Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill

I move, That the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill be now read a second time. The bill restricts the display of gang insignia in central government and local government premises. It makes the display of gang insignia in government premises an offence and empowers the police to arrest the person who wears it and to seize the offending article. I would like to thank the chair and members of the Law and Order Committee for their work on the bill and for the amendments they have recommended to include every school and police building and their grounds and premises in New Zealand in the scope of this legislation.

Gangs are a scourge on society. Every political party in this Parliament recognises this. Gangs commit crime, peddle poisonous drugs to our children, and create victims in vulnerable communities. The gang patch is not a patriotic flag or a symbol of honour and respect; it is a symbol of intimidation by gang members who wear it. It announces to the world that they engage in criminal behaviour and that they are proud to intimidate law-abiding citizens.

The select committee heard from submitters throughout the country. I want to touch briefly on some of the submissions the committee heard, and I do hope members opposite will listen. The Murupara Area School made the forceful point that children at school do not need to be exposed to gang insignia: “they need to be protected from it.” Ōpōtiki District Council said that the bill sets the right boundary to reduce gang intimidation of our communities. Whakatāne District Council told the committee that the bill will help reduce levels of intimidation of the public. The Whitireia Community Law Centre, in Kris Faafoi’s electorate of Mana, spoke courageously about the chilling effects of gang violence and intimidation in Porirua. It has been at the coalface of protecting victims of crime from gang harassment. It said that members of the public have a right to visit Government premises without fear.

I call on Mr Faafoi, who received that submission in the committee, to listen to his own community, which is telling him to support this bill. You see, the Labour Party has said that it does not think the bill is necessary. Phil Goff talked boldly in the dying days of the last Government about banning gangs, but when it comes to supporting measures to do something important, Labour’s voice falls short. Phil Goff and Kris Faafoi sat on the select committee. They heard the submissions from the Kawerau District Council, which said: “A legislated ban will not only protect frontline staff and customers from the intimidation ... but will also prevent intimidation of ... staff who may otherwise have initiated and/or had to enforce such bans case by case.”

It is wrong to put the onus on Work and Income case officers or a school teacher to issue a trespass notice to individual members of the Mongrel Mob after they walk into a public building. We need to recognise the gang patch for what it is. It is an intention to intimidate. A blanket ban that criminalises this intimidating behaviour protects our hard-working public officials, as well as the citizens who use our public services.

I call on the Labour Party to put aside this rhetoric and listen to the evidence that was presented to the select committee. I call on it to get back in touch with the people on the front line. They deal with the consequences of gang violence, gang intimidation in vulnerable communities, and gang recruitment of young people. These communities are asking us to introduce these measures.

Across the world, from Britain to the United States to Australia, legislators are acknowledging the problems that gangs create and are empowering their law enforcement agencies to take action against them. Just last month Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced across the Tasman plans to crack down on gangs. Some of these measures, including the confiscation of proceeds of criminal gang activity, are already available in New Zealand. Australia realises the threats that gangs pose to society and, unlike other parties in this Parliament here in New Zealand, is prepared to take action.

Over the past 4½ years, putting the interests of victims of crime and law-abiding citizens first has been the guiding principle of this Government’s law and order policy. We have increased sentences for our worst offenders. We have improved victims’ rights. We have put 600 more police on to the front line. We have made it harder for offenders to get bail. We are giving the police the technology to spend more time on the beat and less time at their desks. Police patrols are up by 70 percent. We have improved technology to intercept gang communications and we have the powers to dismantle gang fortifications. These policies are successful, because we are now seeing the lowest levels of crime for some 24 years. Violent crime has dropped by 17 percent in the last 4 years, after steadily increasing under the previous Government.

