Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): 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.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The following call is a split call.