Electoral (Prisoner Voting) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 6 June 2018.)

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (17:05): I rise to speak on the Electoral (Prisoner Voting) Amendment Bill. I will not take too long. I appreciate the opportunity to make a few remarks on behalf of the people of Stuart. I refer the house back to 19 May 2016 and to the Electoral (Prisoner Voting) Amendment Bill that I brought to this place as a private member. I was grateful to be supported by my Liberal colleagues in that. Unfortunately, that bill did not pass this place. The then Labor government did not support it, and I was very disappointed in that, but that is how things work.

I hope that they will support this bill. It is the delivery of an election commitment that we took to the last election in March, and we believe that we have a right to pass this through. We accept that the parliament has a right to examine it, to go into it in depth and to think about it, but I earnestly ask the opposition to support us in this, as it was one of our election commitments.

When I brought the private member's bill to parliament at the time, I was the shadow minister for corrections, an outstanding area of work, I have to say; I am talking about corrections rather than being a shadow minister. I know that there are three members on the opposite side of the chamber who have been ministers for corrections. I am sure that they share my view that that is a very challenging, often perhaps even slightly heartbreaking but very important area of work.

We do not bring this bill to this place because we have it in for prisoners. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not like that at all. But we do believe that people who commit serious crimes lose some rights, and we believe that that is appropriate. In the extreme, one of the most serious rights they lose is the right to liberty and, in the extreme, they are sentenced to a term in prison, and that is appropriate; that is as it should be.

We also believe that if a person commits a crime so serious that that crimes results in a conviction and a prison sentence of three years or more, then that person also deserves to lose their right to vote in state elections. We are not alone in this view, either. Other states have this view broadly, and the commonwealth has this view broadly. The commonwealth has had it for a long time.

Other states that have this view and have this legislated have a range of different lengths of prison sentence to which it applies, some more than three years and some less than three years. The commonwealth is three years, so we in opposition took, and now in government have taken, the view that three years was the right place to land. It is actually in the middle of where the other states have set their legislation, and it is the same as the commonwealth's.

That way, in South Australia, if a someone is imprisoned for three years or more, then that person not only loses their right to vote in a state election, as we are trying to implement at the moment, but has already lost their right to vote in a federal election as well, so there is consistency here in South Australia on that.

Again, it is not about trying to punish prisoners; it is just saying that if a person is a criminal of that calibre, such that he or she has brought upon themselves a sentence of three or more years as result of committing so serious a crime, then for the time they serve that sentence they do not deserve the right to vote and contribute to who is or is not in government. Very importantly, when that sentence is finished that person gets those rights back.

I do believe that if you do the crime you do the time, but when you have repaid your debt, when you have done all the things our courts and our society expect of people who commit crimes, let those people do the very best they can to put that behind them. That is one of the most important foundations of our corrections system, to try to help people do that, so of course once they have done that they get back the right to vote. That is very important.

In recent years, the way in which people can serve their sentence has changed. It is now the case that somebody could have a three-year prison sentence but may not serve all of it in prison; they might serve the tail end of it in home detention, for example. They are still serving a three-year sentence which, at the time the court imposed it, was expected to all be served in prison, whether over time or for one reason or another they may have been allowed to serve it in home detention or another way. Effectively, even though they are not in prison they are still serving a sentence, and under our proposal it is not until they have completed serving that sentence they get back the right to vote.

Of course, if a person does have their sentence reduced, that does not take away the requirements of this legislation. If the sentence is reduced, that does not necessarily mean they immediately get back their right to vote. However, if their sentence is reduced and they have then worked their way through completing that reduced sentence, upon completion of the reduced sentence— whether that is because they were allowed out of prison back into mainstream life early or they are out of prison into home detention and then out of home detention earlier than originally sentenced by the judge—when they have completed their sentence they get back the right to vote.

