Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

Through the chair, yes. A man is serving 2½ years in jail. He had gone to his ex-girlfriend’s home at 1.15 in the morning armed with a shortened .22 rifle and thrown furniture aside in the house. He had gone outside the unit, fired several shots into the air and then demanded to be let back in. His ex-girlfriend fled. He then started firing at other people who came to her aid. Yes, I would deny him the right to vote. The Shadow Minister of State seems to think it is proper that he have the right to vote. I do not. Yes, I would deny somebody who has been found to have 10,000 images and 250 videos of children who are being sexually abused the right to vote. Yes, I would deny him the right to vote because he got a two-year sentence.

I ask you, Special Minister of State, whether you are serious about valuing the right to vote in this country and about valuing those decisions given in the High Court. They showed the history of the provision of disenfranchisement for prisoners and showed that from 1902 to 1983 there was no change, and it was one year. It is the same time for members of parliament—for Mr Theophanous and for Mr Wright being disbarred from this parliament, if they had been successful.

The point is that we need to have some consistency and to recognise, as the High Court recognises, that the members of the parliament have the right to decide—given expressly in the Constitution—on what basis a person should be disenfranchised from the vote. All through those judgments, every last one of them, they are concerned that it is in proportionality—that the degree of seriousness that a person has to offend society in order to be disenfranchised must be serious indeed. If we cared to go through the media we would find many more reports of people who are entitled to vote—you say you want to uphold their right to vote—and I say they should be disenfranchised.

By having a one-year period, you could say that a misdemeanour or a lesser crime being committed is not a serious offence against the nation and therefore should not be disenfranchised. That is certainly not the position with the examples that I have put to you as upholding the proposition that we should lessen the period from three years to one year. Any decent Australian who listens to those arguments would be in agreement. It is proper to put a disenfranchisement provision in our law because we have made a decision that certain people have offended against the community to such a degree that they should not be allowed to have a vote counted in an election. By our lowering that period from three years to one year, we would bring about a just position. But to hear the argument that you said I am using this as a shallow false argument—

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