Attorney-General offers advice one would listen. Yet a list MP seemingly has more sway and more influence with the National Government, which is willing to follow that MP’s lead in establishing a partisan and biased approach to the broader issue of electoral democracy.
I listened to the speech of Mr Quinn this afternoon regarding the Māori Affairs Committee inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa. He expressed some very positive acknowledgments to our colleague Mr Harawira and the Māori Party for being in step with the key issues of the day. I was heartened by his kind words. So it defies belief that he can appreciate the value of inclusion and the importance of freedom of expression before the dinner break, then still proceed to bring this bill to its third reading after the dinner break.
As a lawyer I must admit that I take a passionate interest in the rule of law and the opportunities by which legislation can be enabling. I am committed to a legal system that is participatory, and that is just and fair. But if we were to listen to the views of Frances Joychild, a former law commissioner, we would see that this bill fails to meet the mark. In her presentation to the rule of law conference earlier this year, she told participants that this member’s bill should not be enacted. She said “It is not demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society as it is arbitrary, unfair, disproportionate and impairs the right to vote more than is reasonably necessary. It poses an unwarranted threat to the health, strength and cohesion of our democratic system of government upon which we all rely to live in harmony, peace and prosperity. It should not be enacted.”
The Māori Party is astonished that this bill can be supported as good policy, let alone as being worthy of entry into the statute book. We believe that the right to vote is exactly that—not a privilege or a luxury afforded to those citizens we deem as acceptable. We have some appreciation for the analysis raised by the Royal Commission on the Electoral System in 1986, namely that punishment for a serious crime might properly involve further forfeiture of rights such as the right to vote. But the commission rejected any suggestion that such restrictions should be applied as a blanket ban on all prisoners. We do not support this bill, and we are extremely sad that at enactment deprivation of the precious right of voting will be another punishment levelled on people already bearing the costs of the punishment they were served during the court process. It is unjustifiable, it is arbitrary, and it is outright targeting of a sector of the population in a way that we cannot abide.
Dr CAM CALDER (National) Link to this
The right to cast a free vote is a fundamental building block of a democracy. As playwright Tom Stoppard dryly observed, it is not the voting that is democracy; it is the counting. The right to live in a democracy and vote is a huge privilege, and the sanction of withdrawing the right of a man or woman to cast a vote at an election is a serious loss to a citizen.
A prison and a custodial sentence served therein have a number of functions. The prospect of a custodial sentence should ideally deter a potential miscreant from committing a crime. The period in custody serves to protect the community from further depredations from the guilty party. The sentence should offer an opportunity for rehabilitation, and this Government has recently doubled, to 1,000, the number of prisoners who are receiving drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and also help in numeracy and literacy. We would hope to further increase that number. Finally the custodial sentence and deprivation of liberty is a punishment of the criminal. I have mentioned before in the House the philosopher Isaiah Berlin. Berlin wrote of the positive conception of liberty: not “freedom from”, but “freedom to”. In prison, one loses many “freedoms to”. The freedom to vote is a fundamental part of an individual’s liberty—an individual’s “freedom to”. Its loss upon starting a term of imprisonment is consistent with the loss of other freedoms at that time.
From early days in New Zealand a prisoner was unable to register as an elector and therefore was unable to vote. When the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill is enacted, the law will revert back to what it was prior to the implementation of the Electoral Act 1993—that is, a convicted prisoner will have no right to vote. This right is restored upon a prisoner’s release. Thank you.
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) Link to this
It is with great sadness that I rise in this third reading of the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I want to pick up a point made by other speakers, particularly by Rahui Katene in what I thought was an excellent speech, about the fact that we are debating in this House a fundamental change to electoral law, and it is being done very glibly by this Government on the very day that a constitutional review is announced that has as its cornerstone the proposition that changes to the electoral law should be made by consensus. In fact, today the announced review is being criticised because it is too slow and too deliberative, and because it is making too much of an attempt to draw a consensus. Seeking consensus is, in fact, a very good thing to do when we change electoral law, because the right to vote is a fundamental part of our democracy. I tell Mr Quinn to look around the walls at the names of the places and the battles where New Zealanders died while defending the right to vote and defending our democracy.
That is the very point. We defend the right to vote of the people who challenge us the most. It is easy to defend the right to vote of all our friends sitting around here, but defending the right to vote of the people who challenge us in our communities is the gravest challenge of democracy.