It is a very straightforward, very simple principle that the overwhelming majority of South Australians agree with. If you have committed a crime that is so serious that you get a sentence of three or more years as a result of that crime, while you serve the sentence you cannot play a part in who is or is not in South Australian government or who is or is not your local member of parliament, depending upon what your address might be. Some prisoners keep their pre-sentence address and electoral enrolment and some prisoners end up enrolled in the electorate where the prison is located, but that is a separate issue that does not complicate or in any way diminish the principle behind this bill.

I thank my colleagues for supporting me in opposition previously in my right to put forward a private member's bill on this topic, and I thank my colleagues for making this one of our election commitments. I thank my colleagues for bringing it to parliament, and I hope the opposition will support this. I think the overwhelming majority of South Australians want this, and I commend the bill to the house.

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (17:14): I indicate that I am the lead speaker for the opposition. I think it is a pretty rare thing to have the lead speaker for the opposition so far into the debate. We have had probably a dozen speakers from the government on this particular bill. It goes to show, when it came to this particular piece of legislation, where the process really fell down in this fledging government, in terms of how this legislation was introduced but, more particularly, how there was no briefing for the opposition, how the briefing was delayed, how there was a very late briefing offered, and how debate proceeded without the opposition being briefed on this matter.

We then arrived at a point where we had the bizarre spectacle in the last sitting of this parliament where the Attorney-General broke what was an agreement in terms of the government and the opposition and sought to close the debate by being the last speaker. It took a quick intervention by yours truly to make sure that that did not happen and that the opposition had the chance to make a contribution to this important legislation and raise some important questions about this debate.

I think it goes to show how quickly those opposite forget the 16 years in which they sat on this side of the house and complained every inch of the way about every tiny—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member will be heard in silence.

Mr PICTON: Thank you for your protection, Deputy Speaker. Members opposite complained every tiny little inch of the way about every tiny little process thing that happened. Then suddenly they get into government after 16 years in opposition and they want to steamroll the parliament, they want to forget about process, they want to forget about briefing the opposition and they want to forget about the orderly process of this parliament and being held accountable. I think there is a Greek word for that—it might be hypocrisy. It goes to show how quickly they have forgotten what the parliament is here for and the important role that the opposition needs to play in this place.

This is an important piece of legislation. This is an important matter for the parliament to be debating and it is something that deserves a significant amount of scrutiny by this parliament. What the government is proposing to do is to take away the rights of people, and that is something that we should never do without significant scrutiny and without significant consideration, particularly when it is their voting rights, which is inherently very important in our democratic system. That is why we think that this matter deserves a very high level of scrutiny.

I am happy to say at this stage of the debate that the opposition is happy to allow this through this parliament, where obviously the government does have the numbers, but we reserve our position in terms of the Legislative Council to continue to scrutinise this matter, to continue to consider our position and to continue to consider whether any amendments to this legislation might be necessary to improve the law that is being proposed by the government.

As the member for Stuart said in his contribution, this was something that he introduced as a private member's bill in the previous parliament and it was not supported. It was not supported for some of the reasons that I have outlined in terms of the important rights of people. However, I also think it was not supported for the key reason: what do we want our corrections system to be about?

Fundamentally, the now Leader of the Opposition, when he was corrections minister, made great strides in terms of the policy development for our state in that we want our corrections system to be about the rehabilitation of people. That is what the focus of our corrections system should be, not just on punishment and not just on locking people away.

We do know that the vast majority of people who are sentenced to imprisonment one day will be out in our community. We do not want people who go to prison to use their time in prison to become hardened criminals and more set in their ways. We want to use people's time in prison for rehabilitation. That is why the previous government, under the now Leader of the Opposition's leadership of that department, made great strides in terms of the development of policy to do just that—to reduce reoffending and to reduce recidivism in our corrections system.

We have brought in policies that I hope the government is going to take very seriously and continue to roll out, both in terms of making sure that we are improving our education system for people within prisons and also making sure that we are improving the situation for people where they are leaving prisons in terms of the ability to find employment and the ability to find housing. On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, I note that there is no minister in the chamber.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is general practice but it is not an obligation, so continue.

