Garrett David: Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Garrett David: Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 I will start by talking just briefly about the previous speech by Lianne Dalziel. It was not bad really; I agree with some of it. But I take issue with her view on the duty to vote. We do not have a compulsion to vote here unlike in Australia. We are obliged to be on the electoral roll—we are duty-bound to do that—but we are not obliged to vote. Voting is a major right. It is a right that people have fought and died for. I am unaware whether any suffragettes died in this country but certainly they did in England in the early part of last century in order to obtain the right to vote. That right was considered to be so important that women were prepared to go on to racetracks and be trampled to death in order to get the right to vote. There can be no democracy without voting; one inevitably follows the other. 
I am afraid I disagree with Ms Dalziel’s view regarding criminals in prison but she has made a good point: there are disparities in treatment between those who are in prison and those who are on home detention. Perhaps that could be addressed at the select committee because on the face of it certainly someone who receives a sentence of home detention— 
Simon Bridges 
: It is for a less serious offence David. 
DAVID GARRETT 
: Yes well they can theoretically get home detention for a serious offence so perhaps that disparity can be looked at. But by and large contrary to what Ms Dalziel has said people are in prison for very serious offending. They are deprived of their liberty which is a right not much less important than the right to vote perhaps. They are there for repeat violent offending very serious violent offending or for having stolen a lot of money. They have broken the social contract that we all make to abide by the laws that we make in this place. They are there for a reason. The question to be asked is simply why such people should be allowed to exercise a right that people have died for. That is not a melodramatic question; it is a very serious one. 
Although this is a member’s bill in my view it is part of a sea change that this Government has embarked upon in the law and order field. Along with measures to combat drug abuse and the other drivers of crime the National-ACT Government is making it very clear that prison ought to be a place that people do not want to return to. Although it is incorrect to say our prisons are five-star hotels—I have visited seven or eight of them and I know that is not the case—neither are they hellholes or particularly unpleasant. That is changing. This Government with the full support of the ACT Party is introducing container cells. Now the party opposite wails and moans about the inhumanity of that. If members had a bit of life experience they would know that anyone who has worked in a mine in Australia or on an oil rig has lived in something very similar to what is proposed for Rimutaka Prison. Container prisons will not be like the so-called “Milton Hilton” the centrally heated prison in the South Island. They will not be like the Ngawha prison which was opened under the previous Government. They will not have a large sculpture at a cost of a couple of million dollars to indicate the spirit returning to the sea. 
Last week I was speaking to a Rotary group in the North Island near Ngawha about the “three strikes” bill which is soon to pass in this House. After my speech I took questions. One of the audience members was a doctor and he asked me what I thought about prison conditions. I said pretty much what I have just said: prisons are not five-star hotels but neither are they hellholes and they should be places that people do not want to return to. Afterwards he came up to me and said that he treated all the prisoners from Ngawha prison who had ear nose and throat problems. Purely from his own interest he had asked them how they found conditions there and what they thought about life there. He said that every single one of them said that they were very comfortable thanks the food was great they were not required to work and they were very happy. Either that man was lying—and he did not seem like a liar to me—or we have made our prisons too comfortable. That is changing and I applaud that change as does my party. This bill is symptomatic of that change and is part of it and we are proud to support it.