Today we have had a constitutional review announced that puts at the centre the need to reach consensus about changing fundamental electoral law, yet we have a bill in front of us today that gives no good reason to change this law. No good reason has been provided by the National Government to change the law. If we are to change electoral law, we should do so deliberately and with thought about the consequences of the change for our democracy. Yet in this process by the National Government, we have seen almost no argument in favour of the bill. Where has Simon Power, the Minister of Justice, been in this debate? He has been absent from it. Where has Chris Finlayson been in this debate? The contribution we have had from Chris Finlayson is to tell us, through his New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment, that this bill is wrong. He has said the change cannot be justified under section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is the very Act that provides that every New Zealand citizen who is over the age of 18 years has the right to vote. That is in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Therefore, when Mr Finlayson puts his assessment in front of us and says this bill cannot be justified, it is because the rights and freedoms contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act must “… be subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” That test has not been met. In fact, the Attorney-General said the bill is completely inconsistent with that Act. It does not rationally link to the disenfranchisement that is the aim of the bill. The Attorney-General has been completely clear in his denunciation of this bill.
We now know, from listening to the ACT Party contribution, that even the ACT Party does not support this bill. Hilary Calvert gave us what was, frankly, a bizarre intervention earlier in this debate, but it meant that the ACT Party is being forced to support this bill as part of its coalition deal. It does not really support this bill. The Māori Party has clearly said it does not support this bill. But the National Government, without any representation from a senior Minister and without anyone actually justifying this bill, leaves us with Chris Finlayson’s statement that, fundamentally, the right to vote contained in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is being changed here via a member’s bill, on the very day that a constitutional review is announced that says we should change the Electoral Act only when there is a good reason to do so and when there is a process that provides for consensus.
But that issue has been part of the debate on this bill all the way through. The fact is that the Law and Order Committee did not allow the Ministry of Justice to be involved in the process. The fact is that this bill about electoral reform was sent to the Law and Order Committee. The fact is that consistently, that committee has failed to go through due process under its chair, Sandra Goudie, and that is precisely what happened with regard to this bill.
A hoax on the victims of crime is being perpetrated tonight. Nothing in this bill will make our communities safer. Community safety should be the aim of all criminal justice legislation that comes before this House; we should try to make our communities safer. Not one piece of evidence has been provided by the National Government that this measure will make our communities safer. The tragedy tonight was to listen to Paul Quinn stand and run through a series of crimes, one of which I happen to know quite a bit about. For him to somehow give the impression that this bill will stop those sorts of crimes from occurring, or that this bill will give any comfort to the families and the victims of those crimes, is appalling, because he knows that this bill will do nothing in that regard. This bill will not stop people from offending, and it will not give comfort to the victims of crime. Mr Quinn has perpetrated a hoax on them. By standing here tonight and running through the details of those crimes, he did a disservice to the families and friends of the people affected by those crimes. It is a shameful thing to come to this House and pretend that this legislation will do anything for the victims of those crimes or anything to make communities safer.
Mr Quinn and National know that they need to do far better in this House when it comes to criminal justice. If we are serious about solving the crimes that Mr Quinn brought up, and if he was actually serious about trying to stop those crimes, then the bill would be about investing in stopping crime before it starts and making sure that we do not send people to prison. People like Howard Broad have come out and said we have far too many people in our prisons. On this side of the House we acknowledge that is the case. We acknowledge that this House needs to do better in terms of addressing the causes of crime. We all need to do better in making sure that we focus more on rehabilitation and on reintegration. But this kind of petty, mean-spirited bill will do nothing to reduce crime. It will not make our communities safer, and it perpetrates a hoax on the victims of crime.
We have heard a lot tonight about the view that when prisoners go to prison, we are sending them there for punishment, rather than as a punishment. The punishment is the taking away of liberty.
No, Dr Mapp. We have heard consistently from members of the National Government that people are being sent to prison for punishment. The fact of the matter is that they are sent there as a punishment. Their liberty is taken away. In terms of those people who are sentenced for periods of 3 years or less in prison, we know that every single one of them will be back in our society, so what should our aim be when they go to prison? It should be to rehabilitate them and ensure that they can reintegrate into society, because they will be back with us. They will be our neighbours. We want them to continue to be part of society, and we want to make sure that when they come back into society, they are part of our communities.
