The colonists were not convicted and banished by the state.

However.

The NSW government passed legislation banning the emigration of several classes of worker in order to stymie the colony. In that sense many of the emigrants were outlaws.

Several persons were exiled from New Australia. They set up a colony of exiles. In that sense they were declared outlaw by the original colony, along the lines imagined by j_p_z.

finally, the story is entertaining enough to be excused absolute historical parallelism.

Until something specific about the particular interests of incarcerated people is an election issue, why does prisoner voting concern anyone. They’re likely to have broadly similar political leanings and issue-based concerns to the rest of us, unless and until a party comes up with a “release/behead all convicts” platform.

I hereby nominate Florida as the site for the first New Australian overseas penal colony. I’d much rather see a mini-Australia in Dade County than what’s there now.

Believe it or not, j_p_z, it has already been tried in Paraguay!

Can I recommend this story as a case study in doctrinaire self-righteous gone mad?

â??The peopleâ?? is undefined, State and Federal Parliament is given a right to define what an elector is or in fact how old you can be to vote or sit in Parlimament. It would be interesting to see if the Fed. Gov. could actually raise the limit, if this would or would not be struck down.

This would most definitely be struck down because by dint of long electoral practice persons between the ages of 18 and 21 have been deemed to be a significant group within the larger category of “the people”.

Let us say, however, that the Libs give the vote to 15 year olds, but after the next election the ALP rescinds it, the absence of any prolonged custom of suffrage for 15 year olds would likely make it legal for the next government to rescind the right.

Instead of worrying about which convicts can or cannot vote, I think Australia should simply follow its grand national tradition: send all the Oz convicts to some grim, distant overseas colony where, over a period of about a hundred fifty years or so, the penal colony will somehow gradually morph into a jolly, liberal, witty and pleasant, politically and culturally stable, rockin’-and-rollin’ replica of Australia itself. Then that Neo-Australia can send its own convicts off to yet another distant location, and the process will repeat itself until eventually the entire world has turned into Planet Straya, and all problems solved, except what to do about the moon colonies.

I hereby nominate Florida as the site for the first New Australian overseas penal colony. I’d much rather see a mini-Australia in Dade County than what’s there now.

Liam you seem to be saying even never to be released prisoners should be able to vote, I don’t understand the logic or emotion behind this. It would be very unpopular and assumes that violent criminals have a strong altruistic urge. Is that assumption valid!?

Liam, I think you have misrepresented me to an extent, paticularly in your first para. Children and the incarcerated do not have the same rights as a free adult. That never means that can be tortured. I never said that non-adults aren’t free, their parents or gaurdians exercise decision making for them.

Actually think the cost or benefit either way is very minor.

I don’t agree that prisoner’s fit into the “Governed” category. Free people are Governed, they are imprisoned. They cannot dissent in the same way you and I can. Laws affect them in a different way and they do not and should not get consent in how they are detained or how free people live their lives. Yes they have an interest once freed, but they had this interest before incarceration. Again, more generally, what value should society put on the future interests or altruism of (most of) the incarcerated?

Liam’s opinion better expresses how I feel about the current situation.

This can be easily justified from a starting proposition that only free adults have political civil rights.

Mark, nobody in Australia, not even prisoners, entirely lacks freedom or political civil rights. They cannot be tortured, kept indefinitely or incommunicado, punished for their expressed opinions, or sold.

Disenfranchisement is severe enough to add into the impact of incarceration without necessarily inflicting harm onto the prisoner.

I’d ask two questions: one, what do you hope to gain by it, and two, what about the impact on the Parliament which is elected by a reduced electorate?

The alternative is that prisoners are also â??the Governedâ??, and that Governments require their consent to form.

That’s my position exactly. And I argued way up the thread that as the State governs the lives of inmates to a vastly greater extent than it does the rest of us, it makes little sense to disenfranchise them.