August 14, 2019
Murder justification for human rights and treaty breach
National's Māori spokesperson says the party got it right with a 2010 law change that took away the voting rights of all prisoners, and she wouldn't want to see it changed.
The Waitangi Tribunal has found the law change breaches the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi because of its disproportion impact on the number of Māori voters, and the Supreme Court has also found the amendment to the Electoral Act breached the Human Rights Act.
Jo Hayes says people lose a lot of rights when they are sentenced to prison.
"Everybody will say about the human rights thing and I'm hearing that but at the end of the day some of those prisoners are in there for heinous crimes against other humans, they took the right of other humans to live, for some of them, to continue on with their lives, they took that right away so I don't think they should be allowed to vote. If you go to prison, you forfeit that right," she says.
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