Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill

The chair of the Law and Order Committee, Jacqui Dean, who has just resumed her seat is a master of overstatement. She said that this is a bill that does “just a bit” to help tackle the gang problem in New Zealand. I regret to say that “just a bit” is a gross exaggeration. This Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill does precisely nothing—nothing. That is why Todd McClay, the mover of the bill, 2 minutes into his speech had to go off and talk about something else, and Jacqui Dean could not last the distance—she could not last the distance. They know in their hearts that this is a BS bill—a BS bill—that will do nothing to protect New Zealanders and nothing to damage the gang culture in this country.

I asked the officials at the select committee a very simple question. I asked: “Is there anything in this bill that the Government departments and schools can’t already do?”. Do you know what the answer to that was? “No.” There was nothing in this bill, according to the officials, that Ministers cannot do already. I say to Jacqui Dean that if there is a problem with patched gang members going into schools and Government departments now, every Minister in this House has the power, has the ability, to issue an instruction that no patched member will be allowed on school-grounds or in Government premises. That is the fact right now, so once again we will spend an hour of parliamentary time debating a piece of legislation that does precisely nothing—precisely nothing. [Interruption] That was the answer, Mark Mitchell, that the officials gave to the committee.

I put the question this way. I asked: “If a gang member goes into a Government department, can you remove that person, refuse to serve him, get rid of him?”. They said: “Yes.” I said: “What about if the gang member is loitering around the entrance to the school or the Government department, what can you do about it?”. They said: “We can’t do anything.” I said: “Is there anything in this legislation that deals with that situation?”. They said: “No.” So here we have got the irony. You have already got the power to do what this bill says they will do, within the Government offices. There is no power to deal with the gang member loitering outside, and this bill does absolutely nothing to deal with that problem.

I want to say, and put it absolutely and clearly on record, that I have—and I used the word in the minority report—no truck with a gang culture that encourages, promotes, facilitates, or even tolerates its members committing crime. Too many of our gangs in this country are organisations put together for the purpose of committing crime. But what I want in regard to the organised crime that gangs are involved in is not phoney legislation like this—phoney legislation that does nothing. I want real legislation that actually makes an impact on those gangs and their criminal behaviour.

💬 Ian McKelvie: You had 9 years to sort that out.

I stand in this House, Mr McKelvie, very proudly to say that I introduced, as Minister of Justice, a bill called the Proceeds of Crime Bill. Do you know what that legislation does, Mr McKelvie? It enables the courts to go in and to strip the assets—every asset—that a gang controls or owns if it cannot prove that those assets are the proceeds of other than criminal activity. That made a real difference. Let me read what the newspaper said about it at the time. Within 2 months of this coming in the police had seized $7.4 million worth of criminal assets from the gangs. A year later even the now National Minister of Justice and then Minister of Police was skiting about legislation that was not her legislation but was my legislation and Annette King’s legislation. She bragged that: “Among the assets seized were cash and bank accounts worth $13.5 million, 38 residential and commercial properties worth $15.5 million, nine lifestyle blocks and farms worth $8.4 million, and vehicles worth $600,000.”

That is the result of legislation that I introduced after going to the United Kingdom and seeing how effective its proceeds of crime legislation was. That is real legislation. That hurt the gangs where they could least tolerate the pain. They lost the proceeds of their criminal activity. They did not have the resources to promote their criminal organisations. That is real legislation; not phoney legislation like this, Mr McClay. You knew when you brought this legislation into the House that this bill does precisely nothing. It does nothing that Ministers and departments and schools are not already empowered to do. That is a disgrace because if we waste our time on phoney solutions, we are not spending our time on finding real solutions to real problems like organised criminal activity through gangs.

The other thing about gangs that is of concern to me is that gangs by their appearance and by their behaviour—and particularly their behaviour—can be intimidating. There is nobody in this House who has anything other than zero tolerance for intimidatory criminal behaviour. But we already have legislation on the books that deals with intimidatory behaviour. It is called the Summary Offences Act. Mark Mitchell will know this. I think he would be familiar with the sections from when he was with the police. Section 3 makes threatening behaviour imprisonable, as it should be. Section 21 makes intimidation imprisonable. What I say to this Government is: “Don’t worry about the superficial. Don’t put in statute laws that already exist, but do something to enforce the legislation you already have on the statute book. There should be no tolerance of intimidatory behaviour. The laws are in place. Enforce the laws.”

