SpeechANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I was going to give quite a brief contribution tonight but I can't resist actually after hearing from the member opposite Greg O'Connor. We've got a bit of a saying on this side of the House and certainly amongst the class of '17 which is Never go full Greg—never go full Greg." and we saw a little bit of that tonight in some of the observations he made. The first one he started out—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Full names.ANDREW FALLOON: Yep sorry Madam Speaker. He started out by referring to Nick Smith—our honourable colleague on this side of the House—and that Simeon Brown was his clone. Well perhaps Greg O'Connor you might need a different prescription on your glasses because they are in many ways similar but in that way not. He then went on to say that Chris Finlayson opposed the change in 2010—that Chris Finlayson opposed the change in 2010. Well of course he didn't. He voted for the bill; he voted for that piece of legislation. If the member opposite is seriously suggesting that if an Attorney-General comes up and says that something is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that means that they oppose it well tell that to David Parker and all of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act inconsistencies that he's come up with in this Government. If that member is seriously suggesting that David Parker the Attorney-General opposed those pieces of legislation I suggest that he's going to have a call from the Attorney-General David Parker later on tonight.Now I do want to move on to more of the substance of this bill rather than just Greg O'Connor's interesting contribution. I was here late this afternoon and into the evening when we had the committee of the whole House stage. I do want to make a few observations on that because several questions during the committee stage were put to Andrew Little the Minister in the chair and I do want to congratulate him on taking many questions and answering most of them. But there were a number of questions in relation to the consistency of the bill as to why the Government have drawn the line at three years where people who are imprisoned for a sentence of less than three years are able to vote and those who are sentenced to imprisonment for a term of more than three years are unable to vote. Golriz Ghahraman and prior to her Chlöe Swarbrick have put forward what I think is a very consistent position that all prisoners should be allowed to vote.Now I have some sympathy to that argument. I don't agree that all prisoners should be allowed to vote because as I've heard through numerous contributions on both sides of the House when somebody is imprisoned they give up a number of rights: the right to freedom of expression the right to freedom of association and as this Parliament has determined a number of times the right to vote. I don't think actually that the Green Party are suggesting otherwise because I don't think they do think that people should have the right to freedom of association or freedom of expression when they're in prison but of course they do think that people should have the right to vote. But at least that is consistent that we give prisoners—all prisoners—the right to vote rather than draw some arbitrary line at three years which is exactly what this Government is doing.Ms Swarbrick in an earlier contribution in I think the second reading debate made what I thought was a very valid contribution which was: why do we draw the line where some prisoners are given the vote even though they might have committed the same offence as somebody who commits the same offence but receives a different sentence? Again that is a position that I have some sympathy with which is why I was so surprised to hear that the Greens are going to continue to vote for this bill tonight because it does exactly what Ms Swarbrick railed so eloquently against in the second reading debate. It says that prisoners should be treated differently based on the sentence that they're given. If someone's given let's say two years and 11 months in prison they'll be able to vote. But if someone's given three years and one month for the same offence they won't be able to vote. So despite that inconsistent position the Greens are going to vote for this bill anyway. I guess that is where their consistency ends.Then we come to the issue that I struggle with even more and that is that in an earlier contribution Clare Curran said that the threshold of a three-year jail sentence means that those prisoners will be able to vote on the Government that will be in power when they are released and that's true. That would be a very fair point if it weren't for one thing: that it would be true for any prisoner who is given a sentence of more than three years in the last three years of that sentence. But there's been no amendment there's been no amendment from the Green Party and there's been no amendment from the Government to fix that issue.Perhaps in recognition of that error that the Government's made we had Minister Andrew Little earlier in the committee of the whole House stage coming up with a brand new reason. We hadn't heard it before; it was a brand new reason just for the committee of the whole House where he said that people who he would like to see vote are those convicted of lesser crimes. That ignores that those convicted of lesser crimes on their first offence actually go to prison very rarely. To make it to prison on someone's first offence they actually need to do something pretty serious; not a lesser offence as described by Andrew Little. Actually all you need to do is pick up the court news of any provincial newspaper in the country and you'll see exactly that. It can be very very difficult to be sentenced to prison in this country.But my biggest problem is the matter of priorities because yesterday it's been confirmed that we had more than 50 people released from mandatory isolation without being tested. We've got businesses up and down the country going out of business. In the last 24 hours in Ashburton and Timaru more lay-offs have been announced and unfortunately tens of thousands of Kiwis are now out of jobs. And yet tonight in this Parliament under urgency the Government aren't putting forward any remedy to that. They're not putting forward anything that will create new jobs. Instead they're seeking under urgency a priority of theirs to give prisoners the vote.The reason I say "under urgency" is that brings me to perhaps the most bizarre of points that we've seen this afternoon and this evening in this Parliament where Golriz Ghahraman put up her Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) her amendment to extend the vote to all prisoners which as I've said is a perfectly valid and consistent position—something that the Government themselves don't hold—and part of that SOP was passed. Nick Smith has laid out in a far better way than I could how bizarre that makes this piece of legislation. It makes a mockery of the fact that under urgency we're passing electoral law which I would argue is one of the most important pieces of legislation we can amend in this House—the Electoral Act—because it actually defines this Parliament as a democracy. And here we are under urgency passing a bill that makes a massive inconsistency in the law where prison managers are required to advise and assist prisoners to enrol to vote and yet it remains illegal to do so.Now Grant Robertson screws up his face across the House. I'm not allowed to say he wasn't here but perhaps if he talks to a neighbour and says—DEPUTY SPEAKER: No don't say it.ANDREW FALLOON: Perhaps if he talks to a neighbour and asks what happened earlier in the debate he'll find out what happened. He'll find out what this Parliament actually voted on because half of Golriz Ghahraman's SOP passed it's in the bill and it will not be voted on in third reading I presume it will be supported by members opposite; it will not be supported by us. But it does make a mockery of the urgency process when we have legislation that was rammed through select committee where submitters were not able to present in Parliament their concerns and their views. We have in this Parliament now committee stages and third reading truncated into one evening rammed through under urgency and this is why we have such fundamental concerns with this legislation because they've made a mistake. That is one of the perils of urgency. Urgency should only be used in extreme or rare circumstances.I'm old enough to remember actually that the Green Party used to rail against the use of urgency and here they are supporting changes to our electoral law—the fundamental basis on which we all sit here and of our democracy—a change to the law which makes a mockery by inserting an inconsistency into the Electoral Act. We will not support it."