Parker David: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5551. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I rise to take a call. I want to speak about both Vote Corrections and Vote Attorney-General. As my colleague Kelvin Davis has highlighted the terrible fiasco that is the Serco contract at the remand prison at Mt Eden is a disgrace. The performance of the Minister of Corrections has been abysmal so much so that he really is very aptly called the Minister of Corrections because I have never seen a Minister have to make so many corrections in the House after so many mistakes.One of the core responsibilities of the State is that if it incarcerates someone and takes away their liberty it should at least protect the person from harm. The fact is that this Minister of Corrections has so woefully overseen the Serco contract that we have seen through television assaults and people who have died as a consequence of their treatment in a corrections facility. It is a woeful indictment of the National Government’s conduct of this performance and it is a failure of its responsibilities to New Zealand. It is what was predicted would happen with Serco because the only way it can significantly save costs is to have lower levels of staff and therefore lower levels of supervision of prisoners. That results in the sorts of debacle that we have seen overseas where it has been severely criticised and in New Zealand.I want to talk briefly about Vote Attorney-General. Last Friday in the High Court Justice Heath delivered the first declaration ever under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. For the first time since that Act was passed 25 years ago this year there was a declaration that legislation pushed through this Parliament was in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That legislation arbitrarily stripped all prisoners of their right to vote. There is not much sympathy in society for prisoners but as we have seen in the Serco case they should have some rights.Why the High Court made this unprecedented declaration of non-compliance with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is that it found that the National Government legislation which was opposed by the Labour Party and other Opposition parties in this Parliament including the Greens was arbitrary. Previously if you were in prison for more than 3 years you lost your right to vote. The legislation stripped the right from all prisoners and that was found to be arbitrary. Why? Well if you are someone who has decent home circumstances and can get home detention you can vote. But if you are someone from a difficult situation who has not got anywhere to go and therefore you do not get home detention and you are put in prison and you do not get the right to vote. That is arbitrary. What else? Well if you have a 2-yearprison sentence and it happens to fall between elections you get the right to vote but if your 2-yearprison sentencehappens to traverse a voting period you lose the right to vote.We sought then an urgent debate on the issue in Parliament—it is difficult to get these issues debated in Parliament because the Government is clearly or should be embarrassed about this terrible outcome—and we were refused. It is within the jurisdiction of the Speaker to refuse that but it highlights the need for a change to the arrangements in respect of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.As Andrew Little said in a recent speech referring to the Labour Party policy at the last election we think we should adopt the recommendation of the Constitutional Advisory Panel that says that when the courts find legislation to be in breach of fundamental rights—and this is one of the fundamental civil liberties of any democracy; choosing whom you are going to have to run the country—that sort of taking away of rights can change electoral outcomes. We saw that in Florida in the presidential election when they stripped so many people of their voting rights and changed the outcome of the world given that we had George W Bush who then invaded Iraq and it led to these terrible problems in part that we have got on the other side of the world.When these sorts of things are identified by the courts they should automatically come back to Parliament and be re-debated. It does not mean to say that Parliament should hand over to the courts the right to strike down primary legislation—I do not think we should do that—but I thought that the recommendation of the Constitutional Advisory Panel of this middle course should be followed. If a declaration of non-compliance with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is made it should come back to Parliament be put on the Order Paper and the legislation concerned should be re-debated by this Parliament rather than the breach being ignored.