Mr Quinn’s bill tonight does nothing to improve the safety of our communities. It does nothing to uphold our democracy. In fact, it is a shame on our democracy. It is simply a hoax. Mr Quinn is putting up a slogan in front of this House, and it is a shame that it will be passing through the House tonight.
Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP (Minister of Defence) Link to this
I was not going to take a call on the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, until I heard the speech made by Mr Grant Robertson. The sophistry of that speech explains why that party is sitting over there. Those members have simply failed to understand New Zealand’s anger about crime and the lack of punishment for offences.
I was offended when I heard Mr Robertson look around this Chamber and refer to citizens of this nation who died for the right to vote. They did not serve their country or die to enable people to vote who have lost their liberty in this nation because they have offended against this society.
I say to Mr Robertson that there are consequences of crime. If someone is sentenced to jail, then that person loses the most fundamental of rights, which is the right to be free in one’s own society. It is surely logical and appropriate that for the time that someone in incarcerated—and only that period of time, I hasten to add, which is quite different from the United States, as Mr Robertson well knows—one also does not have the right to vote.
It seems that one of the points that Mr Robertson fails to understand is that imprisonment has a number of purposes. One of those purposes is punishment, and another is deterrence. If serial offenders—offenders who regularly go to jail—understand that one of the rights they lose is the right to vote, then that will add a lesson. It will be a lesson not just for those individuals but also for other people who offend that there are consequences for offending.
I also say to Mr Grant Robertson that it does no service to tell victims that punishment is only partial and that although offenders might be incarcerated, they still have the rights of any other free citizens, and one of those rights is to vote. It is offensive for that member to suggest to the victims of crime that there is an equality of rights, and to say that whether one is a victim or an offender in jail, why not let them both vote? After all, there is an equality of rights! Well, I think that misunderstands one of the fundamental consequences of imprisonment, one of which is the loss of the right to vote.
Mr Quinn compared New Zealand with other societies, including the United States. I say to members opposite that members on this side of the House would never go to the point of saying that people who have offended and been incarcerated should lose the right to vote for the balance of their natural life. That would be offensive to liberties. But during the period of time when those people are incarcerated, the right to vote is one thing that they lose. They regain it when they are released, when they regain the rights of full citizenship. One of the fundamental rights of citizenship is liberty, but it is conditional. It is conditional on not offending to the point where one is incarcerated.
I contrast the position of members on this side of the House with the position of Opposition members, which seems to indicate—going by the speech made by the previous member, Grant Robertson, in particular—a lack of understanding of why they are there and we are here. The reason is that we understand that one of the consequences of crime can be imprisonment, and one of the consequences of imprisonment is the loss of all rights—
Hon Dr WAYNE MAPP Link to this
—some rights, not all rights—that many other citizens enjoy.
I stand to support this bill because it is an appropriate response to those who have offended most deeply against our society, resulting in imprisonment.
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) Link to this
That speech made by Wayne Mapp was a totally intellectually and morally bankrupt contribution from a member of this Government. I have been keeping note on this piece of paper of all the arguments put forward by National members in favour of the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. That is it there. It is a blank page. Not one argument has been put forward by National members to justify why this change is being made. Not one less crime will be committed because of this legislation. Not one less victim will be created in this country because of this legislation. This bill will do nothing to reduce the number of people we have in our prison cells.
Hon Steve Chadwick Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise to my colleague, but the member who is sponsoring this bill, Paul Quinn, is not in his own seat and he is interjecting in a most offensive way on the member who is on his feet.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) Link to this
There are two limbs to the member’s point of order. One is in regard to changing one’s seat for the purpose of interjection. I do not think the member has done that. The member has sat in that seat for the whole period of the speech and he is regularly there. The second limb of the point of order was to do with interjections about haircuts. I have not had a haircut recently, and there are several other things I have not done. The member is quite out of court on that.
I think that interjections like that reflect on the intellectual rigour behind this bill. The most that Paul Quinn can come up with is to insult my haircut, rather than any kind of interjection responding to what I am saying or justifying the bill that he has put forward. He had 10 whole minutes in his speech at the very beginning of this debate in which to give us a single reason why the House should vote in favour of this bill, and he could not come up with one reason—not a single one. He could not come up with a single argument to justify this legislation.