There is not much about the Mongrel Mob that my electorate of Rotorua is proud of, but we were proud that the first ever seizure of assets under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act involved the Mongrel Mob in Maketū. Valentine Barclay Nicholas, the local chapter boss who had violent criminal convictions going back some 30 years, had all of his beachfront property seized. Nine cars and his treasured Harley-Davidson were confiscated from him. Just a few weeks ago, we announced the seizure of $150 million from criminals since the Government passed this very important legislation. For the first time ever, gangs are starting to hurt, and it is because we are arming our enforcement agencies with the right tools.

At the same time we must be aware that gangs will change and adapt. There are indications that gangs are becoming more sophisticated in their transportation and manufacture of drugs, and in how they transfer assets, how they intimidate people, and how they communicate with each other. But criminals are not always very smart. The police are now using their powers effectively to intercept communications between gang members—their phone calls, their text messages, and their emails can now be intercepted. For those criminal masterminds who freely parade their gang patches on the internet, it is not just their Facebook friends who now know what they are up to. As a Parliament we cannot stop technology, but we must be vigilant about how gangs are using technology and we must support the fine work the police do by giving them the tools to respond to this. We must constantly update these tools.

This bill will make it harder for gangs to intimidate New Zealanders. It is not a silver bullet to ban gangs in New Zealand, but it is another important tool to make law-abiding New Zealanders feel safe in their communities. I look forward to the House supporting this bill through to the Committee stage. Thank you.

I would like to thank the member for Rotorua for laying down that challenge to listen to the Whitireia Community Law Centre, which is a very good law centre in Porirua, and a law centre that I respect a lot. But I am not going to meet that challenge. I am going to throw another challenge back to the member here: if he really cares about what the Whitireia Community Law Centre thinks about intimidation in our community of Porirua, he should go and put a decent piece of legislation in this House that would actually be effective in doing something about the intimidation by gangs in our communities.

Do not bring this window-dressing piece of legislation, the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill, through to this House. Do not come into this House and challenge me about my constituents and a law centre that I have a duty to, and say that this bill is going to do something about it, because it is not. It is not going to make one bit of difference to gang intimidation in our communities. So, Mr McClay, if you want to come to Porirua, let us go and see the Whitireia Community Law Centre. Withdraw this bill from the House, and let us put something in front of this Parliament that is actually going to deal effectively with the issue of gang insignias and gang intimidation in our communities. If you are truthful about it, let us go and do that, and let us put a piece of decent legislation in front of this House.

It is funny, because the most passionate part of this bill that has come back from the Law and Order Committee actually comes from the Labour Party. We actually say: “Labour has no truck with gangs with a culture that promotes, encourages, facilitates, or tolerates criminal activity collectively or individually among its members.” Well, that is 100 percent right. The member who just took his seat, Todd McClay, was right. No party in this House has any tolerance for gangs, the intimidation that they do play in our communities, the criminal activity that they organise and carry out, and the grief that they create in our families and communities. But, as I said before, this bill goes nowhere near effectively dealing with the problem of gangs in our communities. It fails to deal with the substantial problem. It fails on the test of being clear and consistent to deal with gang problems and the questions of why people are joining gangs and why they commit crime. This bill does little or nothing.

It does succeed in a few things, though. It succeeds in terms of the illusion of tackling crime, which is one of the things that the National Party definitely wants to do. It succeeds in terms of maximum exposure for trying to look like it is doing something, with minimum effort—with minimum effort. It certainly succeeds in the National Party looking like it is doing something or being tough on something where there is going to be no practical difference.

This bill adds nothing to the powers that already exist, and that certainly is the point in case in my electorate of Mana. The member said that the select committee added police stations on to the list of Government premises that are covered under this bill. Mr McClay, I will take you out to Porirua right now and I will show you at the entrance to the police station, where it says: “No gang patches allowed in this station.” The police are already taking action to make sure there are no gang patches on their premises, so why do we need to bring this in? The legislation already exists—the legislation already exists—to make sure that any intimidatory behaviour is policed.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: The police love it. They think it’s fantastic.

