Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Mr Speaker for an opportunity to speak on the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. I find it deeply deeply disturbing that we've come down to Parliament this week we're sitting in extended hours and one of the top priorities for this Government is to ram through a piece of legislation before the election to give prisoners the right to vote. Here's a copy of the Order Paper for this week.Do I see anything to do with addressing the coronavirus crisis on here? No. What we see is we see: number one the Appropriation (2018/19 Confirmation and Validation) Bill; number 2 the Abortion Legislation Bill—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! That is not in the bill. Speak to the bill or sit down.SIMEON BROWN: And then we get to this bill which the Government is seeking to ram through before the election—the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill which is designed to give prisoners the right to vote. I would have thought there were other priorities that this Government had. I would have thought there was other legislation which needed to be dealt with. But this is the piece of legislation the Government has decided to put through. This piece of legislation is something which we will be opposing today. The Government has decided that not only will they seek to get this through under these circumstances but they have decided they are going to truncate the select committee process and have it done before the election so that it comes into effect before the 2020 election. Hon Member: Shocking!SIMEON BROWN: That is something absolutely shocking and again it comes back to this Government which is disorganised. They announced this before Christmas. They could have put a bill before Parliament well before now and gone through the normal select committee process and actually allowed New Zealanders to put their submissions and actually be part of the debate. But instead we're here having another truncated select committee process on another important piece of legislation. This comes on the end of a long list of things the Government is doing which shows that they are soft on crime. They voted against Alastair Scott's legislation to put in place drug testing. They've been soft on drugs. They're putting a referendum to the public on marijuana. We're now not even allowed to call prisoners prisoners". What's the new name for them? They're called clients—clients. No they're not even allowed to be called prisoners any more.Hon David Bennett: They're crims.SIMEON BROWN: Well they're criminals. They've broken the law—they've broken the law—and to go to prison it's not just some sort of light sort of thing they've done. It is a serious crime that has to be committed to go to prison. On this side of the House we believe that when someone commits a crime worthy of going to prison there are rights which should be taken away from them during that time and one of them is the right to vote. We heard the Minister talk about human rights and talk about the rights which are limited when someone goes to prison. If they are going to be consistent on the issue of human rights then they should be consistent in allowing prisoners to have access to all their rights whether that's freedom of expression freedom of movement freedom to write to whoever they wish to write to ring up whoever they want to ring up. But that's not what they're saying. They're simply going to say—they're going to pick and choose and say they're going to have their right to vote restored back to them. But not only that they're going to push this through prior to the election as one of their top priorities using up parliamentary time when there are so many other issues that we could be dealing with as a Parliament. One of the things which is so often left behind in these debates is the rights of victims. We talk about prisoners—or clients as we're now meant to call them but they're actually criminals. We talk about criminals. We talk about them—we talk about their rights but what about the rights of the victim? What about the rights of the people who they have hurt whether that's sexual offending whether it's aggravated robbery whatever the crime might be? Where are the rights of the victim and where are they being considered in this piece of legislation because I don't see them anywhere in this piece of legislation? I ask victims of crime to write in to the select committee and talk about their situations and their experiences and how they see this as another slap in the face by this Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government. New Zealand First—I'm looking forward to hearing Mr Darroch Ball. It looks like he's about to take a call. He's getting very very ready. He's not happy to be voting for this. It's not the kind of thing that he came to Parliament to support but he's about to stand up and take a call. He's going to take a call and swallow another dead rat. Well New Zealand First needs to tell New Zealanders what they got in exchange for voting for this piece of legislation. There would have been a deal done. It may have been in a vape-filled room or a smoke-filled room—I'm not sure what happens on the Government side of the benches these days—but he should stand up and be open and honest and transparent with New Zealanders as to what deal was done to get their support for this bill.So the National Party will not be supporting this piece of legislation. We will not support this Government's continual soft-on-crime attitude to New Zealanders—soft on crime soft on criminals—and the consequences. They ignore the victims of crime who are hurt on a daily basis. So I stand on this side of the House proudly voting against this bill but also noting that there is one part which we do agree with: for those prisoners when they do leave there should be the ability for them to actually be re-enrolled and that process should be made easier and not just for those prisoners who are leaving after a sentence of three years or less but for those who have been there for a lot longer. That process does need to be tightened up. It should be made easier so that they can be re-enrolled automatically and actually be able to get back and vote and be part of the democracy of New Zealand. I do fully agree with them on that but whilst in prison—whilst in prison—some of their rights are taken away some of their rights are limited and this is one of those rights which should be. Thank you Mr Speaker."