Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill

We are all familiar with the adage that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Sadly, the drafting of this bill, the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill, and those people who are supporting this bill today are demonstrating their inability to learn from, indeed, quite recent history—10 or 15 years of history. The lessons have not been learnt. The key lesson that has evidently not been learnt is that one-off, narrowly focused pieces of legislation are not the solution to complex, multifaceted social problems, or to the manifestations of those problems. It is not a difficult proposition. It is one that has been demonstrated repeatedly, even as recently as since the early and mid-1990s, that one-off legislative fixes will not be sufficient to deal with complex social problems. Mr Mitchell has admitted that this is not a silver bullet. Sadly, it is not any sort of a bullet. At best it is a blunt instrument. National members might get some superficial satisfaction, or perhaps even a degree of short-term political advantage, from seeing one or two gang members arrested for either deliberately or accidentally contravening this law, because given the farcical nature of some of the provisions of this law it would actually be quite easy to accidentally contravene this law. I support Mr Goff’s comments about the lack of consistency, the lack of clarity, in it.

But to return to the key point, we need to look at long-term solutions. We need to deal with the root causes of crime and offending, and we need to look at the drivers of why we have gangs, why gangs are manifesting in our communities, and why they are so embedded in some communities. I see it close up and personal in Northland, Kaikohe, Moerewa, and Kaitāia. They are small towns in Northland where gangs are prevalent and where they are influential—very often in a negative way, although not always. We do need to address the issues and the problems associated with their behaviours. This bill does not even begin to go anywhere near addressing the causes of the offending and of the existence of these organisations.

A whole raft of legislation went through this House in the early to mid-1990s, driven by a moral panic that largely came out of this debate about who is hard, who is tough on crime, and who is soft on crime. I have to say that sitting here watching that interchange of points of order recently about who is tough on crime, soft on crime, and who is a petal—really, we need to get beyond that. Tough on crime, soft on crime? How about we be smart on crime? Let us think about smart solutions—21st century, real solutions to crime, to the problems of gangs in our communities, and to the social behaviours that come alongside that. The lesson of the 1990s, which clearly has not been learnt by some members of this House, is that legislative solutions seldom generate any measurable, positive outcomes. We had law passed about criminal association. We had law that enabled local authorities and police to knock down gang fortifications. We saw changes to the liquor law. None of these had any measurable or discernible effect on the long-term, deeply seated, complex problems about gang membership, gangs in our communities, and the criminal offending associated with those problems. Why do we not actually want to address the real underlying problems? Mr Faafoi has touched on some of those, which are unemployment, social disadvantage, and alienation.

I have made this recommendation in an earlier speech on this bill, but I would again recommend that members of the Government parties, particularly, get hold of a book called Patched by Jarrod Gilbert, which presents evidence and presents a social history of gangs in New Zealand. It points out that gangs in some form or another have been around at least since the 1950s. Typically, they were groups of young men, alienated and rebellious. They joined a gang, got themselves into mischief and trouble for a few years, and then essentially grew out of it. They would go and get themselves a job, they would marry, and they would get a house. The patched gangs that are now the cause or the target of this bill are an unusual phenomenon, in that rather than the members of those gangs joining for a few years and then thinking better of it, discovering there would be better ways to spend their lives than bouncing in and out of trouble with the police and jail, and getting on with life in a much more communally acceptable way, the difference for those gang members is, of course, that the 1980s—through the misguided new-right policies of the 1980s—entrenched unemployment.

We are now seeing second and third-generation unemployment and second and third-generation gang membership. It is not hard to join the dots, to look at the causal links between those—the attack on the structure and the fabric of New Zealand society as it was prior to the new-right so-called revolution of the 1990s and carried on into the 2000s, and the fact that we have now got these embedded memberships, the multigenerational memberships, of gangs. That is a very, very difficult problem to overcome and to address. We will not do it by little bits of one-off legislation that put some very limited constraints on the gang movements and behaviours of members of gangs.

I would almost guarantee, I would almost be willing to wager, that there will be legal challenges to this legislation once it is passed. It will be exactly as we saw in the Whanganui gang patch legislation, where members of Hell’s Angels deliberately walked around outside the police station, flaunting gang insignia. They got themselves arrested and not only went to court but actually won the court case, which gave great comfort and added to the mana of gangs, rather than diminishing it or taking away from it. Again, I think there is a lesson there that has not been learnt. I will wager that there will be legal challenges to this bill, and probably successful legal challenges, based on all sorts of interesting legal propositions that we have yet to see or hear.