What did we have from Wayne Mapp? Wayne Mapp said that we do not have enough punishment in this country. Actually, we have the second-highest incarceration rate in the developed world. The Commissioner of Police, of all people, has said that perhaps we should stop and think about that, and maybe wonder why we have the second-highest incarceration rate in the developed world. What happened? The National Government and its cheerleaders—like Garth McVicar, that total disgrace of a man, who has been totally discredited—poured scorn on Howard Broad, the Commissioner of Police, for raising a reasonable argument and for raising some real questions that need to be addressed.
We should be talking about why we have so many people in prison, not about what we are doing to punish them and take away their right to vote. Taking away the right to vote is not so much a punishment, at all; it is a deprivation of a right that should be universal, because we have a universal franchise in this country. By majority, the entire society gets a say in determining what laws result in people ending up in prison in the first place. We are saying that we will deprive those who end up in prison of that particular ability: to participate in that process and to have any say over the laws that govern what we as a society deem to be acceptable behaviour.
This Government is pushing this bill through on the slimmest of margins in this House—it will pass by two or three votes—on the very same day that it has been preaching the importance of having widespread bipartisan support when it comes to significant constitutional change. There is nothing more fundamental in constitutional change than depriving a group of citizens of the right to vote. They are still citizens.
We are not depriving them of the right to vote just when they go to jail; we are removing them from the electoral roll, which means that even when they are finally released from jail, they are still not guaranteed the right to vote unless they re-enrol. We are talking about some of the most marginalised people in society. When they are released from prison, do we really think that their first priority will be to trot down to the post shop to get back on the electoral roll? That probably will not happen. The reality is that if we remove prisoners from the electoral roll, the odds of their re-enrolling on the electoral roll in the future are very, very low. It is likely that we are ultimately depriving them of the ability to vote for ever. That is what this bill will do. If National members wanted to stop prisoners from voting just while they are in prison, they could pass a law that stopped them voting while they were in prison. This bill does not do that; it removes them from the electoral roll.
I will give credit where it is due, though. The bill that we are now debating in the third reading is a significant improvement on the bill that was reported back by Sandra Goudie’s Law and Order Committee. That bill did exactly the opposite of what it purported to do. It stated that it would remove the right for prisoners to vote, but what did it do? It gave the most violent offenders in this country the right to vote. I say to the Government that if it is going to do stupid things like that, and if it is going to pass these kinds of crazy laws, then it should at least send these bills to a select committee with a competent chairperson—maybe somebody like Chester Borrows. Maybe the Justice and Electoral Committee should have been responsible for debating a change to electoral law. Perhaps that would have been the logical thing to do.
Perhaps, for a justice bill, we could have had the Ministry of Justice provide some advice to the select committee, rather than having advice provided by the Department of Corrections, which is responsible for punishing people. Maybe having the experts from the Ministry of Justice provide some advice would have meant that we ended up with a bill that actually did what it purported to do, rather than a bill that did the opposite of what it purported to do, which is what Sandra Goudie, that maestro genius over there, sent back to this House. It was a bill that did the opposite of what it said it would do. That is what Sandra Goudie sent back to this House. It is no wonder that she had only about three sentences to say in favour of the bill when she spoke earlier, because she made such a hash of the select committee process.
It is such an embarrassment for the National Government that it is no wonder none of its members are speaking in favour of the bill. We have this blank piece of paper recording for all of history the contributions and the arguments put forward by National members in favour of depriving prisoners of the right to vote. It is totally outrageous.
The other thing that this bill does, which I think is one of the fundamental points of principle here, is reinforce the two-tier justice system we have in New Zealand. Some people go to prison for their criminal offending and some do not. We had an example earlier this year in the Dominion Post of a white-collar crook from the National Party who ripped off the taxpayer and got community service. He will keep his right to vote. On the other side of the page, we had a poor criminal who went to jail for doing something that was of no greater scale. That criminal lost the right to vote. The crook from the National Party who rips off the taxpayer by abusing their taxpayer-funded travel gets to keep his right—
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The reason that I am taking this point of order is that I think the member ought to reflect on the fact that we do not in this House comment on the actions of the judiciary. We actually respect the role of the judiciary in this House. We keep a separation.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) Link to this
I say to the member that that is correct, but on this particular occasion the member was not reflecting on a particular judgment. The member is quite within his rights to make comments about outcomes of cases. Otherwise, we would never be able to comment on those matters.
