Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’m pleased that this bill will now very soon become law. This is long overdue. The law that this bill seeks to change is a law that should never have changed, in 2010, the way that it did. It was a nasty, insidious little thing. It does nothing about prisoner rehabilitation. It did nothing about reducing the numbers of victims of crime. It was just a silly, stupid, meaningless gesture. A member’s bill, admittedly, but which every member of the National Party at that time in Parliament—including some members opposite—voted for. It has done absolutely nothing for prisoners, or for victims. Whichever side of the debate you think the sort of mindless, dichotomous debate is, it does nothing for any of them.

This law will restore the right to vote of those sentenced to less than three years, because of a very simple principle. At the time of an election, for somebody sentenced to less than three years, they will be out before the next election. It might be in a month, it might be in 18 months, but they will be out before the next election, and they must have a right to have a say on those running the country that they are about to be released free into. It’s not an attack on victims, as some members have tried to argue. If they were really serious about victims, they would have done a way lot more than they actually did in Government. They would have had a Chief Victims Advisor that wasn’t working two half-days a week, but working full time, as she now is. They’d start putting together a package of reform for victims, strengthening their voice in the system, of which they are a bystander at the moment.

But they did none of that. They beat their chests, but they don’t mean it. But this is about restoring some integrity to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and to the idea that voting is important, and that when you are free—or going free into a country, being released free into country—you have a right to have a say on those who are running the country for you. There are members opposite, I know, whose track record on democracy and voting is absolutely atrocious. The Hon Dr Nick Smith introduced legislation—and saw it pass—that took away the right of Cantabrians to vote for their regional council. And he stands up here and lectures us on democracy. That is the outrage—that is the outrage.

But here is the important point. Here is the important point: people do wrong and they cause harm, and sometimes those who do wrong and cause harm wind up in prison. Now, judges make a judgment about the level of culpability, and there are those who wind up in a sentence of less than three years. There are some people who might commit the same act and are sentenced to a non-custodial sentence, but for doing the same thing. It’s a point that, actually, Andrew Geddis and Graeme Edgeler pointed to in their submission on this bill—the arbitrary nature of these sorts of judgment calls.

In any event, for many years, and at least certainly from 1993, when the then National Government—a way more progressive lot than the current bunch sitting in the Opposition benches—passed the law that gave prisoners sentenced to less than three years the right to vote, that was the settled position, for a long time—until the National Party backbencher in 2010 thought they’d try and score some points and earn their stripes. That person lasted one term, so it didn’t do them any good. They passed this law, and we are now changing the law back. The members—sorry, one member at least, says, “This is going to screw the scrum, it’s riding roughshod, and it’s going to give Labour extra numbers.” And I just repeat again: if the Hon Dr Nick Smith is so terrified of a potential 1,800 to 1,900 extra votes all going to the parties in Government, then they are in more serious trouble than we’ve given them credit for. I didn’t think their margins were that—I know Nick Smith’s margin is 600 or so, so he’s got something to worry about. But they won’t all be voting in Nelson—I think we can give them that reassurance—they won’t all be voting for Nelson. But it was never an argument. The reality is more than a third of the prison population have the right to vote now and a small number consistent with the principle established by the National Government in 1993 will now continue to get the right to vote.

The bill does a very important thing. It also allows the Department of Corrections through their prison managers and prison personnel to facilitate the right of those prisoners who will have restored to them the right to vote—the process to get on the roll. It will enable the Department of Corrections to convey the relevant information to the Electoral Commission. And for those who are seeking or apply to go on the unpublished roll, it will allow prison managers and their delegates to assist a prisoner to make that application. They’ve got to meet the same criteria as anybody else, but we know that there are some in prison who are subject to safety risks when they get out, and just like any other person in the community who fears for their safety by having their name published on a public roll, then that person can have that considered as well. So all of that is provided for in the bill and it will be a good thing that it passes and restores some integrity to the totality of our Electoral Act.

I was very pleased when I saw the number of submissions coming in on this bill. I know members opposite thought that, you know, because of the COVID-19 lockdown, nobody cared. Actually, they did. More than 2,500 people made submissions on this bill and 78 percent—78 percent—supported it. What an amazing number. What an amazing majority supported it. And when I get around the community and I talk to people about criminal justice, you know, the overwhelming message is—you know what: we know that most of the people in prison have something wrong with them. Why don’t we focus on fixing what’s wrong so we stop their offending so they can lead a better life and put something back into the community?

That’s how most New Zealanders think now. They’re not into the mindless chest beating of the National Party. They want to do something constructive and meaningful. And so I’m very pleased that this bill has got to the point where it has. I look forward to the remaining debate in the House, but this bill will be a very important measure. It will restore just a little bit more integrity to our Electoral Act, which is a very important piece of legislation. We’ve made a few changes to it, just like the party opposite when they were in Government making changes without any agreement with the Opposition, as they did when they passed the change that we are now reversing. No consensus there. I know Nick Smith tries to retell history, but that’s all right, because there are people around here to correct him—and to correct him and to tell the truth as it actually is. This bill will do very good things for New Zealand and restore that little bit more faith. I commend the bill to the House.

This bill is bad law, it’s bad process, and it’s bad principles. The Minister has made a complete hash of the law, and let me explain. What occurred during the committee stage is that the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) got gutted. Let me explain what a nonsense of a law we are now debating on the third reading that just explains why we should not be passing electoral law in a mad rush under urgency.

Now, in Part 1 of this bill, we limit the right to vote to extending it to those that have been sentenced to a term of three years or less. Right-o! So we’ve established in Part 1 under this Government bill that if you are in prison for a sentence of less than three years, then you are entitled to vote. But in Part 2 of the bill, with the amendments that have been supported by the House, we now have—and I’ll read the provision very specifically. The prison manager must, as soon as reasonably practicable, advise the prisoner of his right to enrol and must ensure those enrolment details are passed on. Except in Part 2 of the bill, there is no distinction between those that have served more than three years than not. We now have a bill that requires a prison manager to act illegally.

Now, the Minister has understandably abandoned the House. The Green Party—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The member has been here long enough to know that he can’t refer to the—sit down, please. The member has been here long enough—even longer than me, for goodness’ sake—to know that he cannot refer to the absence of a member. He will withdraw and apologise and then recommence his speech.

I withdraw and apologise. In the Minister’s speech of the third reading, the penny had not even dropped that half his SOP had been gutted by the Green Party and converted this law into a nonsense and into bad law. Can the next speaker in the Labour Party or Government please explain the shambles? We know we’ve got a shambles on light rail. We know we’ve got a shambles on the border. We know we’ve got a shambles in respect of KiwiBuild. And now we’ve got a shambles in our electoral law where this very bill says something in Part 1 and something very different in Part 2. I invite parties opposite to take responsibility for the shambles of a Government between the coalition partners that can’t even write decent electoral law.

Here’s what’s further: there was a provision in Part 2 of this bill. It said that if a prisoner had their sentence extended—let’s say someone’s doing time, a trial is held for a further crime, and the length of their sentence is extended beyond three years, they shouldn’t be voting under the Government’s policy, but now they will because the Green Party gutted that part of the bill as well. That is the extent of the mess that we now have from this bill. And that is why I say it is bad law.

