Ardern Jacinda: Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Ardern Jacinda: Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I am disappointed that the member Paul Quinn who is in charge of the Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill allowed his contribution to disintegrate and therefore for the tone of this debate I think it is best that we do not descend to the naming of individual cases. I know that members on this side of the Chamber certainly try to avoid that except when it comes to trying to disprove some of the misinformation that is flying around about what our current legislation does. 
I start by saying that I still believe that the onus for proving that this legislation is necessary sits with the promoter of the bill. I listened carefully to the contribution made by Mr Quinn whom I spend quite a bit of time with on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I will come back later to the point of whether this bill was referred to the right select committee. I think Mr Quinn would have enjoyed being on the select committee that considered the bill—the Justice and Electoral Committee would have been a better place for it. I listened carefully to his contribution so that I could better understand why we are here and why we are debating this legislation. I take our role here seriously. [ 
Interruption 
] I hear Mr Bridges making a few little snide jokes but I do take very seriously our role of scrutinising the bill and I did listen to the comments made. 
The first reason I heard from Mr Quinn was that we are looking at this bill because he takes his guidance from his peers and people believe that no prisoners currently can vote and therefore that is what the legislation should be on. Personally I expect a little more analysis than that but even if we were to take that argument are not his peers the people who came to the Law and Order Committee? Or is he denying that the people who presented at the select committee had any right to take a position? If we were listening to his peers who submitted to the select committee we would have heard that 50 of them were against this legislation—50—and two were in favour. If we were listening to Mr Quinn’s peers and the people of New Zealand who know that their ability to access and persuade members of Parliament is via the select committee process we would have heard that they were overwhelmingly against this legislation. I invite any Government member to stand and explain to me why those submitter views should not be taken into account on this legislation because as far as I am concerned they are our peers. 
Although listening to the members of the public is absolutely and incredibly important the onus is also upon us to take responsibility. It is a cop-out simply to say that everyone thinks this is the way it should be and therefore it will be so. We have the responsibility to make the hard decisions in this House and that means weighing up the evidence and weighing up our responsibilities that are incumbent upon us whether it be through the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act human rights legislation or just good conscience. It is incumbent on us to weigh up all matters not simply those that are brought before us because not everyone has access to the information that members have. We are in a privileged position as members of Parliament in that regard and we must take everything into account. I am still none the wiser as to whether the member or even the Government has done that. 
The second reason for this legislation that I heard from the member in charge of the bill Mr Quinn was that New Zealand should stand on its own—the fact that every other country does not have a piece of legislation like this almost becomes a reason to have this legislation because we would be making a point. I think probably the only point we would be proving is that we were wrong and everyone else is right and perhaps when the legal challenges come through we will prove that. 
The third reason is the technical issue of 3 years as an arbitrary cut-off for someone having the right to vote when in prison and that there was not any good basis for the 3 year cut-off—except that when someone travels overseas or is resident overseas they are eligible to vote if they set foot in New Zealand once during that time. Really the question comes down to whether we believe that anyone who is in prison should be eligible to vote at any point during their term of imprisonment. The cut-off point then becomes a point of debate. But the black and white question is whether anyone at any point during their term of imprisonment should have the right to vote. 
Secondary to that question therefore is the question of members’ views on the right to vote generally. Do members perceive it as a privilege or as a right and therefore that people have a responsibility to their community to exercise that civic responsibility? I think that what we are seeing in the Chamber today is essentially two divergent views on the role of voting in this country. I am happy to have that debate and I acknowledge that we are on a difficult side of this argument. The way in which we see the role of voting is a point that has to be discussed and acknowledged when talking to a member of the public. I think Labour is on the right side by taking up that challenge because in our view voting is much more than just a right. It is a responsibility and it is a civic duty and in that regard I really completely disagree with my colleague Simon Bridges. So why are we here? 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Take it up on  
Breakfast 
. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: We have once before. I won; he lost. Why are we here? I think it probably helps to go back and look at the reasons—[ 
Interruption 
] I could make a gesture too. 
Let us look at the reasons why we use terms of imprisonment anyway. There are three reasons three Rs which are commonly used. There is an element of retribution in the idea of imprisonment but there is also the idea of restoration and rehabilitation—restoration to the victim whether it be an individual or society as a whole. On that test I do not believe that this measure passes. In my mind restoration to society means that that individual should become a fully contributing member of society once more. There is a certain cut-off point a line in the sand that we can draw where someone is likely to be in prison for lesser crimes. Those are the individuals who we should ensure are making a full contribution to society by exercising their responsibility. 
The second reason is rehabilitation. Again there are the same points and my colleague Grant Robertson made an excellent contribution on those. So even on the three measures for which we use prison I do not believe that the removal of the right to vote for a certain level of criminal actually fulfils those three aims for imprisonment generally. 
I make a point of clarification here. Simon Bridges interjected during someone’s contribution that the real reason this bill is before the House is that it make us feel better and I think that probably fulfils the third of the three Rs—that this is just blanket retribution without much analysis behind it. I think that some of the debate we have had is slightly misleading because it implies that currently all prisoners are eligible to vote and that is not true. That is simply not true. Under the current law if you commit a certain level of offence and you are convicted of that you are unable— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No no. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: I am sorry Mr Chairperson. You certainly have not been convicted of any offence. You were serving a sentence though by sitting next to Paul Quinn during his contribution! If a person is convicted for a particular crime he or she will not be eligible to vote and that includes the most serious crimes. So it is misleading to imply that voting is a right that everyone has. In fact the best way we have managed to prove that is through the accident that we see could have happened during the select committee process whereby the complete removal of our current legislation and starting from scratch with Paul Quinn’s bill would mean that everyone who is currently in jail would be eligible to vote even if they are currently serving a life sentence. So that accident has actually proven the point that our legislation has I think the balance right. 
I make the point again that the onus is on the Government to tell us why we should change the legislation as it currently stands and I do not believe it has done that. I want to make one anecdotal point. I wonder how many members in this House have ever doorknocked people aged about 60 or 65 who have never voted in their life. I have and probably a few members in the House have but the person I came across had never voted because they had served a couple of short stints in prison. They had been denied access at various points in their life or had never been given the opportunity to take up the responsibility and at that age probably never would. It gave me pause to think about that person because I doorknocked them when they were back in their residence and it was a civic responsibility that they should have take up at some point in their life but never had. It still sits in my mind as an example of exactly the kind of person whom we should ensure exercises that responsibility when in prison. In my view it is a civic duty. 
I come back to the process we went through in considering this bill. This bill should have been referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee. It is electoral legislation and the Department of Corrections should never have debated it or given advice on it.