I have to say, this very day at lunchtime, just next door in the Grand Hall, there was a launch of the Justice Coalition, which is a cluster of progressive NGOs around the justice sector that have come together with common cause to endeavour to offer good solutions to the problems of crime, offending, imprisonment, and all of the other bundle of justice issues, if you like. I must say in passing that the Minister of Corrections was there, and she announced a very positive policy to have an education strategy for every single inmate in our prisons. I commend the Minister on that. We will look with interest to ensure that the policy as it is on paper is reinforced with resources and funding to make it succeed. That is an example, actually, of a bit of joined-up thinking about criminal offending and prisons, and some of the solutions to them. It is a mile away from the sort of nonsense that we are seeing in the bill we are debating today.

I was interested to see how few National MPs were present at that launch. In fact, other than the Minister, I do not believe that I saw one. I did see Labour members there, and Green members were present. It is unfortunate that some of the Government members supporting this bill were not at that launch. I recommend to them that they have a look and learn a little about the Justice Coalition, which bases its operations, among other things, on having a vision about what sort of a New Zealand we want. It has an idea that any legislation or policy should have measurable outcomes. It suggests that justice legislation and justice policy should be evidence-based. I would challenge anybody to put this piece of legislation through that filter. Is it visionary? Will there be measurable outcomes from it? Is it evidence-based? I would suggest that it would fail on all of those measures. It would fail on that filtering, if you like.

Tough on crime, soft on crime—let us be smart on crime. Let us look for real solutions that we know will work. They are complex and they are multifaceted. They will require us to spend money differently. We do not have to spend more money on justice; we just need to spend it differently. We need to engage with the communities. In the drafting of this bill, did anybody go out and talk to the gang members about their behaviours, and ask them what it would take for them to not behave in these ways? Believe it or not, there are some intelligent thinkers in the gangs. Some of the older gang members have turned a corner. They realise the error of their ways. They have joined things like the White Ribbon campaign and some of the anti-violence and anti-drug movements. There is hope by working collaboratively and engaging with these offenders and former offenders, rather than pretending that these little one-off pieces of legislation will have any positive effect or any positive outcome at all. It will chew up police time. No doubt it will lead to a few arrests. It will lead to legal challenges. Ultimately, it will even lead to enhancing the mana of the gangs, as I have said. It will become a point of pride to have one’s gang named in this legislation. This is a very poor piece of legislation. The Greens will continue to oppose it.

I do not know what it is about the Greens, but every time they speak in this House, it reminds me of that song that goes: “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way”, because, clearly, they have been here for 20-odd years and have never had to put their heads on the block.

I just want to comment on the fact that this bill, the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill, really has been a fascinating study of the legislative process in action. No legislation in this House will ever be perfect. No legislation that can ever be passed will be perfect. No legislation has ever solved all the problems in their entirety. This piece of work is no exception. But contrary to the protestations of Labour, and clearly now David Clendon, it will make a difference. It will put some curbs on the activities of gangs. It will give our police force another tool in their armoury. It will give some peace of mind to those people working on the front line of our public services. It will give them some protection from intimidation—the intimidation caused when a patched gang member leans on the counter, demanding service. I have seen it. I have seen it in public sector buildings, I have seen it in councils, and it is not pleasant. The bill will enable our schools to ban patches from their grounds.

The gang insignia bill was introduced to this House from the members’ ballot by the now Hon Todd McClay in response to issues that were affecting his electorate. Todd McClay then became a Minister and passed the bill to one of our ex-coppers, Mark Mitchell. Who better to steer this bill through the House? Who knows better than an ex-copper the damage these gangs cause to our communities?

This bill falls clearly into the orbit of the Law and Order Committee, and further complements the great result that this Government has achieved through Ministers Tolley, Collins, and Borrows, and, formerly, Simon Power. The Law and Order Committee, by select committee standards I have witnessed in this House, operates pretty well. It operates under a very good chair and an equally good deputy chair, and, frankly, we would normally have a very good relationship with the other members of that select committee as well. We generally do not cause Phil Goff to have to shout quite as loudly as he was shouting in this House earlier in the day.

