- What's the worst thing
about being in prison
besides being in prison?
The voting rights, that's what.
Even though Labour announced
they would change the law
to allow prisoners serving
less than three years
the right to vote,
they stopped short of
reinstating it completely.
Bravely going against
the recommendations of
the Human Rights Commission,
the Waitangi Tribunal
and yours truly.
So what gives?
Why are we only for human
rights when it's convenient
or when we're in opposition.
What's it gonna take to
finally get universal suffrage
in this country?
And am I the new Kate Sheppard?
So, you're probably
wondering why you're here,
given that you had no idea about the law
and you seem to not
really show any interest.
(all laugh)
Well, I want you guys to write a song
that I will then record
with a group of celebrities
and release to the public
as a means of getting them
on board with the idea
that all prisoners should be able to vote
not just those sentenced
to three or less years.
- Such a long sentence, you just
(all laugh)
said to fit into a song.
So it's like a charity song, like a
- Yeah.
- bit of a Band Aid.
- I mean, who knows
where the money will go?
- It is a good cause.
- Thank you.
- Like it's a tricky one.
- But, you know pop music has successfully
championed like problematic
things in the past.
- (laughs loudly) This is, I
wouldn't call this problematic.
- Like Blurred Lines.
- No (laughs) this is not that.
- Did you want us to
make you Blurred Lines?
♪ Ooooh ♪
♪ Aaaah ♪
♪ She's got bad news ♪
- In February 2013, I was
sentenced to four years in prison.
And then I ended up doing
22 months of that sentence.
- Was there an election while you were in?
- Yeah.
- Oh there was?
So you actively had an election
that you couldn't vote in?
- Yeah.
It was humiliating.
I was devastated to find out
I wasn't even gonna get
the opportunity to vote.
We're celebrating 125 years of suffrage,
and my own mother was used, as a woman,
to be held up in terms of achievement.
And here was I her daughter,
who had not been allowed to vote,
because I was inside prison.
- So in 2010, there was
a National government
that amended prisoner voting
rights so that anyone in prison
could no longer vote.
Is that something you guys
are still in favour of?
- We are, so we're just very
clear about the fact that
if you've got a custodial
sentence, and you're in prison,
then you lose that right.
- So you don't think it's an arbitrary-.
- It's very hard in New Zealand
to get a custodial sentence.
- Is that always the case?
- Absolutely, it is.
- You could be in prison for
a number of different reasons.
- But if you decide to
offend seriously enough
against our community,
and it's bad enough that you go to prison,
then there's some rights that
are gonna be removed from you.
- It's definitely not accurate to say that
the only people who go to prison
are people who have
done really bad things.
A vast majority of the
people in our prison system
are classed as low security.
- OK, what does that mean?
- It basically means that no
one has any current concerns
about their behaviour right now,
like the crime that they committed
or the harm that they did
was like pretty specific to
the circumstances they were in
when it happened.
- Right.
- So it's really inaccurate
to say that everyone in prison
is some kind of violent offender
who poses a serious risk to New Zealand.
So Mark Mitchell is wrong.
(all laugh)
♪ Let them vote, no matter what they did ♪
♪ Let them vote, even if
they flashed their dick ♪
- Do we wanna encourage people who flash
their dicks to vote?
- Well, yeah.
Theoretically, I'm in
favour of everybody voting.
The point of the song is that
like, it doesn't matter like
the worst thing you could
imagine someone doing.
They still should be able to vote.
- One, two, three, four.
♪ Let them vote, no matter what they did ♪
♪ Let them vote, even
if they killed a kid ♪
- Yeah, I do believe that.
- New Zealand prides itself on being
the first country in the
world to allow women to vote
and to have universal suffrage.
But actually we don't
have universal suffrage
when women inside can't vote
and young people and
men inside can't vote.
- Let's get Kate Sheppard
off the $10 bill.
I hear what you're saying.
- Yes.
(all laugh)
But actually, that's a good point.
- My view is a vote, it's
not a God-given right.
- It's a Bill of
Rights-given right though.
So in that way you disagree
with the Bill of Rights.
- No, I think the Bill
of Rights is important
and I know that--
- What if I said this to you?
What if I said that this
is inconsistent with
the New Zealand Bill of Rights,
the UN Human Rights Committee,
the European Court of Human Rights,
the Supreme Court of Canada,
the High Court of South Africa
and the High Court of Australia.
