Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 2 June and that the committee have authority to meet at any time, except during oral questions, while the House is sitting, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

This bill now upholds the fact that our bill of rights, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, actually means something. Ten years ago, members opposite voted to remove the voting rights of prisoners on short-term sentences and were told at the time by the Attorney-General of the day that that would be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In light now of determinations by the High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court, and the Waitangi Tribunal, this House is now going to reconsider the issue.

And it would be a great pity—

💬 Brett Hudson: Right in the middle of coronavirus!

—if there were members opposite who thought that it was a trivial thing—

💬 Brett Hudson: The greatest priority the justice Minister has at this time is this—is this?

—that enacting law inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act was something we could be dismissive of. So we will hear the chirping from at least one member opposite—he can carry on doing it—but the reality is that what happened 10 years ago was an obscene act by those who voted for the change, and we’re now putting that change back. It is about the integrity of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, so I am glad we are doing that.

There are a lot of things you have to do when you’re in Government. Sometimes you’ve got to do the immediate stuff, sometimes you’ve got to do the very big stuff, and sometimes you have to do stuff that is principled and important. This is what that is.

💬 Simeon Brown: Get a life!

And this is what that is. I’m glad I have the life that I’ve got, which is about being principled and being able to juggle the big things, the small things, and the principled things. The younger members opposite will have time to rehearse that. They’ll have time to get used to it. They’ll sit in their warm leather seats for a few more years yet, and maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll get the opportunity to do so.

This is about making sure that we better facilitate participation in the electoral system for people who have been sent to prison for a brief period of time. This bill actually does two things. It means that those sentenced to a sentence of imprisonment of less than three years—therefore, those whose offending is at the lower end of the scale—and who, at some point between one election and the next, are going to get out of prison have the right to choose the leaders of the country that they’re going to be released as a free person into. And it does another thing, too. It says that, for those who are on longer sentences in prison, the Department of Corrections will facilitate their reinstatement on the roll.

See, the most insidious thing about the 2010 law change wasn’t just the removal of the right to vote. I accept—I accept—that when it comes to those who offend criminally, those who offend and act against the standards of social conduct we expect, to the point where they are taken out of society and deprived of their liberty, there is an argument about how far you take that removal of their rights as a citizen. That is an arguable point, and we remove their liberty—or, at least, we deprive them of their liberty—they lose their right of freedom of movement and freedom of association, they have heavily limited rights of freedom of speech; they can write to Ministers and write to some others, but that is heavily scrutinised. So they lose a lot of rights, and it is right and proper that we debate that when people act antisocially and they offend against their community. But this is about saying to those who we know are going to be out of prison between one election and the next that they must have a right to have a say on who is going to lead the country and the community that they are going to be released into.

The other thing the bill does is, as I say, allow those on longer sentences to be enrolled—sorry, the point I was making was that the most insidious thing about the 2010 law change is that it did not just stop the right to vote; it actually forced those people to come off the electoral roll. And, of course, the nature of these things—the nature of this community that goes to prison and comes back out again—is they have much more pressing things to think about when they’re out of prison, and they never go back on the roll. What was enacted in 2010 was a voter suppression measure—a voter suppression measure—which, in some parts of the world, is absolutely anathema; maybe in the southern states of the United States it’s kind of popular, but it’s not something we should tolerate lightly here, and that’s why this bill is here. We’re going to put back that right to vote because what happened in 2010 was unnecessary and it is undermining the integrity of our electoral system if those who actually ought to be voting once they’re out of prison are set up in a system that makes it harder for them not just to vote but even to get on the roll, and we wanted to change that.

It was interesting what the Waitangi Tribunal said when they considered the whole thing. They wanted all voting rights to be returned to all prisoners, and I don’t agree with that, but they said that as a consequence of the 2010 law change, in 2018 Māori were 11.4 times more likely to be removed from the electoral roll as a result of receiving a prison sentence—11.4 times more than any others entering prison. So there is an obvious inequity there, which has led the Waitangi Tribunal to reach the conclusions that they did.

This bill is based on this basic principle: people who will likely be released, or who will be released, back into their communities during a parliamentary term should have the right to have a say on the Government and those who represent them in their communities. This will affect about 1,900 people, who will have their right to vote restored ahead of the 2020 general election.

I might add, too, just for the sake of completeness, that it is not every prisoner who is deprived of the right to vote. Those on remand continue to have a right to vote—and remand prisoners now comprise about 40 percent of our prison population. We are an outlier in the developed world for the size of our remand prison population, and on the current trajectory we are told that, by 2025, 50 percent of our prison population could be remand prisoners. It would be an absurdity if you’re on remand—that huge chunk of the prison population get the right to vote. The Electoral Commission has to make sure that all the facilities are in place and they can vote, and those who are going to be out before the next election—it could be only a month before the next election, it could be two and a half years before the next election—they don’t get to have a right to have a say on who’s going to lead the country that they’re going back into, whereas some of those on remand may actually, when they get their final sentencing, carry on. So there is an absurdity that has been introduced by that 2010 law. It was unnecessary and it should change.