But I heard the National Government bragging before about police numbers. I will let National know that Annette King as Minister of Police added 1,000 additional police officers to our police force. That included 240 of the 600 that National is claiming now. But the worst thing was that news on Radio New Zealand yesterday, drawn to the attention of the House by Kris Faafoi: we have in the last year seen a drop in front-line police officers of 213. We want to deal with organised crime. You do not deal with it by cutting the number of front-line officers, and that is precisely what that National Government, complete with its former policemen, has actually allowed to happen.

💬 Mike Sabin: We’ve put more of them into surveillance. More of it’s undercover and surveillance work.

I will let the member Mr Sabin know that we had promises at the Law and Order Committee last year there would be no closure of police stations. What about Blockhouse Bay? What about Point Chevalier? What about downtown Auckland? What about the range of police bases that this National Government has closed? It comes to the House with phoney legislation that does nothing, while it cuts the police numbers and it closes the police stations.

It is worse than that. There are huge anomalies in this legislation. You know, under this legislation I can put on a greasy jacket with a swastika on it and walk into a school-ground, and nothing in this legislation touches me—nothing. I can wear a swastika, the most offensive and the most intimidating symbol that there is, into a school-ground and nothing in this legislation prevents me from doing that. If I put on a Headhunters patch I am covered by the legislation, but if I wear the swastika that is OK. If this legislation was really about intimidation and offensive behaviour, why would it not cover a symbol like the swastika?

Let us have another look at how this legislation is going to be enforced. You know, I can wear my patch at a bus stop, unless there is a shelter there. If there is a shelter the police can come and arrest me, but if there is a bus stop without a shelter they cannot. I could walk into a swimming pool with my patch on and I would be arrested, but I could walk on to a sports field and they could not touch me. I can walk down the footpath and if it is covered I might be breaking this law, and if it is not covered then I am not breaking it.

Even Mr McClay had to come in to the select committee to find out what was in and what was not in his bill. This legislation does not meet the basic requirements of good legislation: being clear and being consistent. My last point is that if I have got “Mongrel Mob” tattooed all over my face I am not breaking this legislation, but if it is in fine print on my jacket, I am. This bill does nothing. It is a nonsense, it is rubbish, and that is why we are opposing it. Do something real about the gangs. Stop pretending.

David Clendon.

💬 Mike Sabin: The Green Party will be in support of this.

Unfortunately, Mr Sabin, I am going to disappoint you, as I am sure I so often do. We have heard a lot already about some of the difficulties and the problems with the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill. To begin on a positive note, I would have to say that the bill appears to be well intentioned. It does identify a real problem. Essentially, that problem is one of intimidation. People feel intimidated by young men—and, indeed, not-so-young men—strutting around wearing gang patches, specifically inside public buildings and Government buildings, places where people who might be going around their legitimate business and where staff members have a right to feel protected and safe. This bill may be well intentioned. There is a real problem there. It is, by no means, a new problem. In fact, the problem is at least 40 years old. That is worth repeating: the problem of gangs has been around for something like 40 years. Unfortunately, we see nothing in this draft legislation that will take us anywhere near solving that problem or removing that problem of intimidation. It is not so much about what a person may or may not be wearing; it is about attitude, and it is about behaviour. This bill goes nowhere towards solving the deep-seated, real, underlying causes of those behaviours. It is very superficial and will not work, and we see no reason to support it.

The essence of the bill is found in clause 6, which makes a fairly straightforward statement. It says: “No person may display gang insignia at any time in Government premises.”, and anyone doing so is subject to up to a $2,000 fine. That seems like a pretty reasonable and a fairly straightforward proposition, but, unfortunately, it is far from it. This law, as has been pointed out by previous Labour speakers, borders on the absurd in the sense that it would, if not become unenforceable, put the police in a ridiculous situation of having to arrest somebody who is sitting quietly at a bus stop if they happen to be wearing a patch.

There are major issues about identifying what actually is gang insignia. Although we have heard a great deal from the Government benches about one submission, we have not heard so much about the very good and comprehensive submission, for example, from Steven Rollo, who presented the Law and Order Committee with a large number of images, photographs, of insignia and other forms of decoration, if you like, that might appear to look like insignia to the layperson. A person working in a Work and Income New Zealand office in Masterton or a Housing New Zealand office in Manukau would have no idea how to distinguish between gang insignia that is barred according to this legislation and the number of gangs listed in it, and a garment, a T-shirt, a cap, a badge, or a buckle, which one could buy and wear perfectly legally. It is incredibly difficult for people—for non-experts, if you like—for laypeople, including Government employees, to identify what is gang insignia and what is not. The likelihood of provoking responses from people, undesirable responses, if you challenge them for the garments they are wearing if they are legally wearing those garments is not worth the candle. There is simply not enough benefit in this bill. There is not sufficient in this bill.

