Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Firstly I want to acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee Meka Whaitiri. Secondly I want to point to the fact that the first statements and comments she made were around the rights of victims. To me I think there's a high degree of sensitivity on the Government benches at the moment because they realise that they absolutely have ignored the wishes of victims on this bill. I can be very clear and tell you that through the submission process every victim that appeared in front of the select committee was very clear about the fact that they didn't want prisoners to have the vote returned they felt like there should be some consequences for their actions and they feel like actually some rights are taken away and one of those rights is the right to vote. We supported them on that wholeheartedly.I want to come back to a little bit of the history behind the passage of this bill. It's been well debated in this House but as this will be my last call on this bill I just want to do a quick recap on that. As we moved into level 4 of the COVID-19 response that this whole country has made a huge commitment to—and largely just about every Kiwi in New Zealand has tried to be as compliant as they could with the rules that the Government put down to try and flatten the curve with COVID-19—one of the commitments that was made to us as Opposition—because of course we wanted to support of course we wanted to do the right thing but we were clearly told and made a commitment by the Government that we would not sit on select committees and deal with any legislation that did not relate directly to COVID-19. We took them on their word. What happened within weeks of that is that we were told that we would be sitting on the select committee to hear submissions and to start advancing the prisoner voting legislation through the select committee process as quickly as we could. The Minister of Justice in the committee stage said Oh well what's the problem? MPs were just sitting around doing nothing." MPs on that side of the House might have been sitting around doing nothing; I can assure you that MPs on this side of the House certainly were not—they were responding to their constituents. I can tell you that in my own constituency of Rodney we made sure that my staff—and I want to acknowledge them and the enormous effort that they put in through level 3 and level 4—were set up in their home to be able to respond to constituent inquiries and they did that and I did that. Some of the things that we were having to deal with were the enormous stress on businesses not being able to get access to a wage subsidy; Kiwis caught overseas and us having to make interventions on their behalf; massive confusion and stress around how parents that were co-parenting apart were going to be seeing their children; senior Kiwis locked down by themselves and the issues and the support that they needed.I had a woman—if I can give you one graphic example of me having to schedule a Zoom committee meeting when I was contacted by a lady that was in lockdown with a violent partner who had had her arm broken 10 days previously. She had contacted me out of desperation. She had self-splintered. She'd been dragged around the house for 10 days. She said "I know I can't leave the house. What do I do?"—"What do I do?" I had to try and deal with that get the police there make an intervention make sure that we got her safe because she was so fearful—she was more fearful of breaking the rules around the lockdown than she was of a partner that was being violent to her every day. Instead of dealing with that I had to come on a Zoom call and a committee meeting to deal with giving prisoners the vote. To me it was obscene and offensive. I take great offence at the Minister standing in this House and saying "Oh you know what? MPs were sitting around doing nothing." Maybe on that side of the House; I assure you not on this side of the House.Can I just highlight and say this: Golriz Ghahraman has come to this House as a member of the Green Party and she has stood by her principles—I'll at least give them that. They have stuck by their principles and their principles are quite simply this—and I agree with them—if you're going to stand up here and the Government's going to make speeches in the House and your Minister's going to make speeches in the House in terms of a Supreme Court ruling or a breach of bill of rights and say we're going to give these poor prisoners the vote—oh but by the way we won't give them all the vote only those that have got a sentence of less than three years—why not stand by your principles? If you feel like they should have the vote why not give every prisoner that's in prison the vote? Quite simply what Golriz has done is she's come down to the House and she stood by her principles.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Use the member's full name please.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Golriz Ghahraman—sorry. She's come down to the House and she's actually just stood by her principles. It doesn't mean that we agree with them but I tell you what I respect her for doing that. She's put a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) forward and the SOP's been successful. So what that means now is that because the Government has engaged in a rushed process—Dan Bidois: What does that mean exactly?Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well what it means now is that we've got a terrible horrible botched piece of legislation that is going to put our Corrections officers and our managers—and the interesting thing about this is that the chair didn't address it; she didn't mention one word about that SOP. She didn't mention one word about the legislation. I'm hoping that there are other committee members that are going to take a call.Greg O'Connor whom I have a lot of respect for he's got a lot of experience in this area. I'm looking forward to Greg O'Connor standing up and taking a call and I want him to talk to this. I want him to talk us through it and walk us through it and explain now what the implications are because I tell you what: he's stood in this House many times as a past detective and he's explained that he knows the intricacies of the law he understands how it's applied and he's in the detail. Now he's got a great opportunity to get up and talk us through this and explain to everyone just how poor this piece of legislation is just how botched it is and how embarrassing it is.I feel sorry for Kiritapu Allan—another person I have a lot of respect for. She's rushing around the House. She's out there making calls. She's talking to the Minister's office. She's trying to work out how to deal with this. She's trying to work out what their lines are. They are scrambling. So it's going to be very interesting to hear what the next speaker has got to say.Well done—well done—to the Green Party. You stood by your principles you're a partner inside this coalition and you've made a change to the bill on a principle that you believe in. But actually what's happened is it's botched it.What are New Zealand First going to do? Poor Jenny Marcroft. Jenny Marcroft is like a possum in headlights. She will be on the phone. She will be working it out because they have a deal. We're in the third reading now. What an awful position to be in. Oh the Hon Tracey Martin is here. The big guns have been called down to the House. Well well well. Let's see who's going to take the call. Let's see who's going to respond to this. They're in an awful position now aren't they? What are they going to do? Are they going to support a terrible botched piece of legislation that will be all over the media tomorrow?Look these guys are making so many mistakes that the media don't even know which ones to go for now right? So they're going to have to figure out actually what they're going to do with this. So let's see who's going to stand and take a—oh James Shaw is in the House. It's getting serious. Even the bigger guns are arriving to try and sort this out. So we'll wait and see who's going to take the call on this. There's a huddle going on over there. They're going to work it out.It's a terrible piece of legislation. It is now a botched piece of legislation—horribly botched piece of legislation. The reason for that is because we had a Government decide to rush this through—decided to rush it through when we were in COVID lockdown when the whole country was doing the best that they could to flatten the curve and try and beat this. Instead they had the Justice Committee meeting to advance a rubbish piece of legislation to give prisoners the vote back. We ignored legislation that would give additional protection to our first responders the people that were out there during lockdown who were essential workers putting themselves at risk to help and protect the rest of us. We didn't pick up the legislation that would give them more protection did we? We didn't pick up the piece of legislation that would provide more protection and make the court process easier for the victims of sexual crime. No. What did the Government decide to do? It decided to pick up a piece of legislation that would give 1900 prisoners the vote.Do you know what the most twisted thing about this is? It's that in the committee of the whole House stage we had the Minister stand up and say "What's the National Party worried about? Are you worried that you're not going to win the election because we're giving 1900 prisoners the vote?" By making that statement it was very clear that the Minister was making the assumption that those 1900 prisoners were going to vote for Labour. So if anyone wants to sit down and look in the mirror and ask themselves what their motivation is for bringing a piece of legislation like this into a committee when we're supposed to be dealing with a national emergency and what was a national emergency then actually it's that side and it's that Minister that should be looking in the mirror. Thank you Madam Speaker."