It was interesting that a number of submitters to the recent Electoral Amendment Bill—now an Act—raised this point, and they wanted that piece of legislation to cover this point off. It was out of scope, but many, many people considered it, and when a lot of people think about our electoral rights and our electoral laws, and they look at the disqualification provisions, they say that what is there is just not right and it should change.

As I said before, the other change the bill makes is to require the Department of Corrections to work with prisoners once they’re eligible to vote and get their consent to enrol. So it’s one of those release factors, at the point of release, and before they go on their way—regardless of what else happens—the Department of Corrections will now have a role to play in making sure the best is done to get them back on the roll, and they will have some powers to do that and to work with the Electoral Commission, and the Electoral Commission will have to receive the information from the Department of Corrections on that. That, I think, will address the residual issue that the Waitangi Tribunal raised, which is that the disqualification of prisoners on longer sentences is also problematic. I think the main thing is that if we strive to get them back on the roll once they are a free person—once they’ve been released from prison—then I think we will be acting with integrity in relation to our electoral laws and our electoral system. The ex-prisoner would have to consent to enrolling. Some may not wish to enrol, and some will have fear for their lives and their families once they’re released, and there’ll be issues about whether they go on the confidential roll as well.

So all those issues will have to be resolved and sorted out, and this is about making sure that when we say we have free and fair elections, we are not unduly disqualifying those who should have a right to vote, that we’re not unduly and improperly suppressing the right to vote for those who should, and can, vote and who wish to do so. So, on that basis, this bill will be considered by the Justice Committee—the select committee process is very important—but as I say, many members of the public have already had their say on this; they’ve put in submissions, which is one of the reasons why I’ll be moving, at the appropriate stage, for a truncated process for the select committee, but on that note I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m not going to say it’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. Just to reflect back my own thoughts to the Minister, we came into this Parliament together in 2011. I have no doubts at all that the Minister has got the will and the character and the belief in wanting to reform and make better our criminal justice system, and when we came into Opposition, with me as the Opposition spokesperson for justice, I made it very clear to him that if he brought thoughtful legislation to this House that was going to improve our criminal justice system—and especially the way that victims and members of the public had to try and negotiate their way through it—then we would support that.

Even before, as a nation, we had the coronavirus to deal with, we felt very strongly—and the reason why you heard my colleague Brett Hudson making very clear statements about it during the Minister’s address—that this is a complete and total waste of this House’s time, bringing legislation into the House, especially at a time now that reinstates the right for prisoner to vote, when as a nation we’re trying to deal with one of the most serious challenges that we’ve faced arguably in a generation—

💬 Marama Davidson: It’s not a time to disregard human rights.

And it’s very interesting that I hear Marama Davidson start to try and add her comments to the debate, because during that time when Brett Hudson was challenging around the necessity of having this bill in this House, it was Marama Davidson that was calling encouragement to the Minister, and I think that’s very telling. I believe this is a Green Party bill that the Minister has actually had to bring to this House. And, in actual fact, I don’t believe for one minute that he’s talking about adhering to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal. If he’s going to be a purist about that, then let’s go back and have a look at a whole lot of legislation where the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has been questioned in some of it.

Sometimes this Parliament does legislate, sometimes there is tension between the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but we decide in terms of the public interest that that’s the best thing for us to do. That’s what drove this decision, because to go to prison in New Zealand, you have to have been involved in some serious offending. You have to have been involved in creating more victims—victims that will have their lives impacted for the rest of the natural lives. That’s why you go to prison in New Zealand. When you go to prison in New Zealand, like the Minister said, you do give up some rights. You give up those rights of freedom of movement. You often give up the right—or you have a protection order put in place that prevents you communicating or having access to the victim or the victim’s families. And, actually, you give up a right that the rest of the law-abiding community enjoys, and that is the right to vote.

I do agree with the Minister that when a prisoner comes out of our criminal justice system, out of our corrections system—I don’t disagree with having them re-enrolled. I do disagree with the fact that he says that they lose the right when they come into either the remand system or our corrections system. In actual fact, many of them aren’t enrolled. Many of them haven’t even actually used or accessed that right that they have to vote. I disagree entirely with saying that we were out of kilter with the rest of the world in terms of our remand system.

It’s very simple. We decided, and the National Party was a big driver of this in Government—we had a tragedy occur in our community and it was Christie Marceau. I don’t know if members of this House remember that, but Christie was attacked and killed, stabbed to death in front of her mother, by an offender that was out on remand. And we took a decision as a country that we would tighten our rules around remand, because we felt that that risk was better managed inside our remand system, inside our corrections system, instead of allowing the risk to continue to sit inside the community. Community safety in everything that we do in this House and everything that we do in our criminal justice system must be a priority.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Kelvin Davis again, a man that I have enormous personal respect for. I’d never challenge his integrity or his belief in what he’s trying to achieve inside the corrections system itself. I do challenge the ideology in the approach that’s being taken. I know that I attended the justice summit in the first year when the Labour - New Zealand First - Green parties formed Government. I do remember being in the room when there was a patched gang member with a long history of violence, who had obviously been inside our criminal justice system and was hailed as being an example of a victim that needed the support wrapped around them.