But I also want to say it’s bad process. Let’s just go through how appalling the process has been around this jiggery-pokery by the Government parties with New Zealand’s precious democracy. The first thing that occurred is that we have a longstanding convention that Government bills are consulted in electoral law with other parties. That is a convention that applies to the 1993 Electoral Act, the MMP Act. That is a convention that was consistently applied by Minister of Justice, Simon Power, by Judith Collins, and by Amy Adams, and all credit to them for having the respect of New Zealand’s democracy that the governing party of the day does not get to screw the scrum on the next election and make it easier for their re-election. Zero consultation on this bill.

But here’s the second thing: why is it, only 11 weeks from the general election, under urgency, that we’re changing the electoral law to allow prisoners to vote? Why wasn’t it done in year one? Why wasn’t it done in year two? This is an issue that’s been around since Adam was a cowboy. If we go all the way back to 1974, Labour changed the law to allow its prisoner criminal mates to be able to vote, and that was repealed in 1976. This is not a new issue. There is no justification for the rush that has gone with this law.

Here’s the third thing: why was this bill rushed through by select committee chairman over there, Meka Whaitiri, and her mates from the Labour Party? Why was it rushed through when this country was in the biggest civil emergency in the lifetime of every parliamentarian? Why was it that the select committee delayed dealing with sexual violence legislation? I’m sorry, rape victims, you’re not important. We delayed legislation to provide greater protection for first responders—that’s our policemen, that’s our Corrections officers, that’s our ambulance officers. Hang on a moment, their rights aren’t important. Damn the ambulance officers, damn the cops, damn those people who every day put their life on the line to make our country decent. This Government is focused on the rights of criminals and rushing it through. I found it horribly offensive that not just one day, but 12 days of the lockdown, rather than helping my constituents with the dozens of problems that occurred through the COVID emergency, their attention, their needs, had to be put second-rate, because the Labour Party felt that the most important issue facing the country during the COVID emergency was giving the right to vote to prisoners. That was offensive and that was wrong.

But it was worse than that. The normal process for a bill is it goes to a select committee for six months. This bill spent less than half of that at select committee. And I draw this to the House’s attention: the Electoral Commission last year said that if there were to be any changes in electoral law for the 2020 election, they need to be passed by this Parliament at least six months before the election date. Here we are, under urgency, eleven weeks out from a general election, and this Government is playing jiggery-pokery for some small electoral advantage.

The last part I have to say is that it was insulting to New Zealanders—insulting to New Zealanders, victims of crimes, and others—that they had to make submissions on this bill while they were in lockdown. Where their very basic freedoms were being compromised, they were being forced to make submissions on this bill after the Government had given assurances to this Parliament that, for the period we were adjourned, for the period of the emergency, we’d only be dealing with urgent COVID-related legislation. How can any member look this Parliament in the eye and say that this legislation was in any way related to the COVID emergency?

The last bit I want to come to is the matter of principle. Members on this side of the House say that when you go to prison, you are there to lose your freedoms. You lose your freedom of association, you lose your freedom of movement, you lose your freedoms of access to information. It is absolutely proper that while somebody is serving their time in prison, they do not have the right to stand for this Parliament or to participate in our election. It’s actually more than just a matter of principle, it’s actually a matter of practice, of just practical reality. Only MPs are allowed in prisons. So what about the candidate who is not a member of Parliament? How do they campaign for the votes in prisons? I have spoken to so many prison officers, the practical people who work in our prison system, who strongly believe, as does the Corrections Association, that this is unprincipled, poor law.

I want to rebut two points that were made very cheaply by Minister Little. The first, he said, was: how could I talk about democracy when I had made a decision as a Minister to suspend Environment Canterbury? I remind you, Helen Clark suspended the Auckland Area Health Board. This Government has suspended local authorities when they have been in difficulty. It is a complete red herring, and my passion for democracy and good electoral law is as strong as anybody’s. Then the last thing the Minister said was: well, what would I know about elections with my own electoral record? I’ll compare my electoral record with Mr Little’s any time you like. Mr Little has stood for Parliament in a constituency seat three times and been rejected three times. I’ve stood in a constituency seat 10 times and won all 10 times and continue to have the mandate of my community. I’m not going to have a lecture from Mr Little about the principles of democracy.

This is bad, botched law. This is bad process. This is bad principles. This is nothing other than the Labour Party stitching up a cheat electoral law change that they think will give them a few more votes.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare. Otirā, e ngā mema katoa o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa.

I’m proud to belong to a coalition Government that, first and foremost, acknowledges the trauma of victims of crime. We’ve taken real action in terms of extra police. We’ve talked about modernising our court facilities up and down the country, and we’ve also put in place legislation that tries to avoid re-victimising victims of sexual crimes. It’ll be interesting to see which side that party votes when that particular legislation comes to this House.

I’m pleased to support the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. Essentially, it has rehabilitation at the heart of this bill. I want to acknowledge all those submitters that came before the Justice Committee. There have been statements in this House that the process was rushed within select committee and that we didn’t give due consideration. I would say 2,500 written submissions—just over 30 from organisations; so a majority of them were individuals. I would say 18½ hours of select committee hearing is not taking this piece of legislation lightly. So I do want to acknowledge those that came and presented their views in front of the select committee.

In the second reading of this bill, I actually wanted to acknowledge the number of young people—the young people—that appeared before the select committee and talked about the human rights challenges in this country and for us as a nation to preserve human rights, when submitting on this particular bill. Of course, they also drew reference to the recent Waitangi Tribunal report. The report was called He Aha I Pērā Ai? The Māori Prisoners’ Voting Report, where the tribunal found that the current disqualification of sentenced prisoners was a serious breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and disproportionately affected Māori. We’ve heard that the prior legislation on prisoner voting rights, that was changed under the last administration in 2010, actually increased Māori’s disproportionate participation in voting in this country by a whopping 11 percent. Prior to that, it was something like 2 percent. So as a Māori electoral MP, I’m pleased that this bill goes some way to addressing the disproportionate impact it has on Māori prisoners and the ability to vote.

I’m really pleased with the time that we gave to scrutinising this particular bill to ensure that it comes to the House with those views. Although the committee could not agree, that’s more a reflection on other members of the committee. I’ve got to say, I listened intently to the submitters. I also listened to members of our select committee from the National Party. Apart from regurgitating the victim mentality by giving prisoners voting rights, there wasn’t anything more substantive that members could actually articulate in the scrutiny of this bill. It, seriously, came down to: if we give prisoners the vote, we are re-victimising victims. There was absolutely no correlation whatsoever.

We had young people come to the select committee. I think the young gentleman’s name was Mr Harris, who talked about working in the UK and working with prisoners.

I want to also acknowledge prisoners themselves who came before our select committee, and I want to especially acknowledge Eugene Ryder, who’s a well-known individual through Wellington but through the nation. His view is that voting would actually help prisoners rehabilitate back into the community, back into their whānau, as they take on the responsibility to exercise their right to have a say on who should govern this country. I want to acknowledge people like Eugene, in their submission on this bill.