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) Link to this
I do not need to be careful. I was on my feet speaking: if the member interjects, it is against me. I do not need to be careful about anything. I have ruled that the member has not crossed the line. If the member does not want to accept that ruling, he can make another challenge.
This bill reinforces inequities in our justice system—it reinforces inequities. For example, someone who is detained in prison for fewer than 3 years will lose their right to vote, but somebody who ends up on home detention will not lose their right to vote. So we have an inequity there.
For the same crime. Somebody who shows up to court and cannot produce a home to be detained at will go to jail and lose their right to vote. A rich person who has committed exactly the same crime and has a home to be detained in will—
That person will pay for a good lawyer and will retain the right to vote. It will be unfair. It will not apply across the board. There will be different treatment for people depending on their ability to pay. Somebody’s right to vote under this bill will differ depending on their right to pay. That is the kind of inequity that this bill, put forward by the member Paul Quinn, will reinforce in the justice system. I do not think that is fair.
This is a bad bill. When it was reported back from the select committee, it did not do what it purported to do. In fact, it did exactly the opposite. It gave the right to vote to our most serious violent offenders. At least that anomaly has finally been fixed. But the problem with the bill is that it does not do a single thing to deal with the fundamental problem of why we have criminal offending in the first place. That is what this House should be turning its attention to, not punitive measures like this, and certainly not punitive measures that are being pushed through without the overwhelming support that a significant constitutional change to electoral law should gather.
National members have talked about this over and over again. We have heard it in the debate on the Electoral Finance Act. We have heard it today in their speeches about constitutional law reform. They have been saying that significant changes to our constitutional law should be made only when there is broad support for them. There is no broad support for this bill. It will pass by the narrowest of margins in this House. It was not part of the National’s pre-election manifesto. National mentioned nothing about it prior to the election.
The bill is significant. It does not get much more significant in terms of constitutional rights than depriving citizens of the right to vote, which is what this bill does. This is a bad bill that does not deal with the real issues of how we create fewer victims, how we get less criminal offending in the first place, and how we create a more equal society. Those are the debates that this Parliament should be focused on. We should not be focused on the punitive. We have spent far too much time trying to be tougher on crime than the person on the opposite side. We have had years and years of that and it has not got us very far. Let us take a step back—
It was more than 9 years; it has been going on for decades, I say to Paul Quinn. It is time to take a step back and focus on dealing with the causes of crime.
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) Link to this
One could say that the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill exists to highlight the existence of the social contract, or the obligation, that undergirds a safe and civil society. It is fundamental that the social contract that undergirds our society is that individual freedoms are enjoyed in accordance with the commitment of its citizens to engage in their social responsibilities.
The vote is seen as that which enables citizens’ participation in choosing the Government that rules over them, but also the vote ultimately brings the highest level of accountability of that Government to the public, as we see election by election. So we agree that the vote ought to be enshrined in measures of protection that enable our system of government to remain free from the encumbrances of incompetence, incoherence, and failure. The vote is a safeguard of the institution of democracy, which offers the best opportunity of political freedom for all those people who live under its protection.
No person is truly free; we all live in regard to others. The law exists to arbitrate between the interests of individuals so that we can coexist for the best benefit of all. The social contract is critical for a safe and civil society. The notion of the social contract implies that people give up something to gain something. They give up some sovereignty to a Government or authority in order to receive the benefits of social order that comes through the rule of law. The social contract can also be thought of as an agreement by the governed on the set of rules by which they are governed. It could be said that lawbreakers give up nothing, so something is taken from them. In simple terms, this bill is essentially saying that for a person to participate in the election of lawmakers, that person cannot be a lawbreaker. That is the social contract, the obligation.
Just as I close—
No, no, I have more—I can do more than that. One must have a respect for, and a willing compliance to, that which people seek to participate in—that is, the establishing of, and living under, the law.
We take our electoral law seriously. In fact, we say that a person has to be of a certain age before they can participate in elections. Why? We have drawn a line to say that we judge that at 18 someone is of an age where their understanding and maturity enables them to participate in the election of lawmakers. This is not just a matter of exercising a rite of passage; it is a matter of embracing responsibilities. So as a society we have set limits. We are now shifting the line to recognise the obligation of responsible participation, not just the exercising of the right to participation. Thank you.
A party vote was called for on the question,
That the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.
Ayes 63
Noes 58
Bill read a third time.