I accept the fact that when they come into our criminal justice system, they should be rehabilitated. I’m very proud as a Government that we spent a lot of money and made very heavy investments into our rehabilitation programmes inside our corrections service. I’m proud of that fact. But I can say one thing: there’s no way that a patched gang member like that with a long history of violence and intimidation is going to be rehabilitated inside our corrections system, unless it comes from here [Indicates the heart], unless he wants to, unless he actually wants to make the change in his life.

I do believe, I 100 percent believe, that Bill English—and I know that we use the term social investment. Not everyone entirely understands what that is. It’s quite simply this. I just want to give you, share with you, a very personal experience of when the light bulb came on for me around social investment, and that was as a police dog handler working in Gisborne down on the East Coast, where we saw massive social issues around gangs and organised crime.

As I was called out from home one night, a young guy, 17 years old, had broken into a car, had stolen some of the contents and run off. I tracked him with a dog and we caught him. We took him back to the police station; we had him in the charge room. In there there’s a charge sheet that you have to fill out a box. Inside the occupation box, he put “unemployed”. I said, “But that’s not a job.” He said, “But that’s what my Dad does.”

The light bulb, at that minute, came on for me, as he was a young guy that had been born into a gang household. So his mentor, the man that he looked up to in his life, was a patched Mongrel Mob gang member. His pathway was quite simply to go on to a Government benefit and to supplement the income off a Government benefit with crime, with burglaries, with selling drugs, with violence, intimidation, standover tactics. That’s what his pathway was. It was already too late, when we’re standing in that charge room—he’s in the criminal justice system. It’s much harder then to turn him around and try and get him on to a better track.

It’s much better for us, as a Government and a Parliament, to make the investment in his life—maybe when he was a baby, with helping his mother with some training, with budgeting skills, helping his father to try and get out of the gangs and break that cycle. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s what we believe in. Make no mistake, we firmly believe in going after the problem. You choose to be a gang member or a member of organised crime and inflict harm on our community and our country—we’ll come after you. Make no mistake about that.

You’ll see a determination of focus, if we are re-elected into Government, to make sure that we implement those types of policies, too. But I can tell you now that bringing this type of legislation into the House and using the time of this House, at a time when we are facing one of the biggest challenges that we’ve had as a nation, to give prisoners back the right to vote—something they weren’t using themselves first, something I think that a victim of that crime would feel very strongly that that’s an appropriate sanction to make, that that’s an appropriate message to send to someone that’s already been in the community and already created a lot of harm and created a trail of victims behind them.

It is disappointing. It is disappointing to see both Ministers sat in the House today—I believe in what they want to try and achieve. I totally, absolutely believe it is misguided, that they’re going down the wrong track. The reason why I believe that is because we’re in the House debating this bill, giving prisoners the right to vote.

Why aren’t we talking to real legislation, legislation that does reform our justice system, legislation that does make it easier for victims of crime to be able to navigate through it, or members of the public to understand it, or being able to lower costs to give people better access and more timely access to justice. Why are we not debating issues like that? Why have we—I’m sorry, the Waitangi Tribunal. I acknowledge and respect their findings on that. I don’t agree with it.

The best thing, Kelvin, that you can do, or that Māoridom can do, is look at ways that you can get into that young guy’s life—the young guy back in Gisborne, on the East Coast. How to get into his life with social investment. Invest early to get him off that track, to keep him out of the criminal justice system. That’s the best thing that you can do. A victimhood approach will leave you trapped—

💬 Marama Davidson: Let’s listen to what you have to say about what Māori should do.

—and bogged down in exactly the same position that we’ve seen for decades, Marama Davidson. So instead of looking back, look forward—look forward. That is the answer to the real issues that we face inside our criminal justice system. I’m sorry, I cannot stand and support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The member who just sat down, the Hon Mark Mitchell, is wrong. I never said that gangs were the victims. I did tell the story about a 10-year-old Māori boy from Māngere who was picked up by the authorities and sent to a boys’ home in Ōtaki. His only crime was that he was born into a loving Māori whānau that had too many children according to the State. He was picked up, taken from Māngere down to Ōtaki, where, for four years, he was removed from his family, was beaten, abused—for the first time in his life, he told me—and raped.