It is, like I said, a real sweet, simple, and sensible piece of legislation that is fair and that is based on retaining the human rights of prisoners that are sentenced and also ensuring that we are addressing the disproportionate impact on Māori prisoners. The Minister has outlaid the purpose of this bill. This side of this House, we completely support it, and I recommend it to the House.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee, Meka Whaitiri. Secondly, I want to point to the fact that the first statements and comments she made were around the rights of victims. To me, I think there’s a high degree of sensitivity on the Government benches at the moment because they realise that they absolutely have ignored the wishes of victims on this bill. I can be very clear and tell you that, through the submission process, every victim that appeared in front of the select committee was very clear about the fact that they didn’t want prisoners to have the vote returned, they felt like there should be some consequences for their actions, and they feel like, actually, some rights are taken away, and one of those rights is the right to vote. We supported them on that wholeheartedly.

I want to come back to a little bit of the history behind the passage of this bill. It’s been well debated in this House, but as this will be my last call on this bill, I just want to do a quick recap on that. As we moved into level 4 of the COVID-19 response that this whole country has made a huge commitment to—and, largely, just about every Kiwi in New Zealand has tried to be as compliant as they could with the rules that the Government put down to try and flatten the curve with COVID-19—one of the commitments that was made to us as Opposition—because of course we wanted to support, of course we wanted to do the right thing, but we were clearly told, and made a commitment by the Government, that we would not sit on select committees and deal with any legislation that did not relate directly to COVID-19. We took them on their word. What happened within weeks of that is that we were told that we would be sitting on the select committee to hear submissions and to start advancing the prisoner voting legislation through the select committee process as quickly as we could.

The Minister of Justice, in the committee stage, said, “Oh, well, what’s the problem? MPs were just sitting around, doing nothing.” MPs on that side of the House might have been sitting around doing nothing; I can assure you that MPs on this side of the House certainly were not—they were responding to their constituents. I can tell you that in my own constituency of Rodney, we made sure that my staff—and I want to acknowledge them and the enormous effort that they put in through level 3 and level 4—were set up in their home to be able to respond to constituent inquiries, and they did that and I did that. Some of the things that we were having to deal with were the enormous stress on businesses not being able to get access to a wage subsidy; Kiwis caught overseas, and us having to make interventions on their behalf; massive confusion and stress around how parents that were co-parenting apart were going to be seeing their children; senior Kiwis locked down by themselves, and the issues and the support that they needed.

I had a woman—if I can give you one graphic example of me having to schedule a Zoom committee meeting when I was contacted by a lady that was in lockdown with a violent partner, who had had her arm broken 10 days previously. She had contacted me out of desperation. She had self-splintered. She’d been dragged around the house for 10 days. She said, “I know I can’t leave the house. What do I do?”—“What do I do?” I had to try and deal with that, get the police there, make an intervention, make sure that we got her safe because she was so fearful—she was more fearful of breaking the rules around the lockdown than she was of a partner that was being violent to her every day. Instead of dealing with that, I had to come on a Zoom call and a committee meeting to deal with giving prisoners the vote. To me, it was obscene and offensive. I take great offence at the Minister standing in this House and saying “Oh, you know what? MPs were sitting around, doing nothing.” Maybe on that side of the House; I assure you not on this side of the House.

Can I just highlight and say this: Golriz Ghahraman has come to this House as a member of the Green Party and she has stood by her principles—I’ll at least give them that. They have stuck by their principles, and their principles are quite simply this—and I agree with them—if you’re going to stand up here, and the Government’s going to make speeches in the House and your Minister’s going to make speeches in the House in terms of a Supreme Court ruling or a breach of bill of rights and say we’re going to give these poor prisoners the vote—oh, but by the way, we won’t give them all the vote, only those that have got a sentence of less than three years—why not stand by your principles? If you feel like they should have the vote, why not give every prisoner that’s in prison the vote? Quite simply, what Golriz has done is she’s come down to the House and she stood by her principles.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Use the member’s full name, please.

Golriz Ghahraman—sorry. She’s come down to the House and she’s actually just stood by her principles. It doesn’t mean that we agree with them, but, I tell you what, I respect her for doing that. She’s put a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) forward and the SOP’s been successful. So what that means now is that because the Government has engaged in a rushed process—

💬 Dan Bidois: What does that mean, exactly?

Well, what it means now is that we’ve got a terrible, horrible, botched piece of legislation that is going to put our Corrections officers and our managers—and the interesting thing about this is that the chair didn’t address it; she didn’t mention one word about that SOP. She didn’t mention one word about the legislation. I’m hoping that there are other committee members that are going to take a call.

Greg O’Connor, whom I have a lot of respect for, he’s got a lot of experience in this area. I’m looking forward to Greg O’Connor standing up and taking a call, and I want him to talk to this. I want him to talk us through it and walk us through it and explain now what the implications are, because I tell you what: he’s stood in this House many times, as a past detective, and he’s explained that he knows the intricacies of the law, he understands how it’s applied, and he’s in the detail. Now he’s got a great opportunity to get up and talk us through this and explain to everyone just how poor this piece of legislation is, just how botched it is, and how embarrassing it is.

I feel sorry for Kiritapu Allan—another person I have a lot of respect for. She’s rushing around the House. She’s out there making calls. She’s talking to the Minister’s office. She’s trying to work out how to deal with this. She’s trying to work out what their lines are. They are scrambling. So it’s going to be very interesting to hear what the next speaker has got to say.

Well done—well done—to the Green Party. You stood by your principles, you’re a partner inside this coalition, and you’ve made a change to the bill on a principle that you believe in. But, actually, what’s happened is it’s botched it.

What are New Zealand First going to do? Poor Jenny Marcroft. Jenny Marcroft is like a possum in headlights. She will be on the phone. She will be working it out, because they have a deal. We’re in the third reading now. What an awful position to be in. Oh, the Hon Tracey Martin is here. The big guns have been called down to the House. Well, well, well. Let’s see who’s going to take the call. Let’s see who’s going to respond to this. They’re in an awful position now, aren’t they? What are they going to do? Are they going to support a terrible, botched piece of legislation that will be all over the media tomorrow?

Look, these guys are making so many mistakes that the media don’t even know which ones to go for now, right? So they’re going to have to figure out actually what they’re going to do with this. So let’s see who’s going to stand and take a—oh, James Shaw is in the House. It’s getting serious. Even the bigger guns are arriving to try and sort this out. So we’ll wait and see who’s going to take the call on this. There’s a huddle going on over there. They’re going to work it out.

It’s a terrible piece of legislation. It is now a botched piece of legislation—horribly botched piece of legislation. The reason for that is because we had a Government decide to rush this through—decided to rush it through when we were in COVID lockdown, when the whole country was doing the best that they could to flatten the curve and try and beat this. Instead, they had the Justice Committee meeting to advance a rubbish piece of legislation to give prisoners the vote back. We ignored legislation that would give additional protection to our first responders, the people that were out there during lockdown who were essential workers putting themselves at risk to help and protect the rest of us. We didn’t pick up the legislation that would give them more protection, did we? We didn’t pick up the piece of legislation that would provide more protection and make the court process easier for the victims of sexual crime. No. What did the Government decide to do? It decided to pick up a piece of legislation that would give 1,900 prisoners the vote.

