Attack Paul Quinn for what he does not what he misheard

MP says sorry after rape debate confusion
National MP Paul Quinn last night offered an apology after saying on a televised discussion about rape that "there is a real issue with young ladies getting drunk".

Mr Quinn came under fire for apparently suggesting during the TVNZ7 Back Benches programme on Wednesday that short skirts and drunkenness contributed to rape.

He said last night that he misunderstood the question put to him after a presentation by a member of the "Slut Walk" movement, and thought he was answering a question about drunkenness.

I've been on backbenchers a couple of times and it is very loud so I'm not at all surprised that Paul misheard a question and replied with an answer that suggested he was insinuating that drunk women ask for rape, so I think the heat applied to Paul over this is very unfair, he clearly wasn't suggesting that drunk women ask to be raped.

If we want to rip this despicable right wing hardliner to pieces, let's attack him for what he does, not what he misheard.

So what has he done? This right wing maggot has personally set NZ human rights back a century by pushing his private members bill through to strip Prisoners serving less than 3 years their human right to vote, a move that puts us at odds with most of the developed world and offside with EU Human Rights.

Bill English described the hard on crime bullshit that Paul Quinn revels like a pig in shit over as a 'moral and fiscal failure' in last weeks budget notes. This utterly spiteful law Quinn has pushed to deny prisoners their right to vote is the final nail in the coffin to alienate prisoners even further from the franchise of democracy and serves no other master than hate, the very hate that Bill has described as a moral and fiscal failure.

No one has injected more spite and hate against our human rights record than the National Party and now they are reaping the moral and fiscal failure of allowing the Sensible Sentencing Trust to replace reason with warped anger, a blame that must be partially shared with the Labour Party who in their 9 years merely managed rednecks rather than challenge them when it comes to crime and punishment and has led us to becoming the second most incarcerated nation on the face of the planet.

As the ever brilliant Gordon Campbell points out in his work on denying Prisoners the right to vote...

The main argument against prisoners being allowed to vote is that their crime has cancelled out their right to be considered part of society. That argument, Sauve points out, lacks any value as a deterrent. “When people are committing a crime, most people are not thinking about the rights that they’re going to lose. They’re thinking about how they can avoid getting caught. If people already feel they don’t fit into society and that they’re rebelling against society – well, the better way of trying to encourage them to take part in society again is to encourage them actively, to vote – and to have a say within society.’

‘ The one thing I noticed after we got the right to vote was when every election came about, guys in the dining hall or the ranges were actually talking about politics. And not necessarily talking about the beefs they were in, or stuff like that.” Not everyone in prison does exercise their vote, he adds, just as not everyone does in the community at large – but in his experience, prisoners do talk about the elections.

Even so, getting sent to prison means that people lose their right to a whole range of rights and freedoms. Why should the right to vote be held up as something sacrosanct? “You go to prison for a punishment,” Sauve replies. “ That is your punishment : the loss of freedom of movement. It really is severe. When you’re locked in your cell at night and you are all alone, that’s when you realize you’re really doing time. That’s also when you think about how you want to fit back into the community. I wanted to be able to fit back in. I wanted to show that I could make it, that I could be something other than my crime…”

By contrast, the removal of the right to vote is – he agrees – a way of saying to the prisoner that he or she is literally, a non-person. Given that most prisoners will one day be returning to society, how could it possibly be in society’s self interest to promote such an attitude? “I don’t think it is,” Sauve replies. “ I know that a lot of people want revenge. They don’t necessarily want justice. ‘

So very ugly and so very petty.

Let's attack Quinn for the hateful shit he does, not what he misheard

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