Four years later, as a 14-year-old, he was put on a train from Ōtaki to Auckland. He got off at Auckland railway station, hadn’t been in Auckland for four years—left as a young boy, returned as a young teenager—didn’t even know his way home. The State did that to him. Two weeks after getting off that train, he joined a gang. The State did that to him. The State did that to this young Māori boy who had committed no crime; he was just born into a large Māori family, and the State thought that that wasn’t good enough—that they could look after this boy better than his loving parents. That boy joined a gang and then he went to prison subsequently. When I was talking to him as a 60-year-old man, 26 years out of prison, I doubt if that man had voted once in his life—I doubt if he had voted once in his life.

I support this bill, the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. It is the right thing to do. Better people than those members sitting opposite, such as the former Attorney-General, such as the Supreme Court, such as the Waitangi Tribunal, have said that it is the right thing to do. But they wanted us to go further and allow all prisoners to vote. The National Party wants no prisoners to vote. We think that we’ve got the balance right—that those people who are sentenced to three years or less, who will be released into society, should have the opportunity to vote for the people that are going to be running the country when they are released.

This is all about the two legs of being in prison: rehabilitation, in the first instance, and reintegration. Now, you can’t have one without the other, and for too long we’ve had the rehabilitation—we’ve had the programmes, the drug programmes, and all those sorts of things, the anti-violence programmes, but we haven’t done the rehabilitation very well. But we can’t rehabilitate people once they’re out of prison. That rehabilitation has to start when they’re in prison. We want them—and as part of our Hōkai Rangi strategy for Corrections, one of the pillars is to prepare the foundations for participation in the communities. But you can only prepare them for participation in communities when they’re there, when they are—excuse the pun—a captured audience. We have to work with them then.

As the Hon Andrew Little has said, when we put people into prison and we cut their right to vote, we take them off the electoral roll, then, basically, we are taking them off the electoral roll for life. It is very hard for them, because they have got other things on their mind other than voting. They don’t trust the system that actually has taken the right to vote off them. They leave prison and they just carry on, and this is having a disproportionate effect on Māoridom. As we’ve heard, it is 11 times more likely that a Māori will be taken off the roll and not re-enrol, and that is a breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi articles 2 and 3. If we’re going to stand in this House and say that we value Te Tiriti o Waitangi, then we actually have to live it. We have to stop creating these laws—and one was created in 2010 by the previous National Government—that disadvantage Māori. This disproportionately affects my people and our ability to engage in our government and our systems.

The member who spoke is right. You know, to go to prison, you have to have done something wrong. You have to have been involved in some serious offending. But the thing is that we want these people to be better people at the end of their sentences than they were at the start of their sentences, and if we subscribe to the theory that putting people into concrete boxes for three years and then telling them to come out at the end of it as better people, as cured, as well, we’re just fooling ourselves. We have to actually help people and assist them to be better people so that they don’t come out of prison and go on to reoffend and create more victims.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: We agree. I agree with you entirely.

He’s saying he agrees with me, so agree with this bill that we have to help people while they are in prison—

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: It makes not one iota of difference, Kelvin.

—to come out and be better people. He says it doesn’t make any difference. It does. We are helping people to engage in society. We are helping people to engage in their communities. We have to help people, and we know that the approach that the previous Government took—to be punitive, just to continue punishing people, to make life harder for them, to not support them—doesn’t work. The re-offending rates under the previous Government were 60 percent after two years.

We have upped the ante. We are addressing specifically Māori offending. The previous Government was criticised again by the Waitangi Tribunal for having no targets for Māori, for having no plan to address Māori reoffending, and this is just another example of the fact that they just want to throw people into concrete boxes for three years and then tell them to come out as better people. Then they throw up their hands in surprise when they see that people go on to reoffend because they haven’t been supported, because they haven’t been equipped with the tools and the skills and the ability to engage properly in society and our communities and be contributing members. You know, it can’t be just hope and pray that people rehabilitate or reintegrate. We have to give them active support, not just wag the finger at them.

This bill, when it becomes law, will affect 1,900 people, and as Andrew Little has already said, around about 40 percent of our prison population are on remand. Those people can vote. But what happens when they vote? Then they’re sentenced and they go away. They could go away for years—when I say “go away”: go into prison. They could go into prison for years and have had an ability to influence the Government while they’re inside, but those people who are subject to sentences of less than three years don’t have that opportunity to vote for the Government who will be in power when they are released. That’s just wrong. It’s just—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Contradictory.

It is contradictory. We need to make sure that we give these people who are going to be released into the community after the next election the ability to have the right to say who is going to be the Government when they are released. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act says it. As I’ve said, the previous Attorney-General has said it. The Supreme Court said this is the right thing to do. The Waitangi Tribunal has said it’s the right thing to do.

The member who finished speaking says, “Oh, I respect the Waitangi Tribunal, but I don’t like this decision.” I think this is more of that silly “tough on crime” stuff that they do. We have to be smarter on crime. That rhetoric, that tired old rhetoric, hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked around the world and it didn’t work when they were in Government previously. We have to be smarter in the way we deal with the people who commit the crimes so that they leave prison and don’t go on to commit other crimes.