The results of the law and order policies of this Government have been spectacular. There has been a 30 percent drop in youth crime, a fantastic improvement in police resources through the use of technology on the beat—up to, in fact, Feilding police station having a saving of 20 percent of the total force in Feilding’s time. That has happened in about 8 months.

💬 Kris Faafoi: That’s because you’ve got fewer cops.

We listen to Mr Faafoi bleating on about the reduction in the police budget, but those figures make a nonsense of that. We have also seen—

💬 Kris Faafoi: I’ll table them, then. They’re the Minister’s figures.

You are most certainly welcome to table them. We have also seen vastly improved rehabilitation and retraining of prisoners, which is making a big difference to the future of those people. These initiatives and achievements complement the further introduction of legislation in this area, including the Bail Amendment Bill, the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill, the Administration of Community Sentences and Orders Bill, the Corrections Amendment Bill, and many more. The gang insignia bill sits right alongside those as another tool in the tool box of the New Zealand Police.

Crime is an insidious thing. It can have a dramatic effect on a victim. Equally, it can go unnoticed for years. Crime in our communities is often inflicted on the most vulnerable in our society. You see, criminals are bullies. They do not pick on those who can fight back. Does that not remind you or me—in fact, apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not trying to remind you. Does that not remind us of a gang member? They are bullies, and that is what they make their livelihoods from. That is what they spend their lives doing—bullying people.

I just want to very briefly comment on Mr Goff’s comments on this bill, because I cannot believe that someone with his vast experience of inept lawmaking can now criticise a Government member for bringing a bill to this House and say it is inept lawmaking. It is inevitable in the course of making any law that you are going to have inept lawmakers; people whose law does not achieve what it initially set out to do. I think that everyone who brings legislation or proposals to this House, particularly members who bring them through the members’ bills process, bring them here with the best intentions. I do not think it is our business to necessarily pull those people apart for the manner in which they do that.

Intimidating public servants, people who work for our Government and cannot dodge people, is not a pleasant way to be. In the private sector we can do what we want with those people. We can deal with them as we like. We can ban them. We can trespass them. We do not have to serve them. In the public sector our public servants cannot do that. At Work and Income, at post offices, at hospitals, and at schools they have got to look after those people.

💬 Kris Faafoi: You can trespass them.

You may be able to trespass them but you need to look after those people, because that is what we are here for. That is what Governments are for. So bill this will give public servants a little bit of an opportunity to manage that a bit better.

I want to briefly address Mr Faafoi’s Pacific unemployment issue. In Marton, which is a town in my electorate, I have about 30 to 40 Samoan families a year coming into this country to work in the meat company just down the road. That happens every year, so I fail to understand why, in places like the Rangitīkei electorate, large numbers of Pacific Islanders are coming into the country to work, and at the other end we have them dropping out of the workforce. That is something we need to address.

Before I finish I also want to comment on the latest edition of the Listener, which I notice is red and has got “risk” written all over it. I suspect that is where we are at. Thank you.

It is with a great deal of satisfaction that I rise to stand in support of this Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill. New Zealand First is proud to support this bill. We are proud to stand in support of this fine bill, which is about to become a splendid law. We have been here from the outset, from the beginning, when Mr McClay introduced his member’s bill; through its first and second readings; through the Committee stage, when we were able to contribute constructively to the bill and when the Government most generously chose to embrace the spirit of cooperation that New Zealand First brought to it by supporting Supplementary Order Paper 253, which was in my name; through the handover, when the newly promoted Minister McClay passed the baton to Mr Mitchell, who, in turn, has ably shepherded the bill through to its conclusion—and so we arrive. We arrive at the culmination of this process of lawmaking by which an inspired thought has given life, when one man’s righteous indignation at a perceived injustice grows from the spark of contemplation to become something tangible, and when it grows to become the law of the land.

This law will be a tool, a weapon, in the hands of our police, and a device by which they may remove the scourge of gangs and of gang members from the eye and the presence of decent people and decent society. That splinter of one man’s mind’s eye has grown to be a shaft of light breaking through the darkness that is the gangs and the gang culture in this country, growing to become a sabre of justice in the hands of our law enforcement officers, and a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the gangs and their filthy and abhorrent lives and behaviour.

