Attorney General Lara Giddings today released a letter from former Supreme Court Judge Justice Pierre Slicer questioning the Greens plan for judicial discretion over voting rights for prisoners.

Ms Giddings said the Greens had not thought through the consequences of their policy.

“Mr McKim came up with his plan on the spot, and without any thought as to what it actually meant in practice,” Ms Giddings said

The Greens initially released a policy committing to:

Legislate to give the fundamental democratic right to vote in elections to all people serving custodial sentences. (Tas Greens Justice Policy)

Mr McKim then claimed reporting of the policy was motivated by a News Ltd conspiracy:

It’s an incorrect beat-up by the Murdoch press, presumably to further the political direction of Rupert Murdoch, and it’s a disgrace (Nick McKim, AAP, 9/3/10)

Greens Leader Nick McKim then changed the policy to include the concept of judicial review of voting rights:

As part of that package we would give or seek to give judges the right to remove a prisoner’s right to vote where there has been a particularly heinous crime committed and we would also allow that to happen retrospectively. (Nick McKim, The Examiner, 14/3/10)

Finally, Mr McKim conceded his judicial review plan had not been ratified by the party as official Greens policy:

But Mr McKim did acknowledge that the Greens party website reference to giving the vote to all criminals did not exactly reflect the policy he stated last week.

Mr McKim said the website could not be changed until grassroots Greens members had voted on the policy change but he described his position requiring judges and magistrates to make individual assessments about the right to vote as further detail of the existing policy. (The Mercury, 16/3/10).

In his letter, Justice Slicer said that he felt strongly about the issue “because of its consequences for the judiciary which ought remain removed from this aspect our democratic system,” and he had no objections to the letter’s distribution.

Download:
4658_001.pdf
Lara Giddings, Attorney-General