Penk Chris; Mallard TrevorCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Mr Speaker for this opportunity to speak to the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill. This is a difficult area. This is an area in which we have considerable intersection of constitutional rights including electoral rights as well as a lot of issues that affect many other areas of society. So I want to take it very seriously in acknowledging some very key points made by submitters on both sides to be fair albeit ultimately of course I support the position that this side of the House has taken in relation to maintaining the status quo and not changing the electoral law at this stage. The discussions about criminal justice often reflect a narrow view whereby submitters or indeed politicians tend to emphasise the purpose of criminal justice that is most important to them. Deterrence is a legitimate aim of the criminal justice system so is punishment so is rehabilitation and so on. Like every other aspect of criminal justice this proposal has a complicated relationship with those but let me state clearly for the record that I think that probably very few people in this House believe that there is a good deterrent effect to be had either way by amending the electoral law in respect of prisoners. I don't believe that many people would be more likely or less likely to commit a crime on the basis that they would be able to vote more frequently or at an earlier stage and so on. But I do think that the aim of punishment—even though that term is rather heavy—is a valid aim of course of our criminal justice system and there is a symbolic element of that. The removal of the electoral right for the period that a person is incarcerated is symbolic of the fact that the person has divorced themselves from the rule of law such that they have failed to follow the law of the land made by those who have been duly elected in previous elections. So it's not a mere matter of punishment for the sake of punishment; there is a direct logical connection between the act of saying that a person should not be able to vote while they have been imprisoned for committing crimes against the State and indeed against their fellow New Zealanders in a previous period and at a previous juncture. In that context it's significant that people who have been incarcerated for any period of time including beyond the three-year mark but also up to the three-year mark have often dozens of different offences against their name which would indicate a repeated denial of the electoral or constitutional mandate the so-called social contract that we are governed by which are the rules of this place for better or worse and whether we like it or not on the basis that we have the opportunity every three years to change the Government or indeed to reconfirm it—or re-elect it as the case may be—and of course the quid pro quo is that we play by the rules of the game. So for those who have not played by the rules of the game to be able to continue to elect a referee if I can strain a sporting metaphor—here we are in New Zealand and it's compulsory of course to get some sort of vaguely rugby-related reference in there—it seems to me a bit stretched. A couple of other issues I think do deserve and require the serious attention of the House. One is the Treaty of Waitangi angle and specifically the tribunal's finding in relation to the law as it currently stands. I do want to acknowledge that it is a problem for this country and indeed for those of us who sit in this House if we take the problems of the country seriously that there are a disproportionate number of Māori in our criminal justice system. However to me it seems appropriate that this be addressed by this House and by the Government of the day in relation to the underlying factors that lead to crime as well as criminal actions themselves in the moment—frequently expressed as causes of crime versus crime itself. So in policing in the practice of convicting in a court of law and of course in sentencing the law should of course have no disproportionate effect on any person relative to the outcomes that have transpired on the ground. But I think it's a mistake to say that because we have these prior difficulties whereby we have a disproportionate number of a particular ethnicity in prison we should change the law or we should take that into account in the law that applies to those people. I believe that those are separate issues within the criminal justice system but I do want to acknowledge that a number of submitters did make points about the disproportionality at least on a numerical basis and of course the constitutional implications from that. I'm less persuaded by the argument that the law has been said to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That may be so but of course this legislature is in the business of making law—indeed that's exactly what legislature" means. So it's consistent with my views more generally on the right or the desirability of our senior courts to be pronouncing on the suitability of laws in this place such that I would be troubled by the thought that we legislate here to keep on side with the judiciary who rightly apply laws and rightly consider human rights implications but who do not have the role within our constitution of deciding what legislation ultimately is appropriate given all the factors at play that of course we must take into account here. It's worth noting that a large number of the submitters who were in favour of the bill actually would have had it go much further and to say that if you're going to have those who have been incarcerated for less than three years voting then actually logically speaking we should allow it for prisoners who have been incarcerated for any length of time. Of course that's a perfectly logical argument and I think it probably speaks to the political dimension of what the Government-related parties have been grappling with such that they have reached a compromise I believe—and I use that term "compromise" not in a particularly kindly fashion but also just to reflect the reality that they've had to basically come to something that will get across two different views on either side of the Cabinet table or the Government table more generally. Really I think there's a good argument to be had for saying that prisoners should either be able to vote or not be able to vote according to whether it is as the Waitangi Tribunal would have it a matter of proportionality for the Māori population or if it's a matter of New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consistency. So why we have this strange halfway house whereby prisoners with up to three years' worth of incarceration should be allowed to vote but not those who are in longer makes no sense in terms of the arguments that we've heard from the other side of the House today. If we were being logical and going with the argument that we've heard previous to today from those on the Government side whether it was through questioning at the Justice Committee or other advocacy in this House the logical outcome would be to say that well if we want people to be able to vote so that they are having a say indirectly on the laws of the land at the time they are released then the logical thing to do is to say that prisoners should be allowed to vote in their last three years of their sentence. So we've got an anomaly with the bill that's now in front of us for its current reading that says in fact what we're going to have is a bill that says it matters when you were convicted as to the number of elections potentially that you will vote in but if you were convicted for more than four years you won't get to vote in the last three years of your sentence. So that argument doesn't stand up in terms of what has actually been put forward. I do just want to touch on a couple of other issues that have been made at various points of the debate a little bit today and a little bit of previous engagement as well. One is the point about enrolment on the electoral roll. I think it's a good one and the select committee members on both sides of the select committee table were in agreement with points made by those who say that well if we want people to reintegrate into society after they have been released and to be fully functioning fully participating members of society then they should be re-enrolled automatically. That was not a contentious point among the committee so I think that is a thing that we are able to agree on. The Minister has emphasised it from the angle of the Treaty of Waitangi. I would say that as a matter of double jeopardy we don't want to continue to punish people after they have been at Her Majesty's pleasure. They've served their time they've done their time and they can move on but until such time as that's taken place it's not appropriate. Other arguments in relation to the unpublished roll I think are fair but we should have an equal system whereby everyone is judged on a criterion of safety for that. SPEAKER: I thank the gallant member for his contribution."