Do you know what the most twisted thing about this is? It’s that in the committee of the whole House stage, we had the Minister stand up and say, “What’s the National Party worried about? Are you worried that you’re not going to win the election because we’re giving 1,900 prisoners the vote?” By making that statement, it was very clear that the Minister was making the assumption that those 1,900 prisoners were going to vote for Labour. So if anyone wants to sit down and look in the mirror and ask themselves what their motivation is for bringing a piece of legislation like this into a committee, when we’re supposed to be dealing with a national emergency and what was a national emergency, then, actually, it’s that side and it’s that Minister that should be looking in the mirror. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s always a pleasure to stand and take a call on behalf of New Zealand First, and on this particular bill, the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. And it is, indeed, a pleasure to take this bill seriously, as we are doing on this side of the House, because that is our job. That is what we are in this House for, is to take care of legislation in a proper manner—not playing games, silly games, like the other side of the House is doing this evening with this particular piece of legislation. The mucking around that we are seeing from the other side of the House is unacceptable. We are parliamentarians, and it is our job to do what is right and proper.

This bill will overturn a silly rule, pre-2010, that the National Party bill removed the voting rights of all sentenced prisoners. So this bill will restore some dignity, it will restore some humanity, and it will uphold the ability for reintegration to society, engagement back into society, for those who are in prison with less than three years. I am proud to speak to this bill, because the Supreme Court takes this seriously, the Waitangi Tribunal takes this seriously, and the Government, on this side of the House, takes this seriously. Rehabilitation is at the very heart of this bill; so I’m very proud to stand and say New Zealand First supports this bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That was a shocker of a speech by Jenny Marcroft, a member of the New Zealand First Party, who’s had to swallow a very, very, very big dead rat tonight. She stood up in the House and had the audacity to tell New Zealanders that this Government takes a proper manner and doesn’t play silly games when it comes to legislating. Well, why are we passing this bill through urgency? We wouldn’t have these sorts of amendments being passed without the Government scrambling to try and find ways to fix it up if we weren’t here in the middle of urgency. So there’s no proper manner in the decisions by members on the other side of the House.

What we’ve seen happen tonight with this prisoner voting, or the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill, is symbolic of the sham of a process that it has had right from day one. I just want to remind members on the other side and people viewing from home that the process is an absolute sham that this Government has pursued. They’ve had 2½ years to bring this piece of legislation to Parliament, 2½ years to consult with New Zealanders, and 2½ years to actually make sure it’s well-thought-through. But, no. The first reading was done during extended sitting hours of the House. The select committee process was rushed during lockdown. While New Zealanders were fighting for their lives and uniting to fight COVID-19, the Government was uniting to give prisoners the right to vote, trying to give the people in lockdown the right to have their right to vote. That’s what they were prioritising, and then, on top of that, they were letting all those people serving community service sentences time off on their community service sentences as well.

The second reading was done during extended sitting hours of this House, and here we are, at the third reading. The final debate on this legislation, and here we are in urgency, passing a piece of legislation in here around prisoner voting. Why are we doing this in such a rushed manner? Why are we doing this through urgency? Because the Government believes it needs these votes of 1,900 sentenced offenders on 19 September, and it will stop at nothing to pass this piece of legislation through the House.

Tonight, we’ve seen what happens when you rush legislation through Parliament without having due consideration and without following the procedures of the House, which would have allowed the Government to get its act together properly. We’ve seen a Supplementary Order Paper from the Green Party, essentially, white out half of the Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister, and he didn’t even know it was happening. He just looked like a possum in the headlights, scrambling his pieces of paper. We’ve had members of Parliament running into the Chamber trying to fit things back together.

We’ve now been given a lecture on due process by the Government, and I just say to the New Zealand First members opposite that I hope you’re going to do another deal if you’re going to vote for this. There must be some other deal that you’ve struck in the last five minutes—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m not doing any deals with anyone, Mr Brown.

New Zealand First members—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Please don’t find the Mark Mitchell habit contagious.

Oh, thank you. Well, look, you know, COVID-19’s very contagious, and I don’t want to catch everything. But I would say to New Zealand First members opposite that I expect you’ve done a deal, just outside, to secure your votes to get this legislation through, because that’s how—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Mr Brown, would you mind having a seat. I haven’t done a deal and I’m not intending to do a deal, but I’m tempted. Please don’t bring me into the debate. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party is opposed to this piece of legislation, which gives prisoners who are sentenced up to three years in prison the right to vote. This piece of legislation does not put victims at the heart of criminal justice; this piece of legislation puts criminals at the heart. People who have committed offences, people who have broken the law, and people who have done crimes against other people are the ones who will be getting the privileges which, currently, they do not get under this piece of legislation.

We heard during the select committee process that an offender who is sentenced to prison, on average, will have committed 24 offences—24 offences. People convicted of sentences of up to three years aren’t convicted of petty crime. We’re talking about people who have committed serious assaults, people who have committed robberies, and people who have committed family violence and sexual offences. These are not light-hearted, petty crimes which have been committed; these are serious crimes, and on this side of the House, we believe that there are consequences for one’s actions and that when someone commits crimes worthy of being sentenced to prison, some of their rights are taken away. In New Zealand, when you go to prison, you lose some of your rights, and one of those rights is your right to be able to vote.

As we have been debating during the committee of the whole House, we have a piece of legislation here which gives prisoners the right to vote if they’ve been sentenced to less than three years. They’ve also got the right, it would seem, to stand for Parliament. They’ve got a right to be able to stand to be a representative in this House, and I think that would be something which New Zealanders would find even more shocking.

We have questions around how these prisoners who are going to now have this right to vote are going to be able to exercise their democratic right to seek information and to impart information in relation to their right to vote, to be able to hear from candidates, to hear from members of Parliament, to be able to watch the electoral debates, and to be able to engage in the democracy, because when they’re in prison, they have their freedoms curtailed. They don’t have the same freedom to information that we have. They don’t have the ability to simply tune in to a Facebook Live, and they don’t have the ability to ask a question of a candidate in their electorate. They don’t have the ability to turn up to a public meeting to be able to put across their view and ask a question. People in our prisons have had rights taken away—rights which would actually limit their ability to be able to fully engage in our democracy.

But I do want to finish by bringing this back to the point around victims of crime. Last year, according to statistics produced by the New Zealand Police, there was a 9.6 percent increase in victimisations in New Zealand—a 9.6 percent increase in victimisations. That is a sad and sorry statistic. As we know, behind each one of those numbers is a person, a family, and a community who have been affected by crime in our country, and this piece of legislation doesn’t say to those victims of crime that we’re there to support you. It doesn’t say to those victims of crime that we’re going to stand up for you and what has happened to you. It says that instead of addressing crime and instead of addressing the causes of crime and instead of ensuring that there are strong deterrents in place and that there is a corrective part of the sentence or the response to that crime, what we’re going to do is we’re going to give more rights to those people who committed the crimes. That’s the priority in this piece of legislation.

That’s the priority by members on the other side, and I say this particularly to the members of the New Zealand First Party. Their entire next three months will be spent travelling up and down the country, talking about how tough they’re going to be on crime, because that’s what they like to campaign on—how tough they’re going to be on crime. Well, I just want to remind everybody watching and New Zealanders who think that the New Zealand First Party is a tough-on-crime party that they are not. They are voting tonight to give prisoners the right to vote and to give them—

💬 Hon Member: A party with heart—a party with heart

They’ve got no heart over there, on that side. They’re voting against victims and they’re voting for criminals.