Just while I’ve got a few seconds left, I do take issue with some of the rhetoric that the previous member who spoke is saying around—he continues to say that Corrections is releasing people into the community. Corrections doesn’t. The courts make the decisions to release people on bail, the Parole Board makes decisions to release people on parole, or they come to the end of the sentence—

💬 Hon David Bennett: They’re being told to do it, though.

And he is saying that we are told to do it. We cannot influence the judiciary, and they are misleading the House if they stand up and say this. We have not said it, and they are wrong.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for an opportunity to speak on the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I find it deeply, deeply disturbing that we’ve come down to Parliament this week, we’re sitting in extended hours, and one of the top priorities for this Government is to ram through a piece of legislation before the election to give prisoners the right to vote. Here’s a copy of the Order Paper for this week.

Do I see anything to do with addressing the coronavirus crisis on here? No. What we see is we see: number one, the Appropriation (2018/19 Confirmation and Validation) Bill; number 2, the Abortion Legislation Bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! That is not in the bill. Speak to the bill or sit down.

And then we get to this bill, which the Government is seeking to ram through before the election—the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, which is designed to give prisoners the right to vote. I would have thought there were other priorities that this Government had. I would have thought there was other legislation which needed to be dealt with. But this is the piece of legislation the Government has decided to put through.

This piece of legislation is something which we will be opposing today. The Government has decided that not only will they seek to get this through under these circumstances but they have decided they are going to truncate the select committee process and have it done before the election so that it comes into effect before the 2020 election.

💬 Hon Member: Shocking!

That is something absolutely shocking, and, again, it comes back to this Government, which is disorganised. They announced this before Christmas. They could have put a bill before Parliament well before now and gone through the normal select committee process and actually allowed New Zealanders to put their submissions and actually be part of the debate. But instead, we’re here having another truncated select committee process on another important piece of legislation.

This comes on the end of a long list of things the Government is doing, which shows that they are soft on crime. They voted against Alastair Scott’s legislation to put in place drug testing. They’ve been soft on drugs. They’re putting a referendum to the public on marijuana. We’re now not even allowed to call prisoners “prisoners”. What’s the new name for them? They’re called clients—clients. No, they’re not even allowed to be called prisoners any more.

💬 Hon David Bennett: They’re crims.

Well, they’re criminals. They’ve broken the law—they’ve broken the law—and to go to prison, it’s not just some sort of light sort of thing they’ve done. It is a serious crime that has to be committed to go to prison. On this side of the House, we believe that when someone commits a crime worthy of going to prison, there are rights which should be taken away from them during that time, and one of them is the right to vote.

We heard the Minister talk about human rights and talk about the rights which are limited when someone goes to prison. If they are going to be consistent on the issue of human rights, then they should be consistent in allowing prisoners to have access to all their rights, whether that’s freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom to write to whoever they wish to write to, ring up whoever they want to ring up. But that’s not what they’re saying. They’re simply going to say—they’re going to pick and choose and say they’re going to have their right to vote restored back to them. But not only that, they’re going to push this through prior to the election as one of their top priorities, using up parliamentary time when there are so many other issues that we could be dealing with as a Parliament.

One of the things which is so often left behind in these debates is the rights of victims. We talk about prisoners—or clients, as we’re now meant to call them, but they’re actually criminals. We talk about criminals. We talk about them—we talk about their rights, but what about the rights of the victim? What about the rights of the people who they have hurt, whether that’s sexual offending, whether it’s aggravated robbery, whatever the crime might be? Where are the rights of the victim and where are they being considered in this piece of legislation, because I don’t see them anywhere in this piece of legislation? I ask victims of crime to write in to the select committee and talk about their situations and their experiences and how they see this as another slap in the face by this Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government.

New Zealand First—I’m looking forward to hearing Mr Darroch Ball. It looks like he’s about to take a call. He’s getting very, very ready. He’s not happy to be voting for this. It’s not the kind of thing that he came to Parliament to support, but he’s about to stand up and take a call. He’s going to take a call and swallow another dead rat. Well, New Zealand First needs to tell New Zealanders what they got in exchange for voting for this piece of legislation. There would have been a deal done. It may have been in a vape-filled room or a smoke-filled room—I’m not sure what happens on the Government side of the benches these days—but he should stand up and be open and honest and transparent with New Zealanders as to what deal was done to get their support for this bill.

So the National Party will not be supporting this piece of legislation. We will not support this Government’s continual soft-on-crime attitude to New Zealanders—soft on crime, soft on criminals—and the consequences. They ignore the victims of crime, who are hurt on a daily basis. So I stand, on this side of the House, proudly voting against this bill, but also noting that there is one part which we do agree with: for those prisoners, when they do leave, there should be the ability for them to actually be re-enrolled, and that process should be made easier, and not just for those prisoners who are leaving after a sentence of three years or less but for those who have been there for a lot longer. That process does need to be tightened up. It should be made easier so that they can be re-enrolled automatically and actually be able to get back and vote and be part of the democracy of New Zealand.

