Calder Cam: Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Calder Cam: Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:668;Page:15186] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to offer some comments on the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. 
Committing a citizen to a period of imprisonment is one of a number of sanctions available to the State to use with those citizens who break the law. Imprisonment is a sanction that is designed to deter the citizenry from committing a crime to protect the public from lawbreakers to rehabilitate those in prisons and of course to punish through loss of liberties the incarcerated citizen. 
Imprisonment is a significant sanction. I doubt that many prisoners would find much solace in Byron’s lines: 
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! 
Brightest in dungeons Liberty! thou art 
Loss of liberty is a terrible travail to most human beings. I ask members of the Committee to think for a moment of being stuck in a well-appointed hotel room. Imagine if the door was locked one did not have any meals of one’s choice one could not turn on the television or the Internet and one could not have any visits from any mates. It would not be a lot of fun; one is not free in other words to associate with whosoever one wishes or otherwise exercise liberties that we daily take for granted. 
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin referred to the positive conception of liberty; not freedom from but freedom to. Imprisonment at Her Majesty’s pleasure involves a loss of a number of freedoms to. In prison one loses the freedom of movement of liberty and the loss of a number of freedoms to: the freedom to associate the freedom of speech the freedom to communicate freely with phone or Internet and many other freedoms to. 
I believe the freedom to vote is an integral part of an individual’s liberty and of an individual’s freedoms to. The loss of the freedom to vote upon going to prison is perfectly consistent with the loss of the other aforementioned freedoms to concomitant with a term of imprisonment. Let us explore the reality. Many criminals have a long string of convictions before they receive a prison term. A judge does not sentence a person to prison lightly in this country. It is a last resort reserved for either the more serious offenders or repeat offenders. 
This Government is committed to addressing the drivers of crime and is aiming in the long term to reduce the size of our prison muster. New Zealand and Australia currently ban prisoners’ suffrage for prisoners having a sentence of 3 years or more but among democratic countries there is no clear policy or threshold at which those convicted of crimes lose or do not lose their right to vote. 
Internationally we run the whole gamut with regard to prisoners’ suffrage. Some countries have no disqualification and even the worst serial offender is allowed to vote. Some ban voting even after prisoners are released. Others have a total ban on prisoner voting. There is a continuum; arguments can be made for any number of scenarios about where along the continuum the threshold for a ban on prisoner suffrage should be. It is logical less arbitrary simple to understand and entirely consistent with the concomitant loss of Isaiah Berlin’s freedoms to which is inherent in any sentence of imprisonment for the ban to apply to any prisoner sentenced to prison. I commend this bill to the Committee.