Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill

In this debate on clause 7 I want to draw attention to some concerns, which have already been expressed in this debate, about the extent of the powers of arrest and seizure in relation to persons displaying gang insignia. As many Labour speakers have already made clear in this debate, we certainly do not support gangs. We think that gangs are a blight on our society. But this bill does little to deal with what gangs do; it simply deals with what gangs wear.

Clause 7—and, indeed, clause 8—is where we get into the question of what the police may do in terms of how they arrest people, and what they may do to seize and remove gang insignia. I think this raises some concerns about the way in which this clause is laid out, but what concerns me is the fact that this bill will be able to pass through the House because of the support of the ACT Party. I thought that the ACT Party members would be leaping to their feet when we came to clause 7, because this is the kind of freedom-type issue—the freedom to wear things, the freedom to move about the place; in this case, Wanganui—that I thought the ACT Party was founded on.

Rodney Hide, in the first reading of this bill, touched on some of the issues that are covered by clause 7, and I quote him: “Freedom is about the individual, and the measure of a free society is how we move to protect the minority from the majority. If the majority thinks that people wearing glasses should be locked up, that is not freedom or democracy;”. I certainly would share those thoughts as a man who wears glasses, but the point Rodney Hide was making was that freedoms and things that were important to the ACT Party were the kinds of reasons why he opposed this bill.

Remarkably, that is no longer the case. The ACT Party is now in favour of this bill, a bill that Rodney Hide called rubbish. We now know why the ACT Party is in favour of this bill and why its members appear to have traded away their beliefs and their principles about freedom. It is because they have done a deal about the “three strikes” bill. They have done a deal with National—or they are hoping to do a deal with National—to move the “three strikes” bill through the House. We have already seen National send it off to a select committee, so that was stage one of the deal. Rodney Hide told people who watched the Back Benchers show on TVNZ 7 that a deal had been done to allow ACT to support this bill. The last time we were here, I think, David Garrett told us the bill was nonsensical but that ACT would still support it. That is a remarkable position.

The principles about freedom and about the ability for people to move around the district where they live have now been completely ignored by the ACT Party. ACT members have simply moved on from that and have said that they will not stand up for their principles. They will not look at a clause like clause 7 and ask about issues of freedom and the movement of people, and they will not ask what the consequences are beyond Wanganui.

The really important point here is that because we are making this law on a district-by-district basis, we are, at the moment, looking at an issue like freedom of movement—an incredibly basic right—just in relation to Wanganui. We are not thinking about the wider consequences of making criminal law in this way. We are not thinking about what these things actually mean. We know that David Garrett does not much believe in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. He says that we have got too hung up on people’s rights. But even he could see that this particular part of the bill was flawed. But, no, ACT has decided that it will flip-flop and simply take a deal whereby it will vote for this bill in the hope that it will get its “three strikes” legislation through the House.

I can quote what Mr Hide told the Back Benchers show. He said: “We voted for it, this bill, because what it’s going to do is get ‘three strikes’ through this Parliament.” Those are Rodney Hide’s exact words. Shame on the ACT Party for turning its back on its principles! Sir Roger Douglas is here. He founded the ACT Party, and even though I disagreed virulently with what the party stood for, it at least I knew what it stood for. It stood for some principles about freedom—freedom of choice and freedom of association—and here we are debating clause 7—

💬 Paul Quinn: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Clause 7 is quite specific about matters to be addressed. We have had a wide-ranging dissertation about ACT’s principles. I ask that you bring the speaker to clause 7.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The member makes a valid point. The Committee stage is a clause by clause debate. It is about the nuts and bolts of a bill. Freedoms, important as they are, are things that one might want to bump up against once or twice in a speech, but this debate is about the nuts and bolts. This is not a part by part debate. It is a clause by clause debate, and it should be about the nuts and bolts of the wording of the clause. I invite the member to continue. He has 27 seconds.

I will make every one of them worthwhile, Mr Chair. Clause 7 is indeed about the powers of arrest and seizure in relation to persons displaying gang insignia. Important issues in terms of rights have been raised, and I would have expected the ACT Party members to be on their feet immediately. But, clearly, they have traded their principles away.