I’m proud to be on the side of Parliament where we stand on the side of victims, and that’s where the real heart is in this issue: standing up for victims of crime and standing up for those who have been affected by crime. So I’m proud to oppose this bill. A shambolic process by this Government—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: A shambolic law.

—a shambolic piece of legislation that—and thank you, Dr Nick Smith. It’s a very shambolic piece of legislation, and I am proud to oppose it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a proud moment, standing here in our House of Representatives tonight. New Zealand is a proud nation of universal suffrage. We stand for human rights, we stand for democracy, and we stand for equality—and tonight this House makes headway toward that. We stand here reversing a change to our law that was passed in the dead of night, under urgency, with no process at all, by a member’s bill, by a bare majority, taking away fundamental rights. We’ve been told that by the New Zealand High Court, by our Court of Appeal, by our Supreme Court—who almost never intervenes with the affairs of this House—by the Waitangi Tribunal, by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, the guardians of our human rights.

We, in this House, in the past Government, breached fundamental rights. We degraded New Zealand’s justice system. That’s not what we’re here for. That is why we’re restoring the right to vote. It’s not, I might remind that side of the House, extra rights. There’s no such thing as extra rights. We all have rights; they are universal, they are indivisible. That means you can’t have a democracy when some people don’t have the right to vote. We don’t have human rights because we are good but because we are human, and starting down the slippery road to taking away basic human rights based on arbitrary moral judgments by individual Governments is degrading to all New Zealanders.

Our system of justice is there to protect our communities. There is no punishment allowable in our system of justice that takes away basic human rights without a valid criminal justice purpose, without the purpose of protecting communities, rehabilitating prisoners, and reintegrating them successfully back into the community, and taking away the right to vote has none of those purposes. We’ve been told that by every juris, by every expert, by the community. We have no right in this House to do what breaches fundamental human rights without a valid purpose.

So tonight is a night of celebration for New Zealand, because we do stand for democracy, and we do need to talk about victims. So let’s protect victims. Let’s really protect victims. Let’s do what will rehabilitate prisoners; let’s do what will help them to reintegrate more successfully into our community. I’ve been in those parole hearings, and they always require the prisoner applying for parole to prove they remain connected with the community.

Now, why would we have law that disconnects prisoners from their community, that disenfranchises them, that tells them that they are less than human in this society, and then ask them to show that they’re connected with their community? The evidence shows that that is the only way that they will remain safe once they re-join our community, the only way that they will successfully get a job and successfully live in that community without resorting to crime. Why would we do something that undermines that in this House? For vengeance? We have no right to do that. We have no right as the representatives of that nation to take away basic human rights. It actually undermines the safety of our communities. Just to make ourselves look tough on crime? That doesn’t protect victims.

So let’s talk about victims. What about investing in mental healthcare for victims? In hospitals, in homes, in jobs—why not invest in victims? They didn’t do it.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes, we did. You took it away.

They did not do it. They did not do it, and they did what would make them look good. It’s callous. We won’t be doing that.

💬 Marama Davidson: It’s dangerous.

It’s dangerous; that’s right. And let’s talk about who we are disenfranchising when we take away the right to vote from prisoners. Let’s talk about the fact that, on this side of the House, we look at the evidence, we look at what we know is the truth: that Māori are disproportionately targeted by our system of justice, that other communities of colour fare far worse in our system of justice, that poor people fare far worse in our system of justice for doing what anybody else has done. That we have a higher rate of Māori being spoken to by police, when spoken to by police of being charged, when charged of being convicted, and when convicted of being sentenced to imprisonment, than other people and—let’s not mince words—than Pākehā. So that’s who we’re disenfranchising. That’s why the Waitangi Tribunal stood up against this law. It is a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi; it is a breach of our work toward equality and decolonisation in this House.

So, when we talk about a Treaty, when we talk about shared sovereignty, when we talk about land and resource and language that was never ceded, and then we talk about who we imprison in a colonial system, and then on top of that we take away the right to vote, it is abhorrent, and it doesn’t help victims. It has always been Green Party kaupapa to stand for democracy and for fairness.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Is that why you stood up for genocide?

So we celebrate tonight. We celebrate tonight because we know that, in our system of justice, where everyone has a right to a defence—we’ve just heard from the Hon Nick Smith, by the way, that he opposes the right to defence in a justice system, because he equates defence counsel with those who stand for a crime. That is the danger; that is the slippery slope—he’s just demonstrated it. When they talk about taking away the right to vote, they also mean the next step is the right to a defence. They want to take away our justice system and our human rights altogether; isn’t that right, Mr Smith? Isn’t that abhorrent? Isn’t that backward? That’s not what New Zealand’s about; we’re a modern democracy, and almost no modern democracy abolishes the right to vote in their justice system. No modern democracy has members of Parliament opposing defence counsel acting legitimately in a trial. Can you imagine? I can’t imagine.

On this side of the House, we’re focused on fixing our system, on fixing our society and our communities, so that crime actually goes down, so that victims are taken care of. We are not concerned with making ourselves look tough on crime at the expense of New Zealanders and our fundamental human rights. So tonight we celebrate, because it is Green kaupapa that’s come to the House as part of my member’s bill on strengthening democracy that’s just been adopted in the House, and we’re not going to stop there. We will continue to strengthen our democracy because, come September, when that side of the House has shrunk to just a few seats, we won’t have to debate whether defence rights are even a thing. We won’t have to debate whether universal suffrage is a good thing or not, because we live in the 21st century, and we stand for human rights, we stand for inclusion and equality. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Sometimes in this place, it’s hard to know if we’re in a parallel universe because things might have gone differently or if some members indeed are on another planet. The Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill has been a wild ride. Others have talked about the select committee submission process; I may have talked about it myself at the second reading speech, which was the appropriate place to do so. We heard from people who have been intimately involved in the justice system, including some who have served time behind bars, and they had interesting perspectives, on both sides of the argument, incidentally.

We also heard interesting discussion about the fundamental nature of democracy, which is the way that I would phrase it, in relation to who it is that writes law in this country and this constitution. I’ll get back to that a bit later in relation to our response to the senior courts and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but, roughly speaking—and spoiler alert—the good news is that MPs write the law. The bad news is also that MPs write the law, because we’ve seen something quite extraordinary tonight in relation to a law that has been affected by the passage, or, rather, half of the passage, of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—and, again, I’ll return to that.

The submitters to the Justice Committee ranged from the very young to the less young, and I thank them all for their contribution, as have other members of the select committee. The victims’ perspective was almost universally, or perhaps universally, that they were perplexed by the fact of this bill being passed, not only in the sense of the priority relative to the legislative programme of the Government but also in relation to the way that they felt that their place in the criminal justice system and society was adversely reflected by what this bill represents.

I do want to say that I think that the arguments that we heard in relation to the Waitangi Tribunal were well made by many submitters, and I think that we should take in this House very seriously the challenge that we face as a nation whereby there are adverse and disproportionate outcomes. But as I’ve said in previous stages of this bill, I believe that the appropriate place to address those very real and legitimate concerns is other than in the consequence for prisoners who have been sentenced according to the law of the land.