But the problem here is that it is not being enforced. It is interesting that the Minister of Police is piping up, because the police, who are under huge pressure because of the budget cuts that this Government has brought in, cannot police things like this—they cannot police things like this. So the police Minister might want to think about why they have to bring in this piece of legislation and about the ability of the police to enforce the current laws.

I would have to say that the stretched police resources—we heard yesterday Radio New Zealand saying that there are 213 fewer front-line police staff on the front line right now than there were in June last year. The police Minister can say whatever she likes over here—but that is a Government that said it was going to get tough on law and order and beef up police numbers—but we know that there are 213 fewer police because of the budget pressure that this Government has put the police under. It is an absolute fact. The numbers coming from the police Minister’s own office, own department, are that there are fewer police officers on the front line. In black and white, this is a Government that says it backs police, but it does not, because there are fewer police officers on our front line at the moment.

What is more, because of the budget pressure that the Government has put the police under, there are fewer police trainees going through the Police College.

💬 Hon Anne Tolley: Rubbish.

There are.

💬 Hon Member: Table them now.

I will table the written parliamentary questions I get from—roughly, I think, in 2011 there were 450 trainees going through the Royal New Zealand Police College, then last year it was roughly 265. So half the number of police trainees went through the Police College in the previous year.

Let us look at the Ten One magazines at the moment. If you look at the Ten One magazines at the moment, at the back of the magazine it starts listing who has left the police force. I am sure the police officers who are in this House will see—Mark Mitchell will be watching that closely, and Chester Borrows—that a lot of their mates whom they know through long-time policing are starting to resign. The numbers are starting to creep up. So what is going on with the police at the moment when experienced officers like Grant Coward out of New Plymouth are saying: “OK, I have had enough of this place; I’m out of here.”? He had 20 years of policing experience, and this Government is letting experienced police officers go, all because that Minister is starting to cut the budgets.

The truth hurts; the truth hurts that Government. That is exactly what the truth is. Our police are stretched, and this is one of the plethora of things that they can no longer manage to keep an eye on. So why is the Government making these cuts, and why is it bringing in this window-dressing piece of legislation? Nothing good is going to come out of this piece of legislation.

💬 Hon Annette King: The Minister’s agitated. You’ve got her good.

She is—the truth hurts, unfortunately. Let me go back to the bill. Let me go back to the bill, because I did want to acknowledge some of the submitters, and the one that Mr McClay did mention, because I think they did make a very good submission. That was the Murupara Area School. It did make two points why it supported the bill. The first one was that children and students did not want to see gang insignias plastered around their school and that they needed to be protected from them, and also that the introduction of gang insignia into the school’s premises: “would create tensions and unnecessary negative behaviour and we want to discourage that type of behaviour from our school.”

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: It was a good submission.

It was a good submission. I will say that. It was a good submission. But the message that we sent to that school at the time, in terms of the Opposition members, was that there are laws already in place—

💬 Todd McClay: You weren’t there when they came in.

I beg your pardon?

💬 Todd McClay: Were you there when they came in?

I was there—were you there?

💬 Todd McClay: Yes, I was there.

OK, good. We were both there. Thanks for establishing that—thanks for establishing that. I was there. I listened to it. I actually knew one of the submitters. So—

💬 Todd McClay: You weren’t there when I submitted.

Just pipe down for a second. It was a very good submission in the fact that we said to the submitters that there are already laws that exist to make sure that their concerns are already catered for. This bill certainly does not do anything new, and will not be effective in making sure that the threat of gang intimidation will be stamped out in our communities.

There are also a number of anomalies in this bill about who can do what and where. One of them is that you can wear a gang patch on Government premises, but that does not apply to things that could also be considered offensive, like a swastika. I think that is a strange anomaly in this bill. I think most people would wonder why you can not get away with a gang patch, but something highly offensive, like a swastika, is not captured in the bill.

💬 Todd McClay: Put a Supplementary Order Paper, Kris.

Maybe we will put in a Supplementary Order Paper. We will probably put a few Supplementary Order Papers in, to get rid of most of the things in this bill.