I do fully agree with them on that, but whilst in prison—whilst in prison—some of their rights are taken away, some of their rights are limited, and this is one of those rights which should be. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I’m not entirely sure where to begin, replying to that speech. I think that Mr Bennett would have done a much better job, and I’m not sure why he didn’t stand up for the second speech from the National Party, being the spokesperson for corrections. It’s pretty weird from this side. I don’t know if there’s some internal dynamics going on over there at the moment, but what I do know is that over the seven minutes that Mr Brown spoke, I’m not exactly sure he made it quite clear why they’re opposing this bill. The first thing that he spoke about for two minutes, and so did Mr Mitchell, was COVID-19. He stood up and he started talking about the Order Paper. He started talking about the Order Paper and nothing about the bill—nothing about the bill itself at all.

So why are they against it? Well, the one thing that I have to say to Mr Mitchell and Mr Brown is that—I don’t know if they recall—this issue has already gone through the Supreme Court. It has gone through the Supreme Court, and it ruled in favour of this, Mr Mitchell—and it ruled in favour of this, Mr Mitchell. But they seem to clearly ignore that that actually even happened. They think that they are the authority on what is right or wrong in this country, not the Supreme Court.

What does Mr Bennett have to say about that—what does Mr Bennett have to say about that? Not only that, but it’s a matter of principle. Is that right, Mr Bennett? Is it a matter of principle, Mr Bennett? So we’ve got Mr Mitchell and we’ve got Mr Brown standing up and talking about this being a matter of principle—that prisoners, when they go to prison, should lose their rights, and of course they should, in some areas they do. They lose their right for freedom of movement, right? They’re standing up and they’re lecturing us about this being a matter of principle, being tough on crime, and ensuring that any offender, and any prisoner, should lose the right to vote—should lose the right to vote.

But what confuses me is that when this law came in, this was done not by a Government bill, when the National Party was in Government; this was accomplished by a member’s bill, when the National Party was in Government. The Minister of Corrections at that point in time, I believe, was Judith Collins. Now, I don’t know—and who was the Minister, at that point, of Justice, Mr Bennett? Do you recall? Because no Minister who was in Cabinet since 2008, at that point during the term, put this bill forward, or this concept forward, as a change in the law. The only way that this actually happened was by pure luck. It was plucked out of a member’s ballot. So how important was it, Mr Bennett? How important was it that the National Party stands by their principle about prisoners not having a vote and rights for the victims and, you know, all the hoopla that they’ve been hearing from Mr Brown and Mr Mitchell this morning, but they couldn’t even be bothered putting it through as a Government bill? Where’s the seriousness for that? Where’s the principle standing behind the principle of that, Mr Bennett? No answer.

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Why does the member support this bill?

We support this bill, Barbara Kuriger, from the fact that we’re serious about rehabilitation and reintegration. You know, we got a lecture on that side of the House from Mr Mitchell about social investment.

Now, there’s one sure-fire way of ensuring that a convicted criminal who is released into society goes back down that path, is forced down that path—when they are not given the vote when they’ve been sentenced to prison for fewer than three years, and cannot vote for the executive of the country, and the community, that they’re going to be going back into within three years. Not only that but we’re changing what the National Party put in—which was that they couldn’t even be enrolled to vote. So if you want to isolate people that come out of prison, if you want to isolate them even more, and force them down the pathway of criminality once again, one sure-fire way of doing that is not letting them vote and not enrolling them to vote. That is what the National Party is wanting us to do.

Let’s get one thing straight. This is not a change. This is not so much a change in legislation; it is going back to a status quo. This was the status quo for 17 years. In 1993, we had the rewrite of electoral law, for MMP, which was passed, by the way, by a National Government as part of the Electoral Act 1993. Back then, prisoners could vote as long as they had not been sentenced to life in prison, preventive detention, or more than three years in jail. So it was the status quo for 17 years, for successive Governments, and all of a sudden the National Party want us to believe that they found their principles two years into their first term, not as a Government but, by luck, as a member’s bill—by luck, as a member’s bill.

So the question really that needs to be answered from that side of the House is: why was that? If it was a matter of principle, why was it not one of the first items on the Order Paper for National in 2008? Why was that? Paul Quinn was the member who was in charge of the member’s bill, and if it was such a great idea and he pitched it to Cabinet or to his caucus colleagues, obviously they didn’t think it was that important, so they told him to put it in a member’s bill. That’s the question that Mr Bennett needs to answer when he gets up—I’m not sure he will.