The starting point that one comes to this House with in relation to the bill makes all the difference to the way that one will view it and, ultimately, vote. From those who take the point of view that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the apparent inconsistency, the declared inconsistency, indeed, by the senior courts—if that is one’s starting point, then, inevitably, one says, well, then prisoners should be given the right to vote. We can have an interesting discussion, and in the next six minutes we will have a discussion—whether it’s interesting or not we will see—about the threshold of the three-year mark. But in any case, roughly speaking, in principle, the human rights perspective, as discussed specifically in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, would lead one to the conclusion that prisoners should be allowed to vote.

However, having said that the perspective is understandable when one starts with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, the whole affair is nevertheless inexplicable from the point of view of those who say—whether victims’ advocates, victims themselves, or others who share that point of view—that those who have repeatedly offended against the rule of law and, indeed, broken specific laws should not be given more opportunities than they currently enjoy to participate in that process, at least until such time as they have served their period of detention.

Let’s then pass to the detail in the bill—because, of course, as always, the detail matters—and the fact that a particular line in the sand has been drawn at the three-year mark indicates that the compromise that was reached even before tonight’s events was one that was political in nature rather than legal or, indeed, logical. The reason I say that is because we heard a number of very compelling submissions about the arbitrary nature of the three-year mark to determine whether someone should be able to vote or not. The argument from the Minister of Justice and others of that perspective was that a person would be able to vote on the basis that they would be affecting the law of the land by electing representatives in the three years before they were released, and therefore when they came out of incarceration, then they would be subject to those laws. Well, that’s all very well, except that a prisoner who is incarcerated for longer than three years isn’t given by this bill the right to vote in the last three years. So the logic of that is not internally consistent, and that’s a challenge to what it is that we’re expected to pass, or indeed being asked to pass, tonight by the Minister and the Government, even before we ask ourselves: what is the purpose of having a three-year time frame in the first place?

The principled position, surely, is that if voting is a human right—and I think on one level it is, or at least it’s a civil and political right—then it should apply to all and not those who have committed a particular degree of offence. As I say, I believe that a political compromise, as opposed to a legal or logical principle, has been at play there.

The discussion about the restrictions of rights has been pretty well thrashed out, actually, in different stages of the bill, and I think that there’s some merit in the perspective that, really, to be incarcerated in the first place is a restriction of rights. So it’s somewhat of a nonsense to say that we should not restrict people’s rights in not allowing them to vote because they are imprisoned, because it’s precisely because someone has done something worthy of imprisonment that we should at least consider curtailing various rights. So I think that sort of absolutist approach that we’ve heard from the Green Party member earlier tonight doesn’t particularly stack up.

The question then becomes, of course, well, what restrictions on rights do we place? How can we justify restricting some and not others? The answer, I think, must surely lie in the nature of the penalty. We lock people up so that they are no longer a danger to others for a certain period of time and also themselves. We also have the opportunity to rehabilitate them and so on. So what, then, is the justification, for restricting the ability of such a person to vote? The answer is surely that with, almost invariably, multiple offences against the criminal law, law to which they have to have offended at least to a standard of beyond reasonable doubt, with the onus being on the other side to have proved it and so on, we don’t lock people up lightly—that’s the short point. To have reached a point where, on average, a person who is incarcerated, perhaps incarcerated for three years—I forget the detail, but in any case, an average of 24 convictions before a person has got to the point of losing their right to vote shows that the social contract has readily enough been torn up by that person. Why it should be a matter of logic for the other side to say that they should be allowed to continue to participate in a process which they’ve already withdrawn from, to their own benefit, seems to me entirely baffling.

We also have talked about a number of different practical issues with the bill. The Hon Dr Nick Smith pointed out the illogicality of the fact that someone who is a member of Parliament has the right to visit a prison at any time, and a candidate, on the other hand, doesn’t have that ability. So an election campaign is naturally tilted towards incumbents. I’d perhaps even go a step further and say that if the member of Parliament is going to visit the prison as a member of Parliament, then he or she shouldn’t be visiting as a candidate, because the visit as a member of Parliament is to check on welfare and processes and so forth, as opposed to being there to campaign. So even for members of Parliament who are candidates, let alone other candidates, the situation does not make sense, because they shouldn’t be—and in other cases can’t be—in there actually actively campaigning.

Let’s finish on the bizarre situation that we faced tonight whereby an SOP from a Government member was partly successful, meaning that we’ve got a real anomaly in the law. Once upon a time, getting 50 percent was a pass mark, but you can’t be half right in these things without causing a lot of difficulty. So we’ve now got an absurd situation where prison officers, as defined, I believe—or I’d call them Corrections officers—are required to tell all prisoners that they are entitled to vote, but only some of those, those serving up to three years, will actually be entitled to do so. It’s an absolute shambles, so from a legal, moral, and practical point of view, we cannot support this bill.

The following call is a split call.

I seek leave of the House, under Standing Order 74, for a motion to discharge the bill and for it to be referred back to the select committee. It is openly acknowledged now that this bill has an internal contradiction. It is unworkable law. It would require our prison officers to act illegally. The correct way for the House to ensure that we’re not passing law that puts our prison officers in that impossible position would be for us to discharge the bill and refer it back to the Justice Committee. The Standing Order would normally require for that motion to be moved earlier in the legislative process, but I am seeking leave of the House to be able to put that resolution, because the bill as it stands is now unworkable law.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): So I’m not trying to trick you on words; I’m just getting it clear: you’re seeking leave, which, in effect, is to leave aside the Standing Order, which deals with proper process.

Correct. The Standing Orders provide a process by which a motion can be put to the House. It’s a non-debatable motion. It requires the bill be discharged from the House and referred back to the Justice Committee, and that is the motion I am seeking leave to put to the House, given the pretty extraordinary situation we’re—

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is. The following call is a split call—Jo Luxton.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. If it was up to the members opposite, we would see every single criminal thrown into jail—throw the key away, never to see the light of day again. Unfortunately for them, on this side of the House, we think that everybody deserves a second chance. If we want people to integrate back into society, we do need to give them some rights. One of those rights is the right to vote. But what we’ve seen from the National Party this evening has become symbolic of what we see from them all the time: flip-flop, can’t make their minds up, playing politics, playing games, and political point-scoring. We’re here as politicians to make sensible legislation, and what do we see? The Hon Nick Smith running around, laughing, playing games, making fun of the fact that they’re supposedly the party for victims, and all they’ve done is play games with the victims here tonight. So it’s very disappointing—somewhat disgusting—to see them behave in that way. I commend this bill to the House.

I’ve been listening to the debate in this House and I’ve heard not one justification—not one justification—for the inconsistency on the law that’s just been passed from Golriz Ghahraman’s amendment. That inconsistency, essentially, requires the prison managers to break the law. This law is a botched law; it is a shambles. It is a law that reflects poor process and it is a law that reflects poor priorities on this Government.

I’ve been part of the select committee on this process, and I must say that in the urgency of lockdown, when constituency MPs have faced extraordinary challenges in their own electorates with dealing with constituency issues, here I was and here were other members on this side of the House dealing with complex issues, but also having to deal with giving prisoners the right to vote—in lockdown. That reflects, I think, the poor priorities of this Government that we have such deep challenges going on in the community, and all that side of the House worries about is who has the right to vote in prison.