Would that be enough evidence for my case?
- No, it's not enough evidence.
- So the UN Human Rights Committee is.
- So Māori are,
in 2018, 11 times more likely
to be removed from the electoral roll.
- What, how?
- Because of the prison voting ban.
51% of the male prison
population are Māori.
- Fucking hell.
- It's even higher for
women, it's about 64%.
- And what is the percentage of Māori
in terms of general population.
- 15.
- Oh, cool.
- There's the impacts of colonisation,
which I see as living and
breathing in our prisons.
You remove an economic
base, you steal land,
you remove people's access
to culture and language
and identity of who we are.
Then the impact of that, flows
into disproportionate numbers
of my people going inside.
- Waitangi Tribunal wrote
an extremely salty report
basically being like,
"How did you guys fuck this up so badly?"
So they were like, it breaches
the Treaty principles of
tino rangatiratanga, active
protection and equity.
And that's particularly important because
Māori electoral participation
is a really massive part
of the Treaty principles
and how they play out today.
- Look, I'll be honest with you,
I'm not involved enough
in what's going on around
with Waitangi Tribunal and the settlements
and the work that's being done there.
- Don't you think as the
spokesperson for justice
where Māori are over-represented in prison
that it would be fairly
crucial to be up to date
on the recommendations
of the Waitangi Tribunal?
- So I listen very carefully
to what is happening
right through our criminal justice system.
Most prisoners coming
into the correction system
have never voted.
- So then don't you think,
one of the things we should be doing
for ensuring democracy
in New Zealand should be
how do we take a group of
people who aren't voting
and empower them to
engage with the system?
- Well, absolutely.
We should be delivering
maybe a civics programme
while prisoners are in prison, right?
It would be funny though, to
deliver a civics programme
and then say, "But not for you."
♪ Let them vote, it's
the right thing to do ♪
♪ Let them vote, yes,
we mean rapists too ♪
(laughs)
- Do you mean rapists as well?
- I mean it all.
I just think there's something
weird about hearing it
in a pop song.
- I think you got to imagine
more voices on it as well.
It's like, what kinds of
celebrities have we got?
- Yeah, who have we got?
- Jennifer Ward-Lealand
can do that bit (laughs).
- We actually feel it
sends a powerful message.
You have offended so badly
against the community,
that you're gonna lose some rights.
And when you come back and
you rejoin the community,
you're gonna get them back.
And maybe, just maybe, they
might reflect and think,
"Actually, there's a
value attached to that.
"Because I lost it when I was in prison.
"And I'm getting it back when I come out."
- (laughs) Fuck.
Sorry.
As someone who's lived that experience
to deny people their human rights
and justify that by saying,
"They're gonna value it more later,"
like it's just so ridiculous to me.
The voting system sets up like a cycle
of Māori not participating.
If you have a lot of
Māori locked up in prison,
when these people go back
to their communities,
you've got a number of
people within a community
who aren't voting.
They're also parents,
their kids are never gonna see them vote.
- 'Cause voting is a really social act.
All these like political
science professors
came into the Waitangi Tribunal hearings.
And were like, "Yeah, we know for sure,
"that when you take away
people's right to vote,
"you know, even if it's
just for a couple of years
"while they're in prison,
"the likelihood of them not voting
"for the rest of their
life is really high."
Partly because it's actually quite hard
to get back on the electoral roll
and partly because like
having been told like
"We don't give a shit
about what you think."
People are kind of like,
"Oh, well, fuck you, then."
- Surely the Waitangi Tribunal
saying something like this
is discriminatory, should ring
alarm bells in anyone's head.
- There's gonna be a very
positive view taken around
how we work together moving forward,
to be able to address the social issues
that are creating the harm.
- I wish that that was an
answer to the question.
- Well, that is my answer to the question
because are you going
to get me to look back
and fix all the problems from
the past, I can't do that.
What I can say is that we'll move forward.
- Racism doesn't happen in a bubble.
You have the founding
relationship of this country as we
know is Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
And then we've had active
policy and legislation
like the Māori seats representation,
like the Native Lands Act,
like the Tohunga
Suppression Act that said,
"OK, well you can't
actually practise Māori,
you know, ways of doing things."
These aren't like stories
that have no impact today.
These were active levers of legislation
like our Foreshore and Seabed Act.
