It is ironic that we are gearing up for another federal election while thousands of people in this country remain disenfranchised. In Australia—the so-called lucky country—not everyone has the right to vote. Not everyone gets to have a say in the policies that shape their lives or the political direction of the nation.
Prisoners serving sentences of three years or more are stripped of their voting rights under Australian law. This exclusion overwhelmingly affects Aboriginal people, poor people, and those criminalised by systemic injustice. These are the people most impacted by government policy, yet they are denied a say in shaping it. We are excluded from the very democracy that claims to represent all.
And let’s be clear: this is not about public safety. Many people in prison—especially those serving long sentences—are working. They pay taxes through work release programs and pre-release centres. They contribute to society. Yet, they cannot vote. They are expected to obey the laws of this country while being denied a say in how those laws are made.
This is not about justice; it is about disposability. It is about who is seen as worthy of participation and who is cast aside. It is about power—who gets to wield it, and who is deliberately silenced.
The disenfranchisement of incarcerated people in Australia has a long and deeply political history. When the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 was passed, it prohibited any prisoner serving a sentence of one year or longer from voting in federal elections. In 1983, the Commonwealth softened this restriction to exclude only those serving a sentence of five years or longer. In 1995, the reference to those serving a sentence of five years was changed to three. But in 2006, the Howard Government introduced a blanket ban, stripping all incarcerated people of their voting rights, regardless of their sentence length. Aunty Vickie Roach challenged this, and was successful with the High Court later overturning this complete ban in Roach v Electoral Commissioner (2007), ruling it unconstitutional because it violated the principle of representative democracy embedded in the Australian Constitution. However, the court still upheld the exclusion of those serving three years or more, a threshold that continues to silence thousands of voices today.
This is a deliberate act of power. People don’t care when prisoners are disenfranchised because we are treated as a disposable population. The right to vote is seen as settled. But it is not settled for us. And because it is the poor, the racialised, and the marginalised who remain locked out of full participation, society accepts this exclusion as natural and justified. Our rights are seen as negotiable. Our voices are treated as unimportant.
But we refuse to accept that.
As a National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, we refuse to be silent. No government can claim legitimacy while denying thousands of people their democratic rights. Full suffrage must mean full suffrage. Anything less is an indictment of the so-called democracy we live under.
This election, when politicians and voters debate the future of this country, we must ask: who is left out? Who is deliberately excluded? Because the community we live in, the community we work for, and the community we belong to are some of the most marginalised in this society, facing extreme disadvantages before, during, and after imprisonment.
- We are 10 times more likely to be homeless.
- More than half of us were unemployed before going to prison, and post-prison unemployment sits around 60%, with even worse statistics for Aboriginal people and women.
- Over 40% of us have a diagnosed mental health condition.
- Aboriginal women in prison are 100 times more likely than non-Indigenous women to have had a child removed by the child protection system.
These are not individual failings. These are deep structural inequalities that pipeline people into the criminal legal system and keep us locked in cycles of disadvantage. And yet, while governments create and maintain these inequalities, they deny those most impacted the right to vote on the policies that govern their lives.
A truly democratic nation would not accept this. Australia cannot claim to be one while maintaining laws that deliberately silence thousands of people, particularly Aboriginal people, from participating in elections. The question for voters and politicians alike is simple: do we believe in democracy for all, or only for those deemed worthy?
If we accept the latter, then we must admit the truth: our democracy is a lie.
By Tabitha Lean & Debbie Kilroy
This article was originally published on
https://www.croakey.org/federal-election-and-right-to-vote-of-people-in-prison/