We do not support this law, but don’t take my word for it, take Chris from my own electorate of Northcote, who said, “The moment they decide to live outside the law of New Zealand, prisoners lose the right to vote.” That is the first principle on which we oppose this law. If you do the crime, you do the time, and that means having your rights as a free and fair system of democracy taken away—whether it’s the right to vote, the right to freedom of association, or liberty rights to go with that.

What about the role of our justice system? Well, we on this side of the House care about the victim—we do. Unfortunately, the bill that’s going forward has a lack of centeredness on the victim, and we heard about this in the select committee—victims who have had deep challenges with sexual violence, rape, and, unfortunately, that has been escaped from the process.

A third reason why we oppose this bill is around the role of rehabilitation and reintegration. Of course this plays an important role in making sure prisoners reintegrate into our society, but we can do that in prison in a safe way, and that is through educational means. And I’ve talked about previously, already, other complex skills training that’s provided for prisoners in New Zealand prisons.

But what I think typifies the law that we’re about to vote on today is the Supplementary Order Paper that was passed less than an hour ago, which, essentially, requires prison managers to break the law, and it’s a shame that that side of the House didn’t want to refer it back to select committee for deeper consultation.

This election is a stark contrast between Labour and National on the issue of crime and prisoners. On that side of the House, we’ve got a party that is soft on crime, a party that has poor priorities in Government, and a party that doesn’t care about the democratic process—

💬 Simeon Brown: Or victims.

—or victims that we have in New Zealand. But on this side of the House, we are tough on crime. If you do the crime under a National Government, you will be put away. And we have very clear priorities—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope I won’t.

Madam Speaker, if the prisoner or the offender does the crime, they will do the time. We have very clear priorities: make our communities safer.

Lastly, we care about the proper democratic process of our parliamentary system, not a half-baked system to get it done for the next election. So we oppose this law in this House, and we hope that we have some justification for the changes that have been made today. This is a terrible law and we do not commend this bill in the House.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this shambles. You know, there was a great Chancellor called Otto von Bismarck, who said that people who love public policy or legislation and love sausages have one thing in common: neither of them should watch what they love being made. That’s very much the case here tonight. This is the biggest legislative screw-up by this Government under urgency for, oh, about four weeks since we accidentally passed the wrong law and unwittingly legislated a $2.5 billion business loan scheme because the Government couldn’t put the right bill on the Table.

So now we have a situation where prisoners are going to be enrolled regardless of how long they are sentenced. But it’s not clear whether being enrolled will actually allow them to vote or whether by enrolling them to vote means the prison warden will have actually committed a crime. You think about the difficulty of that. The prison wardens are supposed to look after the people that are committing the crime, but this Government is making the prison wardens criminals in themselves. This is the kind of mess that that we’re getting into with this kind of lawmaking. You know, Sir Geoffrey Palmer once said that New Zealand is the fastest lawmaker in the West, and this Government seems to have done a line of smack and decided to go even faster. I think that’s a real problem, because actually this is quite a serious issue. Before I discovered what had transpired earlier in the evening—because I’m a busy leader of a small but growing political party—I was coming down to record the ACT Party’s thoughts about this very serious matter.

First of all, we have a major problem in this country with recidivism. We don’t send more people to jail; we send the same people around and around and around. You know, half the people that get out of jail are back within four years—a disgrace. We have the fourth largest imprisonment rate in the OECD, behind countries like Czechoslovakia and Mexico and the United States. We need to do a lot better. We actually need to do a lot better with policies like ACT’s, that if you learn to read in prison and you get educated, we’ll reduce your sentence. That’s the kind of smart thing we need to do. But this Government’s trying to tell us that letting prisoners vote is going to substantially help to rehabilitate them. There’s no evidence for that. That’s the first area where it falls down.

The second area where we have a problem is this vexed issue of human rights, because notwithstanding the omnishambles of legislation tonight, the intent of the bill is that you have this human right of voting if you have been sentenced for three years or less. Well, if the Government had the courage of its convictions, it would say human rights are indivisible, and every prisoner should have the right to vote. Rapists and murderers are still human and should be able to vote. But oh no, no; it’s only people on sentences of less than three years. So it’s not even principled by its own standard. It actually says that those people are less than human because they don’t deserve human rights. Then Jo Luxton, the member for a place called “List”, which is apparently near Rangitata, said that the Government is playing—playing—with prisoners. Well, what’s playing with prisoners is this law that says you’re going to be enrolled by the warden, but you can’t actually vote. That’s playing with them. So it fails on a human rights basis.

We actually, to be serious, take away part of the bundle of rights New Zealanders have when we imprison them—freedom of association, freedom of movement. Very important rights in the Bill of Rights are withdrawn. On the other hand, the right to vote—well, I, like many people in this House, have lived overseas. I lived in Canada for five years. I couldn’t vote there. Why would you want to? Because there’s no ACT Party in Canada to vote for. But I didn’t feel that I’d lost all my rights. I don’t think it’s a serious human rights issue. That’s why the ACT Party is opposing this bill, aside from the fact that it’s an absolute shambles.

I’d also say that this Government’s priorities—the fact it’s been willing to put so much capital into this non - human rights issue—tells us that this Government is not thinking hard about the real needs of New Zealanders. If I had some more time, I’d give some better examples of what they should be thinking about. But for now, the ACT Party opposes this shambles.

For anyone watching this that thinks that somehow this is about crime and soft on crime, as is being espoused by Nick Smith and his high-pitched little clone Simeon Brown, it is not. What this is is simply about entrenching some legislation. Actually, funnily enough, nobody on the other side has mentioned one of their finest members, the Hon Chris Finlayson, who was opposed to the legislation when it went through in 2010 and remains opposed to it. What this is about—in fact, as touched on by the previous speaker, David Seymour—is victims of crime. It’s about future victims of crime. As someone who, as an undercover police officer, lived among criminals, the one thing I’ll say is the common denominator among criminals is complete alienation from mainstream society. Voting is not going to be a panacea. It’s not a cure all. But, as the previous speaker said, it is going to be a stepping stone into becoming part of mainstream society.

Just before I finish, there’s a huge irony tonight that that party opposite, who opposed this legislation all the way through, tonight voted for an amendment that the public should know results in all prisoners now having the right to vote. Thank you, National Party, for all prisoners now having the right to vote. I commend this bill. [Interruption]

Order! Order! Goodness me.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was going to give quite a brief contribution tonight, but I can’t resist, actually, after hearing from the member opposite, Greg O’Connor. We’ve got a bit of a saying on this side of the House, and certainly amongst the class of ’17, which is, “Never go full Greg—never go full Greg.”, and we saw a little bit of that tonight in some of the observations he made. The first one, he started out—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Full names.

Yep, sorry, Madam Speaker. He started out by referring to Nick Smith—our honourable colleague on this side of the House—and that Simeon Brown was his clone. Well, perhaps, Greg O’Connor, you might need a different prescription on your glasses, because they are in many ways similar, but in that way not. He then went on to say that Chris Finlayson opposed the change in 2010—that Chris Finlayson opposed the change in 2010. Well, of course, he didn’t. He voted for the bill; he voted for that piece of legislation. If the member opposite is seriously suggesting that if an Attorney-General comes up and says that something is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that means that they oppose it, well tell that to David Parker and all of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act inconsistencies that he’s come up with in this Government. If that member is seriously suggesting that David Parker, the Attorney-General, opposed those pieces of legislation, I suggest that he’s going to have a call from the Attorney-General David Parker later on tonight.