Just ongoing, this is like
ongoing law has been used
as a patu against Māori.
And if we just pretend to
live in some bubble like,
"Oh, let's look to the
future," like it doesn't,
then that's just blind
and actively protecting
systemic privilege,
and I have no time for it.
- Are we going to turn around
because someone jumps up
and says, "Oh, you know,
we don't agree with
"prisoners not having the right to vote."
No, we're not.
- Not someone,
The Waitangi Tribunal.
- Well, we believe--
- And the high court.
- We believe that--
- And the UN Human Rights Commission.
And the Australian Supreme Court.
And the Canadian Supreme Court.
And the European Human Rights Commission.
- I know you're looking for loopholes
and you're trying to put up an argument.
- I mean, I think I've
already proved my point.
We believe that in the face
of overwhelming evidence,
that is a breach of human rights.
- So we just have to
agree to disagree on that.
- Yeah.
♪ Let them vote ♪
♪ Let them vote, this
mainly affects Māori ♪
♪ Let them vote, it's in
breach of the Treaty ♪
♪ And if you don't agree ♪
♪ You're a big fucking racist ♪
♪ Let them vote ♪
- It's really weird
because like in opposition
Stuart Nash called it
a nasty piece of law.
Jacinda Ardern said voting
is much more than a right.
And Grant Robertson said it was like
a disgraceful attack on democracy.
I think what they're struggling with
is how much political capital
they're willing to spend
on getting access to democracy for people
who are pretty marginalised
in our society.
And frankly, I think that's pretty shit.
- So like the three year limit,
what's the philosophy behind that?
- Well, we're just taking
the law back to what it was
pre-2010.
- But, why?
Why not go back to what
is the right thing?
- (laughs) Because like
we have these discussions,
cabinet makes collective decisions,
and we all stand by that decision.
- So could I safely
assume that any Labour MP
that stood up in parliament in opposition
saying that all prisoners
without limitation
should have the right to vote,
that they would likely
have held that position
through cabinet but have been outnumbered
and therefore we reach a compromise.
Like is that how the government works?
- Well, look, you know, you
win some and you lose some.
This is government.
- Is this a loss for you?
- I'm not gonna go into the details.
I think it's a balance between you know,
the extremes of the argument.
- When you talk about
the balance, you know,
I could point to the Waitangi
Tribunal, the supreme court,
who on the other side, am I pointing to
who doesn't want this?
- National.
- So you're balancing National
against the Waitangi Tribunal?
- I was being a bit...
- No, I mean, I love it.
But like when I'm putting
things on the scales,
what's going on the other
side, other than bad vibes?
- Well, there's, we
just think that this is
where it needs to sit at the moment.
- Isn't it the role of a
government to be diligent
as to which views they take into account.
- And this is the position
that we've landed on.
- OK.
- I thought when I got sentenced
and got put into prison,
that, "Fuck this is the lowest
my life could get," like,
my life was gonna be
over, I'd never get a job,
I'd never be accepted
back into normal society.
But then when my son
passed away at 13 years old
when I was in prison.
- I'm sorry,
I didn't know that happened, that's awful.
- Yeah, rock bottom.
I found was like a glass floor
and it just kept going lower and lower.
And just before,
we were getting locked
down in the unit one night,
the women came out and they
performed a women's haka,
Ka Panapana,
which is from the East
Coast, where I'm from.
And that meant, sorry, that
meant the world to me, you know,
I'll never forget that and
that they wanted to honour me
and that loss in that way.
So I want to represent these women
as best I can.
So I will be here speaking out
until people in prison are
given the right to vote.
♪ Life with no democracy,that
would feel like prison to me ♪
♪ And being in an actual prison ♪
♪ Would also feel quite prisony ♪
♪ So the life they're living,
that's double prison ♪
♪ It's up to us to make a difference ♪
♪ Voting rights, the Bill of Rights ♪
♪ Why they gotta be so inconsistent ♪
- It's perfect.
It's perfect.
I'm a social justice warrior.
And I've made merch already.
Do you want one of these?
- Yes.
- Cool 'cause I actually haven't got
any celebrities on board. (laughs loudly)
Everyone in the crew you get a T-shirt,
you get a T-shirt.
Joseph and Laura, you
guys get T-shirts too.
- [Joseph] Thanks.
- You get a T-shirt.
♪ Let them vote ♪