💬 Dan Bidois: Say why you’re supporting the bill. Come on, mate; say why New Zealand First supports the bill

Well, you see, Mr Bidois, the fact is that we understand on this side of the House that if someone is sentenced—first of all, if you haven’t been listening, this is going back to a status quo; back to a status quo. It is about reintegration and rehabilitation. People who are sentenced to prison for fewer than three years need to be able to ensure that they belong to the community that they go back into. What they want is to belong to the community they go back into, and have ownership within the community. And the one way, the foundation of that, is ensuring that they have the ability to vote and enrol to vote, and this is what this bill is doing. This is why we are supporting this bill. Not only that, but this isn’t a grand change in things. It’s not a huge step. This is allowing a thousand or more prisoners to be able to vote and enrol. The vast majority of prisoners who are in prison still will not be able to vote because they have been sentenced for greater than three years.

We believe that this is a balance. As Minister Davis said, this is a balance between ensuring that we hold people to account, that we do restrict the rights of those people who won’t be integrated back into society any time soon, but also that we ensure that rehabilitation and reintegration is of priority and falls in line with the social investment approach that they harp on about all the time—about ensuring that people don’t go back and re-commit any crimes, and ensuring that they do belong to the community, and one way of doing that is ensuring that they vote.

It’s a pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First and support this Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. It strikes a good balance in moving forward, and we commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call on this Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. The Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, wants us to accept another short-on-logic, indefensible law change.

I just want to pick up on the comments of Kelvin Davis, who spoke earlier, saying he thinks we’ve got the balance right. I say: the balance right for who? Has the Minister, and has Kelvin Davis, sought to get something back from the victims of these criminals in terms of the balance—do they think the balance is right in this piece of legislation?

This Government does not believe that people are capable of committing crimes. It believes that people who commit crimes didn’t really mean to commit crimes, that it was a mistake, and that to label them criminals is to shame them. This Government’s proposal is that we change the name of criminals to men in our care, or clients, because to label them as criminals is to stigmatise them.

It would be not a surprise to anyone if this Government was to then turn to the victims of crime and chastise them for stigmatising men in our care by laying criminal complaints against them. This is the newspeak nightmare George Orwell foretold in his famous book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The term “men in our care” is Orwellian, and with this newspeak, this double-speak, this move to destigmatise crime, they are now asking the public to accept giving these men in our care the right to vote whilst they are in care facilities, which we in National, and New Zealanders, call prisons.

If my tone sounds mocking it’s because this proposal to allow prisoners the right to vote deserves nothing but contempt. It deserves contempt because law-abiding New Zealanders, New Zealanders who play by the rules, who don’t commit crime, find themselves the victims of crime from the very people this Government now labels clients in an effort to not hurt feelings. Feelings is what this Government is about. And facts don’t care about this Government’s feelings. The fact is that a person, or a client, or, in real-speak, a criminal who earns that prison sentence has committed a serious crime.

A person doesn’t go to prison for petty misdemeanours. They go to prison for committing serious crimes against law-abiding New Zealanders. They include serious drug dealing, family violence, street violence, robberies, fraud, sexual violence, child sex abuse. And here we have the Minister of Justice, the Hon Andrew Little, worried that these criminals can’t vote whilst in prison—sorry; whilst in the Minister’s care. Well, the day these criminals dealt hard drugs to school kids, the day they bashed their wives, the day they punched over some guy in the street, the day they decided to sexually assault a woman, the day they put their hands on a child inappropriately is the day they gave up their right to vote.

Make no mistake—the right to vote is an undeniable mainstay of our democracy, of our freedom. It is a solemn right that is conferred to every law-abiding citizen of age. And why? Because law-abiding citizens, good New Zealanders, will choose people who will pass good laws to enable them to live productive, safe lives for themselves and for their families—lives free from violence, street violence, robbery, sexual violence, and child sex abuse.

But I’m not surprised by the efforts of this Government to destigmatise crime or that they would want to give the vote to criminals in prison. This is a Government that is determined to undermine our voting process. To propose that men and women who have committed serious crimes, crimes that have resulted in their rightful removal from society in order to serve out their sentences, be allowed to choose people to represent them in Parliament is a slap in the face to the victims that these men in care, these clients—these criminals—have offended against.

Our victims of crime, good people, New Zealanders who have had their lives horribly impacted by people who are serving time in prison, want justice. They expect their offenders to be punished. Punishment is a word that this Government is at pains to avoid as though punishment is a bad thing. Well, tell that to the victims of your clients’ crimes.

I challenge the out-of-touch Minister to go to those victims and to present in front of those victims, the advocacy groups, and explain to them why their offenders should retain the right to vote.

Just as those that criticised the good law we enacted while in Government to suspend the right to vote as a prison sentence was served will also not front—no, critics of our good law will pontificate from their places of sanctuary, their crime-free places, about the rights of prisoners while they studiously ignore any consideration of the rights of victims to have their offenders appropriately punished. And there stands the stark contrast between us on this side and the crime apologists in Labour, the Greens, and New Zealand First. What’s all the more shocking is that a party that claims to be New Zealand First is now also the party of criminals first.