Mr PICTON: They are too busy to be here, okay. This is a very important program that the former government was rolling out in terms of making sure that we can improve the rate of reoffending in South Australia. We actually have a relatively low rate of reoffending in South Australia compared with some other states, but it is something where we think we should make continued strides to reduce that rate of reoffending. So, in those three areas in terms of education, employment and housing, we are seeking to make sure that we reduce that reoffending.

We have a significant increase in terms of work programs inside prison to make sure that prisoners are occupied and doing constructive things. I note a number of other members in their contribution have talked about some of those programs that we particularly see in prisons like the Port Lincoln Prison that you would be very familiar with, Deputy Speaker, as well as Mobilong Prison, Mount Gambier Prison and others where we are increasing the productive output of prisoners but also giving them skills to enable them to have additional pathways apart from crime when they are released from prison.

With that as the central principle, that is why the former government did not support what was then the private member's bill from the member for Stuart at the time because we thought that using that time in prison as productively as possible would be to make sure that we could reduce that reoffending. Whether you take a person's voting right away, whether that contributes in any way to reducing the rate of reoffending, I do not think there is any particular evidence to show that that is the case at all.

Of course, we have since had the election. The government has been formed and they have reintroduced this legislation now as a government bill. We think that it is something that deserves a significant amount of scrutiny. Unfortunately, what we saw in terms of the process was that the bill was introduced and a briefing was not offered until the Monday night of the last sitting week, when an email was sent to the shadow attorney-general's office apologising and saying that a briefing would be provided as soon as possible. However, it had already been put on the Notice Paper for debate for the government that week.

We said that, quite frankly, we were not prepared to consider that. That message was passed back to the government. In fact, I had a conversation with the Attorney-General to that point when we met on Tuesday to say that we were not ready to debate this bill because she had not briefed us. At least at that point, even though her office had contacted us saying that they apologised and were setting this up, she said that she had no knowledge of that and that she was not aware we had not been briefed. But she agreed at that point that we would not close debate that we would have a number of members of the government speaking on this bill but that we would reserve the ability for the opposition to speak on it after the opposition had been briefed but also after our caucus and shadow cabinet had the opportunity to consider the bill as well.

Then we got to the stage later in the week where, after a huge number of government MPs debated this bill, the Deputy Premier got up to close the debate. The Attorney-General got up to close the debate and started to close speaking, after which the opposition would not have been able to speak. Luckily I had my trusty new television monitor displaying the parliamentary proceedings—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: An outstanding development.

Mr PICTON: It is an outstanding development. I know that, while I am bagging the Attorney-General for what I think she did, I praise the Acting Attorney-General for his contribution in terms of pushing the agenda for televised debates of the parliament, something I also supported internally within our show. I think it has been a great development.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: There are dozens of people who are grateful to us.

Mr PICTON: They are all watching. I think it is just David Bevan usually, isn't it? Now having this ability to watch proceedings in my office, I saw the Attorney-General rising to finish the debate on this bill, which would mean, of course, that no member of the opposition was able to contribute to the debate and breach the agreement that we had earlier in the week, at which point I bolted down the steps from level 2, where my humble lodgings now are in this building.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: We just need CCTV in those corridors, too.

Mr PICTON: There probably is. The Clerk could probably pull that up. As I am sure the Clerk knows, those are a huge occupational health and safety risk, those steps.

Mr Pederick: Here we go—they are going to unionise the stairs next!

Mr PICTON: That's right, but we are not covered by any occupational health and safety at all in terms of members of parliament. There is no WorkCover for us, so if I had fallen I would have been all on my own. But I managed to transcend the steps very quickly to rush into this parliament and, speaking out of the standing orders, I jumped up to say to the Attorney-General that she had breached the agreement, that she was closing this debate without any member of the opposition speaking, and she said, 'Oh, I am sorry, I didn't realise.' She did not realise and then allowed us to speak on it this week.

