Harawira Hone: Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Harawira Hone: Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10346] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. Tena tatou katoa e te Whare. 
Paul Quinn 
: Hey brother. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: Tena koe parata. If an election were held today some 3200 sentenced prisoners—those with a release date between now and 5 March 2011—would be able to take up their democratic right to vote. Another 1800 prisoners on remand would also be eligible. That makes up about 5000 people in prison who can legally vote at a general election. Under the terms of the Electoral Act 1993 because they are serving a sentence of less than 3 years they are eligible to vote. But today we have the Electoral (Disqualification of Convicted Prisoners) Amendment Bill which seeks to deprive those 5000 people of their legal right and to punish them again for the crime for which they have already been prosecuted sentenced and incarcerated. I have to wonder about the motivation of targeting people who are already isolated from our society who are already alienated from everyday life and who are already serving the time to pay for their crime. I ask what on earth could be the motivation to deny them even more of their rights except to punish them to prove how nasty and vicious society can be to show that we do not care about those who have fallen by the wayside and to show what a callous and depraved society we really are. 
This bill is a backward step. It takes us back to the time before 1993 when based on a recommendation of the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System the Solicitor-General agreed to the 3-year rule. This bill will take us back to the days when on conviction anyone in prison was disqualified from voting. This bill will take us back to the days of prejudice and ignorance and of a society ruled by fear rather than freedom. Kim Workman director of Rethinking Crime and Punishment said the provisions of the bill would affect the 90 percent of prisoners who would be out of jail in 2 years and it would also actively disenfranchise the families and the communities that those inmates come from. Communities like Otara Flaxmere and Cannons Creek would stand to lose a significant number of their voters. It does not take very much consideration to realise that with Maori and Pasifika constituting the great majority of prison inmates the Polynesian voice would be the voice that was silenced by this legislation. 
The history of the right to vote in this country is one of confronting prejudice and challenging exclusion. Our history has been one of opening up the right to vote to women to Maori to people who were not British subjects such as the Chinese to people living on the Chatham Islands to 20-year-olds and ultimately to 18-year-olds as well. This bill along with a range of bills of a similar nature aims to take us back to a time when exclusion defined us as a society and to reset us on the track of slowly but surely rebuilding the walls of denial and racism. That would see this country plunge into levels of hatred and violence that would make today’s problems look like they were a bun fight. We shudder at the thought of what might come next and we signal quite clearly that we will most certainly not be supporting this bill. Kia ora tatou.