Queensland: Law reform to cut prisoners’ voting rights slammed over potential human rights act breach
One state is making it harder for prisoners to vote, but an array of challenges - literacy, enrolment and a feeling of powerlessness - also stops engagement.
Thousands of people, including many Aboriginal Australians, have been disenfranchised by recent voting changes.
A Queensland law reform which strips voting rights for anyone sentenced to more than a year behind bars means more than 2,500 people can no longer cast ballots in the state.
Lawyers groups and civil society organisations are at odds with the government as to whether it breaches the state’s human rights act, with Attorney-General Deb Frecklington arguing it increases respect for the rule of law.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“Law breakers shouldn’t get to elect our law makers,” she said.
The Queensland Prisoners Legal Service says it means for the first time, more than half of Queensland’s prisoners will be ineligible to vote.
Ruimin Gao, the service’s acting director, said the new cohort of disenfranchised prisoners meant just 47 per cent of the almost 11,500 incarcerated Queenslanders could vote.
“Why this may be problematic under Queensland laws is that one-year terms of imprisonment may not necessarily equate to serious offences,” she told a Castan Centre for Human Rights Law talk on Tuesday.
The changes mean that a person convicted for unlawful assembly, carrying prohibited items in public or trespass could lose not just their liberty, but their right to vote.
Ms Gao said Queensland’s prison population had grown by 50 per cent in the last decade, with First Nations prisoners doubling, resulting in a disproportionate loss of voting rights.
Indigenous Australians comprise just five per cent of Queensland’s population but make up 41 per cent of its prisoners.
Voting rights for prisoners vary across state lines.
Queensland’s new one-year sentence cut-off is the same as NSW and WA, while prisoners serving up to three years can vote in Tasmania, the NT and federally.
Victoria bans prisoners serving jail terms of at least five years, while in SA and the ACT, no ban applies, making all prisoners eligible to vote.
Irrespective of jurisdiction, both enrolment and voting rates among eligible incarcerated voters are well below the general population.
Denham Sadler, chief reporter at Australia’s national prison newspaper About Time, said prisoners sometimes felt they were “used as political pawns” when witnessing tough on crime policies during election campaigns.
“The general disillusionment with the system, which is more prevalent often in these populations, contributes to people just not wanting to enrol and participate,” he said.
Tasmania’s ombudsman and custodial inspector Grant Davies said that above-average illiteracy rates also contributed to lower electorate participation and a higher informal vote.
“The AEC estimated that 57 per cent of eligible voters in the Tasmanian prison population were enrolled in June 2023 ... compared to approximately 97.7 per cent for Australia as a whole,” he said.
Mr Davies advocates for telephone voting and mobile polling centres to help bridge the divide.