I have to say that it goes to show how important it is that the opposition is briefed on these things and does get the opportunity to scrutinise legislation. There is no better way of demonstrating that than that we now have, filed in this house, amendments moved by the Minister for Education, filed on 20 June 2018—a whole series of amendments that came from contributions that we raised in the briefing with government.

Mr Bignell: Picto saves the day.

Mr PICTON: That's right—the member for Mawson says, 'Picto saves the day.'

Members interjecting:

Mr PICTON: That's right. It should be noted as well that all of this chaos, all of this breakdown in procedure happened without the Minister for Education here carrying the ship, which I think goes to show how much he does carry the show over there.

Mr Bignell: He does a good job.

Mr PICTON: He does a good job.

Mr Bignell: We missed you.

Mr PICTON: We missed him. I raised some of these points in an earlier debate and he then went on to have a massive spray about how bad the former government was, and I am sure he will do that again. The point is that they are in government now. It is up to them to be consistent with their statements previously in terms of what they had committed to the house. You just have to look at some of the previous contributions of the now Attorney-General when she was the shadow attorney-general and some of the outrage that she had about the way that she was so harshly treated and how she should have been able to be briefed.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Point of order: I feel we are now straying from relevance to the bill at hand.

Mr PICTON: Point of order, Deputy Speaker: you, in the debate on this bill in particular, have ruled a number of times and referred to the House of Representatives practice that second reading speeches can be very broad—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Broad ranging, you are right.

Mr PICTON: Broad ranging.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Kaurna, if you could work towards concluding your comments before 6 o'clock, at least, that would be worthwhile, I think. Continue.

Mr PICTON: I appreciate your suggestion, Deputy Speaker, but I understand the standing orders allow me unlimited time for my contribution as the lead speaker for the opposition.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Given that it is Thursday night, I would encourage you to further your comments, and particularly in relation to the bill.

Mr PICTON: Thank you very much. I will have to note the footnote in the standing orders that says that Thursday night is a different connotation in terms of what you can contribute. In terms of the process, which I think is very important in relation to how this bill has been debated, the Attorney-General previously had made a number of statements when she was in opposition about how things should be debated in this chamber. We have seen the results of her throwing out—that complete discard of her previous views—in the fact that we now have these amendments.

Amendments Nos 1, 2, 3 and 4 filed by the Acting Attorney-General, the Minister for Education, go to the points that we raised in the briefing with the government. These are points that go to the fact that there were some very serious flaws with the government's bill that was promoted, and they go to some of the issues in terms of what the definitions are around who should be detained. In particular, given that we have just spent a significant amount of time in this house and in the other place debating people who are held in custody due to their inability to control their sexual instincts, there was significant doubt as to whether those people would be covered by this legislation or not.

That is something that we raised, and now the government has had to go in and clarify it in their amendments. It goes to show how important the opposition's role is in this, which I am sure in the many, many quotes from the current Deputy Premier that the Deputy Speaker does not want me to read out, but I am very happy to, goes to the importance of the role of the opposition in this.

I am glad that the Minister for Education is back. I congratulate him on the birth of his child, but I am glad that he is back. Hopefully, from now on we will see routine significant improvements in the process. During the briefing, matters came to light, and one of those matters was that the government had done absolutely no consultation on this bill whatsoever—absolutely no consultation on this bill.

You would think that on introducing a significant piece of legislation like this, it would be pretty important to consult all of those organisations and peak bodies that would be affected, and none of those was consulted. It was mentioned that the Law Society had been sent the bill for its thoughts, or was about to be, but they were not quite clear on whether that had happened. Other than that, to our understanding, there had been no consultation on this bill whatsoever, and a very important part of the legislative process is making sure that we are seeking as broad a range of views as possible on this before members have the opportunity to vote on legislation.

