What was Winston's line? Why would you change the law for people who have broken it? Or something to that effect. And it was a very sensible question. Sadly, the man who asked it, has clearly been rolled by the Labour Party who, it goes without saying are soft on crime.

Prisoners can vote. Maybe Winston got the CGT and the farmers' ETS backdown in exchange for Labour getting this, who knows. But giving prisoners the vote is not what most middle New Zealanders would argue is part of a justice system that they endorse.

Part of the government stance is a series of courts that have decided the bill of rights is in play here. There are two issues here. One, courts interpret the law. If the law is flawed in the first place, all they can do is work with what the law says. If the Bill of Rights, in inference, gives criminals a series of rights, it doesn’t make the law good or sensible.

Two, what is it in the Bill of Rights that gives prisoners with a sentence of three years three months no rights on voting? And yet a crook with a sentence of two years nine months full rights? It doesn’t, of course.

And that’s before you get to the wide flexibility judges have in handing down sentences. Crimes of a far more serious nature, can get lenient sentences with mitigating circumstances, than a lesser crime with none.

Just who is it we want voting? Does the crime itself play no part in the right to vote? And what about the criminal who is sentenced to two years six months, yet this is his 20th sentence, this is a recidivist.

Which is one of the many ironies that drives the Andrew Little thinking on justice. He was, of course, the same bloke who wanted to scrap the three strikes law. He wants more people on parole. And he clearly believes that giving criminals voting rights is a pathway to a better future. Does he have one skerrick of evidence to back that up?

It's all based on the broadest of broad brush arguments that prison doesn’t work. Prison does work; when you're in prison you are not committing crime. Yes, the release part is an issue and the recidivism rate is too high. But it's hardly unique to us.

We labour under the false belief that we can rehab everyone . The simple truth, is we can't. And then we get to the widely held belief that the sort of people now able to exercise their vote will vote left.

Has Labour just given themselves a 2000 vote bump come September or October next year? Little described the law change nine years back, the taking away of the vote, as a nasty piece of work by the previous government. It wasn’t. It was recognition that when you offend, you pay a price, and rights are taken away: rights, liberties and privileges. Voting was, and still should be, one of them.