Now, I do want to move on to more of the substance of this bill, rather than just Greg O’Connor’s interesting contribution. I was here late this afternoon and into the evening when we had the committee of the whole House stage. I do want to make a few observations on that, because several questions during the committee stage were put to Andrew Little, the Minister in the chair, and I do want to congratulate him on taking many questions and answering most of them. But there were a number of questions in relation to the consistency of the bill as to why the Government have drawn the line at three years, where people who are imprisoned for a sentence of less than three years are able to vote, and those who are sentenced to imprisonment for a term of more than three years are unable to vote. Golriz Ghahraman and, prior to her, Chlöe Swarbrick have put forward what I think is a very consistent position that all prisoners should be allowed to vote.

Now, I have some sympathy to that argument. I don’t agree that all prisoners should be allowed to vote, because, as I’ve heard through numerous contributions on both sides of the House, when somebody is imprisoned, they give up a number of rights: the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of association, and, as this Parliament has determined a number of times, the right to vote. I don’t think, actually, that the Green Party are suggesting otherwise, because I don’t think they do think that people should have the right to freedom of association or freedom of expression when they’re in prison, but, of course, they do think that people should have the right to vote. But at least that is consistent that we give prisoners—all prisoners—the right to vote rather than draw some arbitrary line at three years, which is exactly what this Government is doing.

Ms Swarbrick in an earlier contribution in, I think, the second reading debate made what I thought was a very valid contribution, which was: why do we draw the line where some prisoners are given the vote even though they might have committed the same offence as somebody who commits the same offence but receives a different sentence? Again, that is a position that I have some sympathy with, which is why I was so surprised to hear that the Greens are going to continue to vote for this bill tonight, because it does exactly what Ms Swarbrick railed so eloquently against in the second reading debate. It says that prisoners should be treated differently based on the sentence that they’re given. If someone’s given, let’s say, two years and 11 months in prison, they’ll be able to vote. But if someone’s given three years and one month for the same offence, they won’t be able to vote. So despite that inconsistent position, the Greens are going to vote for this bill anyway. I guess that is where their consistency ends.

Then we come to the issue that I struggle with even more, and that is that in an earlier contribution Clare Curran said that the threshold of a three-year jail sentence means that those prisoners will be able to vote on the Government that will be in power when they are released, and that’s true. That would be a very fair point if it weren’t for one thing: that it would be true for any prisoner who is given a sentence of more than three years, in the last three years of that sentence. But there’s been no amendment, there’s been no amendment from the Green Party, and there’s been no amendment from the Government to fix that issue.

Perhaps in recognition of that error that the Government’s made, we had Minister Andrew Little earlier in the committee of the whole House stage coming up with a brand new reason. We hadn’t heard it before; it was a brand new reason just for the committee of the whole House, where he said that people who he would like to see vote are those convicted of lesser crimes. That ignores that those convicted of lesser crimes on their first offence actually go to prison very rarely. To make it to prison on someone’s first offence, they actually need to do something pretty serious; not a lesser offence, as described by Andrew Little. Actually, all you need to do is pick up the court news of any provincial newspaper in the country and you’ll see exactly that. It can be very, very difficult to be sentenced to prison in this country.

But my biggest problem is the matter of priorities, because yesterday it’s been confirmed that we had more than 50 people released from mandatory isolation without being tested. We’ve got businesses up and down the country going out of business. In the last 24 hours in Ashburton and Timaru, more lay-offs have been announced, and, unfortunately, tens of thousands of Kiwis are now out of jobs. And yet tonight, in this Parliament, under urgency, the Government aren’t putting forward any remedy to that. They’re not putting forward anything that will create new jobs. Instead, they’re seeking, under urgency, a priority of theirs to give prisoners the vote.

The reason I say “under urgency” is that brings me to perhaps the most bizarre of points that we’ve seen this afternoon and this evening in this Parliament, where Golriz Ghahraman put up her Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), her amendment to extend the vote to all prisoners, which, as I’ve said, is a perfectly valid and consistent position—something that the Government themselves don’t hold—and part of that SOP was passed. Nick Smith has laid out in a far better way than I could how bizarre that makes this piece of legislation. It makes a mockery of the fact that, under urgency, we’re passing electoral law, which I would argue is one of the most important pieces of legislation we can amend in this House—the Electoral Act—because it actually defines this Parliament as a democracy. And here we are, under urgency, passing a bill that makes a massive inconsistency in the law, where prison managers are required to advise and assist prisoners to enrol to vote, and yet it remains illegal to do so.

Now, Grant Robertson screws up his face across the House. I’m not allowed to say he wasn’t here, but perhaps if he talks to a neighbour and says—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, don’t say it.

Perhaps if he talks to a neighbour and asks what happened earlier in the debate, he’ll find out what happened. He’ll find out what this Parliament actually voted on, because half of Golriz Ghahraman’s SOP passed, it’s in the bill, and it will not be voted on in third reading, I presume it will be supported by members opposite; it will not be supported by us. But it does make a mockery of the urgency process when we have legislation that was rammed through select committee, where submitters were not able to present in Parliament their concerns and their views. We have in this Parliament now committee stages and third reading truncated into one evening, rammed through under urgency, and this is why we have such fundamental concerns with this legislation, because they’ve made a mistake. That is one of the perils of urgency. Urgency should only be used in extreme or rare circumstances.

I’m old enough to remember, actually, that the Green Party used to rail against the use of urgency, and here they are supporting changes to our electoral law—the fundamental basis on which we all sit here and of our democracy—a change to the law which makes a mockery by inserting an inconsistency into the Electoral Act. We will not support it.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I was in this House when the bill that was passed that is now—the effect of which—being overturned by this legislation was put up by Paul Quinn as a member’s bill. It was a mean, petty, and glib piece of legislation that was passed by a member who is best forgotten from this House, and supported by a party whose politicking on issues of electoral law is well known.

I have only two things to say in my contribution. The first of those is that, other than the Ministers of Corrections, I would venture to suggest that I’ve probably spent more time visiting prisons than any other member of this House; because, as is on the public record, my father spent time in prison. And one thing I can tell you—and Greg O’Connor mentioned this briefly in his contribution—we send people to prison in New Zealand as a punishment, not for punishment. When they’re in prison, what we attempt to do is support their rehabilitation back into our society. One element, albeit a small element of that, is for prisoners—in this case, for the proposed bill—who are serving a term of three years or less to be allowed to vote.

There has been a consensus on that across political parties over decades, until Mr Quinn’s glib, petty, mean piece of legislation was passed in this House. Those members opposite who think that maybe tonight they’ve had some great little politicking victory, I say this to them, and especially to Dr Smith: the greatest commitment you can show to democracy is when you uphold the rights of people that you despise, or people that you don’t like, or people who have done things that you don’t agree with. That’s when you show your commitment to democracy, Dr Smith, not some little political trick, not some glib bill, but when you uphold the rights of those who you may not agree with, that is a commitment to democracy, and that is what this bill does.