We find it concerning that they claimed that they were going to come in with all these new ways of operating, be much more consultative and be much better at these sorts of things, and they did not last 90 days. They are not briefing the opposition, they are not consulting anybody and, 90 days later, they are shown to be a government that are hiding things and not talking to the community. There are still a number of significant queries in terms of this bill, a number of which we are going to deal with when we get to the committee stage of the bill.

As I mentioned, we are very unclear as to whether this applied to people who were indefinitely detained under various acts of parliament. I note that the Minister for Education has had to rush in some amendments following the opposition's briefing and raising these issues. During the committee stage, we will have to tease out whether that adequately covers the situation.

We asked about this during our briefing and were told that the intention was that this bill, as it was originally submitted, would cover these people, but clearly now we have been shown that that was not the case and that they were not covered. We are pleased that the government has now come to a similar position and drafted these amendments, but we will be considering them both in the lower house here and also in the other place.

We are also particularly concerned about clause 6 of the bill, which amends section 69 of the Electoral Act, and in particular the insertion of new subsection (5)(b)(iv) which provides:

a person who is subject to detention of a kind that is—

(A) imposed by or under an Act or law; and

(B) prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of this subsection,

That is a very broad range of ability to cover somebody under this legislation. During the briefing we asked, 'Who is this intended to cover?' and the government and their representatives were unable to tell us who they are looking for in terms of being able to cover under this legislation. I think that is another very important piece of scrutiny that we need to cover when we get to the committee stage.

Why did the government need this to be included in the first place? It is a very good question. It appears incredibly broad. We asked about it in the briefing. It does not appear in the commonwealth's prisoner voting model, which is interesting. So much of this is based on the commonwealth's model, but in the state model they are adding in an ability to add by regulation a whole range of other types of acts or laws that are not particularly covered.

One question which I raised in particular, which I do not think has been sufficiently answered, is that, if you are saying another act or law detaining someone applies here, would that not cover mental health detainees? Are we saying that if you are detained under the Mental Health Act you are prohibited from voting under this legislation? That is something that needs to be answered by the government as well.

There are a number of other aspects of the bill, including the purpose of new section 27B, which allow the state Electoral Commissioner to provide information to the commonwealth electoral commissioner; the purpose of playing around the electoral roll with the amendment of section 68(1); and a number of additional queries in relation to clause 6 of the bill, including why the Attorney-General has chosen three years as the cut-off date for eligibility and why we have departed from the commonwealth model and included those people on home detention, whereas the commonwealth model does not include those people.

Some members of this house recollect that this has been debated before. Looking back, there were good words from the Hon. Paul Caica, the former member for Colton, which I think summed up the position of the then government and some of the concerns around it that we are considering in this bill. He pointed out, and I quote:

…in 1976 the South Australian parliament passed legislation with bipartisan support, I might add, to remove the restrictions on prisoner voting that were in the South Australian Constitution Act 1934. There seems to be no strong policy rationale for shifting from the bipartisan position adopted back then. Introducing restrictions on prisoner voting rights does not correspond with other policy priorities of the Attorney-General's Department which focus on restoring and rebuilding community connections.

Those were the points made by the government then. I think that they are matters that the government will need to respond to next sitting week during the committee stage of the bill. They are certainly issues that we are considering in this legislation.

In summing up, I hope that we will see better process from the government. I hope that they will continue the important work of reducing reoffending and the recidivism policies which the former government instituted and which I think are vitally important in terms of reducing crime in our community. At the end of the day, that should be the main focus of our law and order system in terms of keeping our community safe.

I hope that we will see those laws, programs, policies and directions continue under this government. This does not bode well, but I hope that the whole range of other aspects of what was intended by the 10 by 20 goals to reduce our recidivism rate by 10 per cent by 2020 will be maintained by the government. I look forward to the committee stage.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Cowdrey.

At 17:39 the house adjourned until Tuesday 3 July 2018 at 11:00.