We are adamant that crime shouldn’t pay, and that’s what also distinguishes us from this Government. They believe a criminal should vote, that we should find every means not to punish them with imprisonment, and that if we just feel more, then everyone will change their ways. This Government believes that crime should pay, that there should be no stigma to it, that if only victims were more understanding of why the assault that happened to them happened—about why they were bashed or robbed—and if they could only understand why the clients that committed these crimes should not be in prison or should be allowed to vote.

We believe New Zealanders should be able to live productive, crime-free lives. New Zealanders should have faith in our justice system, and when predators seek to harm, they are put out of society’s way for a period of time until they learn that crime doesn’t pay and that you forfeit your right to vote whilst you are in prison. Thank you.

I’m really proud to stand and rise on behalf of the Green Party to support the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I think the best thing for all of us is to completely ignore the previous speaker’s entire speech that was just laid on the floor. Most of it was an incredible narrative of mistruths and absolute lack of understanding of why this is a good thing to do for the safety of communities and to ensure that we are a Government that upholds the rule of law. A healthy democracy is one that understands that we all need to be engaged as much as possible, that every single community and group and individual needs to be encouraged and invited to engage in our democratic processes, and that de-humanising people, through removing in an undue process their democratic rights to vote, does not lead to a healthy democracy.

We understand that when people have committed a crime they will lose certain rights. The Ministers on this bill have already referred to those rights, such as losing freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and so on and so forth. The worst thing that we can do is to continue to distance, marginalise, and further create exclusion, especially in our prison populations. That is the most dangerous, most unsafe thing that we can do for communities and for our democracy. We here in this House are tasked with ensuring that we build and create a strong democracy, one that includes and engages and goes out of our way to make sure we are reaching in to those who feel currently excluded and currently marginalised from our citizen responsibilities to democratically engage.

There has been quite a lot of kōrero in this House today about what the good pathways are to keep communities safe. I did want to pick up on that. I wanted to pick up—I mean, I’m going to go into the rule of law, but I firstly wanted to pick up on the experience of criminal experts, judges whom I’ve spoken directly with, community workers, and people who have breached the law themselves, as well as victims involved with programmes like restorative justice—restorative justice being a way that victims can seek stronger accountability. Restorative justice is a stronger accountability pathway where victims have the option of being able to call the perpetrators who caused them harm to better account than just throwing criminals behind bars and walls does. We understand that there is long-undisputed evidence that the current punitive approach does not help people, does not even restore justice—not even necessarily for victims, and victims throughout restorative and rehabilitative justice processes and discussions have been very clear about this.

If we are taking on board a pathway that understands what the best approach is to ensure that we are rehabilitating properly, that we are reducing reoffending, then upholding the rule of law to allow prisoners to continue to vote is a part of that pathway.

In my short time, I will quickly mention—oh, actually, let’s just go to upholding the rule of law, because we have heard several speeches from the Opposition today that harp on and on about being law-abiding good citizens, and yet they are undermining the rule of law. They are sitting here and standing in this House trying to focus on being law-abiding citizens, but by their very acts they are undermining the rule of law. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the Supreme Court, and the very founding Waitangi Tribunal findings document also agreed that removing these voting rights undermined and went against the very rule of law. The so-called citizen-abiding party is feeling strong in its continued message to undermine the rule of law and the essence of engagement and democracy. That’s all they can cling on to and we can all see why there is such a weak, hypocritical argument for them to be—

💬 Hon David Bennett: You can’t use that word.

If hypocritical is not a good word to use in this House then I take that back, but then it is such a weak argument that turns themselves on the head of what they are trying to uphold.

I did think that I should spend a couple of sentences highlighting Mr Mitchell, I think it was, who stood there without a second thought with his patronising debate of what Māori should be doing. That was astounding. Let’s listen to what his lack of insight and experience of the entire colonisation journey has to say about what Māori should be doing to ensure that our people are living good, healthy lives. Let’s completely ignore the work that our grassroots kaupapa Māori - led organisations have been doing for decades with some of the most challenging conditions and barriers put in front of them, and the work that they have been leading despite the systemic failures that have been happening. Let’s just ignore that is what Mr Mitchell is saying. Let’s ignore the leadership that has been coming from the grassroots community that has been working without systemic support, without understanding how tough it is to have to work with whānau in these conditions, and let’s pretend we know best what Māori should be doing to ensure all of our people are living good lives. That was an astounding debate to put on this floor and I stand strongly to refute every single word and attitude that puts those debates on this floor in this House.

When we distance and further diminish and further dehumanise people in prisons, we are not just distancing them; we are distancing their whānau who are living in our communities today. We are sending a strong message, not just to that person in prison but to that whole whānau, that their life too is worthy of being dehumanised, is worthy of not having access to engage in democracy. So this is why the Greens are very proud to support this bill. This is also why I wanted—I’m looking at you nervously because I’m wondering if my time’s coming up, but I’m just going to try to get this last thing out—

Sorry to interrupt the member. This debate on this bill is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 1 p.m. (Wednesday)