Dear Friends With the NSW election happening this Saturday 22/3/03, we have been working on prisoners' involvement in the process. This has included getting prisoners enrolled, information to make their choice through parties' leaflets and how-to-votes, and a forum for politicians to address prisoners directly.
For those who don't know, our magazine Framed and Justice Action itself have been banned: "The Department of Corrective services does not recognise Justice Action as an advocate on correctional centre issues." This is an expression of the clampdown on community access felt throughout the system over the past few years. We have complaints before the Human Rights Commission, prisoners are pushing from the inside and the media is watching. As a strategy to get Framed into prisoners once again - 42 editions have been in over the years - we decided to create an election special which is protected constitutionally as part of the prisoners' right to vote. The Framed How-To-Vote edition has been printed and been distributed in hard copy form. It will be handed out on election day too. You can download a pdf from our homepage. www.justiceaction.org.au We received responses from 4 of the 6 parties we approached to make statements for the consideration of prisoners, families and community. Those were: Democrats, Greens, Liberals & Reform The Legal System. It includes a statement from the Australian Prisoners Union. We then thought about tactics for getting Framed How-to-Vote into prisons. We had the idea to get the machine rolling by having the parties get their own, official, registered How to Votes (HTVs) into the prisons. The Greens rang the Dept of Corrective Services (DCS) and asked what the procedure was. DCS replied that HTVs would not be allowed into the prisons! This is a brand new policy. In past elections there was no problem. But isn't this illegal? We rang John Wasson, the Electoral Commissioner, to ask if it was legal to deprive voters of information about the parties. Did the Commissioner know about this new policy? "No, and I couldn't care less. Corrective Services doesn't tell me how to run an election, and I don't tell them how to run a prison. We have no bill of rights in this country. They are prisoners first and voters second." Really, John? That's not what the Constitution says. This prison policy directly contradicts the freedom "necessary for the effective operation of the system of representative and responsible government provided for in the Constitution.." ((1997) 146 ALR 107-8) The freedom protects communication that enables voters to exercise a true choice with "an opportunity to gain an appreciation of the available alternatives" (Lange (1997) 189 CLR 520 560). It is generally believed that DCS knew about our plans from the Stateline TV program a few weeks ago, and changed their policy to try to cut us off. We then thought we would have more luck with getting a politician to go in person to speak to the prisoners through their Inmate Development Committees (IDCs) and hand out How To Votes. Guess what, the new policy applies to politicians speaking to prisoners as well. Politicians have been refused access in the last few days. The politicians were so shocked at this policy, that they picked up the campaign and corresponded with DCS on their own terms. DCS lied to them saying the refusal was old policy. But DCS's memory is short, and JA's archives are deep. We have found proof in our files that this battle was fought during the last election and we won. It culminated in a press release from DCS titled "Prisoners Helped To Vote In NSW Election". We now have sufficient proof to challenge the DCS policy in the courts. The votes of prisoners may well have been crucial to the result of some seats. This will certainly be a feature in the next issue of Framed. Stay tuned. Justice Action 65 Bellevue St, Glebe, NSW 2037, Australia P.O. Box 386, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: 61-9660 9111 fax: 61-9660 9100 Please log into the Justice Action Web site, designed and sponsored by Breakout Design & Print, exercising good corporate citizenship: http://www.justiceaction.org.au .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