I am happy to stand and take a call on clause 7 of the Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill—a short call, hopefully, as we do not want to hold this up any more than it needs to be, but I want to follow on from my colleague Grant Robertson. This clause deals with “Powers of arrest and seizure in relation to persons displaying gang insignia”. This is an issue that the ACT Party should be very concerned about. This is really where the rubber hits the road when it comes to the freedoms that my colleague was talking about. All that I can deduce, as my colleague Chris Hipkins said when he referred to the ACT Party fitting the description of a criminal gang under this legislation, is that, just like a criminal gang, its members have all been pulled into line, they have all been beaten around the chops, and not one of them is allowed to say what he or she really thinks. The irony of that, perhaps, should not be lost on members.

This is a very important clause—

💬 Chris Hipkins: Why doesn’t Roger Douglas tell us what he thinks?

Well, he has only one speech and he gave it during the general debate, so we should not expect that he is going to stand up and take a call on this.

In relation to powers of arrest and seizure, clause 7(1) states: “A constable may, without warrant,—(a) arrest a person whom the constable has good cause to suspect” may be breaching the Act. This is a very extensive power to give to the police. Let us look at south-east Los Angeles. A lot of people have talked about different gangs, but what people perhaps do not know when they talk about the Crips and the Bloods is that in fact there are East Side Crips and West Side Crips. When we talk about displaying gang insignia and we go back to the definition of gang insignia in clause 4(1), we see that paragraph (a) states that gang insignia “means a sign, symbol, or representation commonly displayed to denote membership of, an affiliation with,” a gang. I tell members that Labour members have had a photo emailed through to us where the Minister for Social Development and Employment is doing the West Side Crips sign. This is a hand gesture that represents a criminal gang, the West Side Crips, and I want to know whether—

💬 Hon Member: A gang insignia!

—that gang insignia would be captured under the legislation. Obviously, a hand gesture that represented a criminal gang falls under the ambit of this legislation. It would be interesting to see that gang insignia being “destroyed or otherwise disposed of”—and it is gang insignia. It is the Minister for Social Development and Employment in the photo. I notice that the person who has emailed it to us has blurred out other faces to protect the innocent, but the Minister is clearly doing the West Side Crips insignia. This is very interesting and it comes to the heart of why Labour opposes this legislation. We are really getting into bad law when we have to have discussions of this nature, but they are very real discussions. The member in the chair, Chester Borrows, has said—

💬 Paul Quinn: What about the law of common sense?

What was that, sorry?

💬 Paul Quinn: What about the law of common sense?

The law of common sense! Mr Paul Quinn wants to lecture us all on the law of common sense. I look forward to his taking the next call so that he can, in his usual erudite way, lecture members on what he believes to be the law of common sense. I think we would all benefit greatly, I say to Mr Quinn, from his expertise displayed every day in this Chamber on that particular issue. We look forward to that greatly, I say to Mr Quinn.

One of the issues that we have raised—and we have raised it consistently—in terms of powers of arrest and seizure is what happens when a person is in an area and has no reasonable way of knowing that he or she is not allowed to wear gang insignia. The signs will go missing. They will be put in gang headquarters and probably student flats as well. They will be stolen. So someone walking into an area where a constable has powers of arrest and seizure for wearing gang insignia might not even know that he or she is breaking the law. Under this Act, those people have no defence. In fact, under section 5A(2), already agreed to by National and ACT, if a sign is not up and someone does not know he or she is breaking the law, it is not a defence for him or her to say “I didn’t realise this was a part of Wanganui I wasn’t allowed to be breaking this by-law in.”

How can the ACT Party support that provision? How can the ACT Party say that, when there are no signs telling people they are breaking the law, because they have been taken down and hung up in gang headquarters? Those signs are the only way, under this bill, that people can know they are breaking the law, unless they go down to the council and check every single by-law on arrival in Wanganui to make sure they are not breaching any of them during their visit. Of course, everyone does that when they go for a holiday in lovely Wanganui! How can the ACT Party support a provision of arrest and seizure for someone who has not even been told he or she is breaking the law?

All I can say—and I will come back to what my colleague Chris Hipkins said—is that the ACT Party is truly behaving like a gang on this bill. ACT members are not allowed to speak freely and they are not allowed to separate themselves out from the rest of their gang. If they do, they are given a bollocking.

I move, That the question be now put.