💬 Mike Sabin: Well, if it’s a wrist strap or an innocuous bandana around the ankle, is it really a problem?

I invite Mr Sabin to look at Steven Rollo’s submission and look at the reality of the problem. The police officer who was there said the police have no problem identifying gang insignia. It is not an issue for the police. It is about public servants and members of the public who will have no idea what is gang insignia and what is not.

There is the notion of Government premises. Again, this has been traversed already; I will not dwell on it. But there is the absurdity of a person breaking the law by quite innocently wearing a patch while standing on a footpath under a verandah or sitting in a bus shelter. They can be subject to arrest, their vehicles can be searched, and so on. This is bad law. It makes no sense to write law that puts police in ridiculous situations where they are obliged to prosecute behaviour that is not intended to be covered in the legislation.

The list of unintended consequences of this bill could go on at some length. I have made the point that the problem of gangs has been with us for some time. I recommend to anybody with a genuine interest in gangs in New Zealand and an interest in solving the problem or the suite of problems around them that they have a read of this book recently published by Dr Jarrod Gilbert called Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand. It was the basis of a PhD thesis and is now converted into a very readable book, and I commend it to anybody who is genuinely interested in the problem of gangs and the solutions to gangs. It is an excellent social history, a political history, and it outlines from a person who has had very close relationships with gangs the nature of the problem.

There is a quotation in the book that I would like to read from a former member of this House, in fact. In the context of talking about gangs and gang violence, he said this: “The problems of gangs will not be solved by throwing a law at it.” I think that is something we should keep in our minds in our day-to-day work as MPs—problems cannot necessarily be solved by throwing a law at it. That former MP and former Minister went on to say that alienation and lack of job opportunities were two key drivers of this gang behaviour. I suspect the members of the Government will be wondering who this MP was, assuming he was some left-leaning—[Interruption] close, not quite—left liberal, but in fact it was Jim McLay in 1979. As Minister of Justice, he said: “The problems of gangs will not be solved by throwing a law at it.”

We are seeing, with this legislation, unfortunately, an attempt to throw a law at the problem. The law will simply bounce off. We can put our hands up to certain behaviours and say “thou shalt not”, but if we do not remove the underlying causes of that behaviour, we are simply dealing with symptoms, not causes, and, unfortunately, that is what this bill does.

I would like to quote another former politician also referenced in respect of this bill, who said: “Parliament must examine closely the social, economic, and community climate that breeds and fosters the kind of alienation and brutal desperation that we saw last weekend.” That was in 1979. It was Bill Rowling talking about an incident in Moerewa—an incredibly violent incident where a number of police officers and firefighters were seriously hurt as a result of gang violence. In 1979—

💬 Mark Mitchell: By gang members.

—by gang members. Already the problem then was 10 years old. Policemen were carried away seriously hurt. We have not resolved that problem. This legislation may be a worthy attempt but it does not get to the core of the issue. It makes no pretence of dealing with the underlying causes of gang violence and gang behaviours, which we want to drive out.

Robert Muldoon made some commentary on gangs in his day and sought to resolve the problem by creating work opportunities—the detached youth workers. Essentially, they were mostly former—and, indeed, existing—gang members who brought groups of gang members together, found work contracts for them, kept them busy, and gave them a source of income. They did not rely on drugs, intimidation, and other forms of offending. It was a rather enlightened approach, I have to say, and that is the sort of response we need.

We need to drill down to the real causes of offending. We need to look at what is actually going on here. This bill creates so many perverse incentives. I believe that having a particular gang name listed in the legislation, in the regulations, will become something of a moniker—it will be something gang members are proud of. They will actually behave in ways that will ensure that their gang insignia gets named in the legislation. It will be point of pride with them, which is an incredibly perverse incentive to put into law.

I would like to give the last word, in this speech at least, to Jarrod Gilbert, the author of this very good book. He says: “As long as New Zealand has communities faced with poor education, overcrowded housing, unemployment, family abuse, poverty, the country will always have gangs. Steam is the inevitable result of water being boiled and gangs are the clear result of certain social conditions.” This legislation, perhaps, takes us one step forward, but will, in fact, put us two steps back. It is not readily enforceable legislation. It does not address core issues. It does not address causes of behaviour. It does not address causes of offending. It has been described as window dressing and, sadly, we cannot see anything in it beyond that and will not be supporting the bill.

Debate interrupted.