There was also another anomaly—that you could be wearing a gang patch on a covered footpath that is operated by a council or owned by the Government, and that was a no-go area for anyone who was wearing a gang patch, but you could certainly be on an uncovered footpath and you would be fine being there. Another anomaly is that you could be at a bus station or a train station, and that could be a covered building or premises, but then if you were in an uncovered bus station or train station, well, that would be a go area. So there are holes in this piece of legislation, right through it, that mean that we on this side of the House cannot support it.

What the Government should do is take a good look at a decent piece of legislation, look at what some of the factors are, and at the reason why some of these youngsters are joining gangs—factors like youth unemployment, which is at a high level. Maybe, just for the benefit of the Minister of Police, the Government should look at some of the harm that her budget cuts have done to the police and are causing some of the issues, so that the laws that are currently in place are not being enforced. If this Government talks tough on law and order, it should back it up with a budget and some legislation to do that, but it has not.

We have just had to endure a 10-minute speech from Kris Faafoi, and only 2 minutes of it was devoted to the bill at hand, the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises, because I believe that Todd McClay, the author of this most excellent bill, has touched a really raw nerve with Mr Kris Faafoi. He is beside himself because he knows that the submission from the Whitireia Community Law Centre is absolutely right. This bill is making a huge contribution to tackling the problem of gangs in New Zealand. Mr Kris Faafoi knows it, and we have this submission from the law centre that absolutely backs this bill and backs Todd McClay’s position. It has utterly destroyed the reputation of Kris Faafoi in his electorate, and he is very, very worried—

💬 Hon Member: Not hard to do.

That is not hard to do. He is very worried about that because Kris Faafoi knows that anything that this Parliament can do to tackle the gang problem in New Zealand is a good thing.

The bill has been widely supported by the submitters who came to the Law and Order Committee, and it will do its bit to tackle the scourge of gangs in his electorate. That is what is biting and eating away at Kris Faafoi so much—he knows that that is the truth. Kris Faafoi knows that there will be people out there in Porirua, his electorate, who are looking at this debate today and who will be absolutely dismayed at the fact that their member of Parliament, who is meant to be representing their interests in this place and who should be supporting this bill, is finding himself in a policy no-man’s land where he is forced to espouse a position that in his heart he does not believe. In his heart he knows that it will be eroding the popularity that he enjoys a little bit of in Porirua, his electorate.

The Whitireia Community Law Centre said some things to us that were very compelling and were in support of Todd McClay’s bill. It had this to say, by way of a submission to us: “In the early 1970’s, the Mongrel Mob moved into the Porirua Area and since then they have had a strong presence in our community.” You see, these are people who really care about their community. “With high unemployment, increased availability to drugs and a rise in poverty the Mongrel Mob offers an alternative to young men who are often estranged from their families, products of broken homes and/or had long associations with Child Youth and Family.”

So this law centre cares about and represents vulnerable people in Kris Faafoi’s constituency. They are the ones who care about the constituency. They are supporting the bill. Why is Kris Faafoi not supporting a bill that does just a bit to help tackle the gang problem in New Zealand, which this Government is so focused on doing? In his 8-minute rant about the New Zealand police what Kris Faafoi did not say was that crime is dropping in New Zealand. Kris Faafoi ignored the inconvenient truth that there are more police on the streets in New Zealand and in Porirua, and that crime is dropping in his own constituency. What is eating him up so much about Todd McClay’s excellent bill is that he knows it is the right thing to do, but he cannot do a damn thing about it because he is being told to oppose it, for ideologically bereft reasons.

Labour members can find no real reason to oppose this bill, except that maybe, when somebody walks along an open walkway they are not covered by the bill, but when they are in an enclosed walkway they are covered. Well, come on! What kind of logic is that? I mean, we are going to hear that kind of logic from Phil Goff and that is not going to be very convincing. So poor old Kris Faafoi has found himself having to oppose this bill against the wishes of his own community. Man, it must suck to be him.

Debate interrupted.