Davis KelvinHon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): 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.Hon KELVIN DAVIS: 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.Hon KELVIN DAVIS: —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 1900 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.Hon KELVIN DAVIS: 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.Hon KELVIN DAVIS: 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."