Rurawhe AdrianPAULO GARCIA (National): National believes that voting is a right. It's a fundamental right but a right that is not absolute. The law gives more weight to the moral obligation of persons not to commit a crime rather than the moral obligation of persons to vote. If we consider all the things that we think of as rights we do agree that there is never an absolute right when even fundamental ones come with responsibilities. There is a social contract between individuals and the State.The disqualification of prisoners from voting makes it clear that our democratic rights as citizens include the obligation to obey the law. Prisoners however would have opted out of that social contract and often in quite substantial ways. When people break the law and are sentenced to prison they have not met their side of that social contract that obligation to society and therefore should lose the right to vote when they are in prison. By giving rights to voters it is giving back that right to criminals that voice to criminals when it is these very criminals who have taken that voice away from their victims. If someone is sent to prison because he has committed a serious crime that comes with consequences and as my colleague Simeon Brown has mentioned National believes that if you do the crime you must do the time. Going to prison is a punishment and should be treated as such.In New Zealand it's not easy to be given a prison sentence. You need to have committed serious things to be sentenced to imprisonment and people who have received sentences of up to three and more years are not small-time criminals. Again people have committed serious offences—that would mean assaults violent robberies family violence offences and sexual offences. There is a wide spectrum of offences that equates to imprisonment and taking away of a person's rights. This is why National is opposed to the current bill bill No. 2: Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill (No 2). This is why National was opposed to bill No. 1 the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill.Last week the Government passed the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act under urgency. The Act intended to reinstate the right to vote to criminals who were sentenced to less than three years' imprisonment including possibly to vote in the coming elections. We are now in urgency again this time on new legislation legislation that aims to amend the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act that was passed just last week. The question that many will ask the public may ask is Why?" Why are we doing this again? Simply because bill No. 1 which we will call bill No. 1 was passed with a problem in its provisions. Despite this the bill went on to third reading and was voted on to pass under urgency. The problem with the passage of the bill is that corrections officers are now required to tell prisoners that they are entitled to vote but even as not all of the prisoners that they will have to tell they're entitled to vote are actually entitled to that vote. It is an inconsistency that needs to be amended. All prisoners will be enrolled under the Act regardless of the sentence that they are going through and it is unclear whether or not being allowed to enrol will carry with it that ability or right to vote.Now after all that's been said and done this inconsistency the problem with the first bill having passed on third reading in urgency—the problem arose from the Green Party's Supplementary Order Paper carrying two amendments one that extended the right of voting returning the right of the vote to all prisoners and the second taking away the Electoral Commission's power to remove disqualified voters from enrolling essentially resulting in an unworkable law. From the very beginning the National Party has opposed returning or reinstating that right to vote to prisoners and what has happened through the process of urgency is that in enforcing in implementing that belief in not allowing for prisoners to be reinstated to their voting rights National has voted on the Supplementary Order Paper of the Greens that did contain that provision of requiring that electoral officers be required to inform the prisoners of their right to vote. Even if it results in an inconsistency in the Act regardless that was in keeping with National's position to be against and opposed to reinstating that right.I think that I would like to finish by saying that again we need to be reminded that we have gone through and are going through an extraordinary difficulty in New Zealand as the world is also undergoing extraordinary difficulty at this time. After the COVID lockdown in New Zealand and as COVID-19 continues to go through the world destroying economies because of the lockdowns that countries have needed to get into because of this extraordinary situation and the time of Parliament coming slowly to an end over the coming recess and the next final three weeks of sessions one would think that opportunities for urgency and moving bills faster through the process would include bills that address assistance to businesses and possibly anything that would push New Zealand towards economic recovery a little bit faster than it could possibly be. Such a bill that is pushed through urgency allowing for the reinstatement of the right to vote is simply not able to be supported.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—I call Ginny Andersen."