The passing of this bill marks the ending of one process and the beginning of another. We are witness, we here in this House are witness, to the dawn of a new time. This bill and its passing into law mark the beginning of the end for the gangs and the gang culture in New Zealand. Through this bill, and through the others that will follow—the laws that are yet to come but which will follow in the wake of the trail that this bill has blazed—we will see the gangs expunged from the fabric of New Zealand life and society. We stand in the dawning of the light of a new day. The darkness is ending. The gangs should be afraid. They should be very afraid. We, the decent people of New Zealand, are claiming back the night. We are claiming back the streets. We are claiming back the rule of law. The gangs will be consigned to history and they will be driven back. They will be forced to crawl or scuttle or slither back under the rocks and the rotting logs where they belong, back to the shadows from whence they came. That shadow will be lifted. That veil of darkness that the gangs have held over New Zealand for these past 40 years will be torn away by this bill and by the others that will follow in its wake.

I think it is fitting for us to remember to pay tribute to those who have lived and who continue to live under that shadow. The dark criminality of the gangs has been a curse on too many people’s lives. Too many good people have been defiled and despoiled by the evil filth of gangs, gang members, gang culture, and gang crime. In the mean streets of too many of our cities and towns, there are people—good, ordinary citizens and families—living in fear of the gangs and their intimidation, their threats, both real and implied, their presence, and the very real power over people, denoted by the displaying of the patch. Well, no longer. This bill will put an end to that intimidation. In time it will put an end to that threat, an end to the threat against the safety of good, ordinary people, and an end to the threat against the safety of our police officers, who serve and protect us all.

Mr Mitchell, himself a former police officer, and others from the Government side of the House have reminded us more than once of what the gang patch stands for. They have not let us forget that the patch is the mark of a criminal, that its awarding denotes the commission of the vilest of crimes against innocent people—robbery, rape, and murder—committed for their own sake as much as for personal gain, committed to demonstrate to their fellow lowlifes and reprobates that they are worthy of the patch, which until now they have worn as a badge of honour but which will now become a badge of shame.

We owe a great deal to the brave and honourable men and women who wear the blue uniform. This bill and the law that it is about to become will give them a new and powerful tool with which to remove the ugly menace of the gangs from our cities, towns, and streets; to remove their presence and their intimidation; and to bring an end to the drugs, the crime, and the violence that are visited upon good people by the evil that is the gangs. The police in New Zealand welcome this bill. They welcome this new tool, and we in New Zealand First are delighted to have been able to play a hand in helping to craft it and in helping to ensure its passage through this House and into law.

So we come to an end and to a beginning. I look forward to the grim satisfaction that I am sure we will all feel—all of us who stand in support of this bill, and, I suspect, more than a few of those who profess not to—when the first gang patch to be confiscated under this new law is consigned to its doom in a police incinerator. May that flame, may the fire of a burning gang patch, serve as a beacon—the flame of justice casting aside the forces of darkness with the light of civilisation. May that light lift the shadow of the gangs from the lives of all the good and innocent people who have lived and who continue to live under their menace. I look forward to that day.

In closing, then, I say to the members of this House that we in New Zealand First are proud to support this bill. We are proud to stand with all those who hold the rights of good and innocent people up above those of criminals and lowlifes. This is a fine bill and it will be a fine law. We welcome it, we support it, and we commend it to the House. Thank you.

I do not know quite how to follow that contribution, that fine Churchillian contribution, by the member opposite, Richard Prosser, delivered with such passion. But is that not what this House is all about? Is that not what this bill is all about? Is not this Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill about New Zealand society caring enough to do something about a part of our society that causes unending problems and heartache for some people? So I want to congratulate Richard Prosser. He has entertained us. It was a wonderful speech, but the point is that he is absolutely right. I am so pleased that New Zealand First is supporting the bill in the name of Mark Mitchell, because it is a bill that deserves to be supported.

The board of trustees from Murupara Area School came to the Law and Order Committee and made some very strong points to us. What they said was that they loved their school as parents and trustees and community members. They loved their school, they loved their children, and they loved their community. They wanted nothing more for their community than for their children to be able to go to school, enjoy their time at school, learn, and then get home safely. That is what we all want for our children. The problem is that in Murupara they could not do that. Why? Because of the influence of the gangs in the community. That influence was reaching not just through the streets of the town but right into the school, right into the playground, and they wanted to put a stop to it. It is as simple as that. That community, that school community, wanted to put a stop to the intimidation of gangs in their community, so they came to our committee, the Law and Order Committee, in support of this bill. They came to our Law and Order Committee in support of giving police the power to seize without warrant gang patches of gang members and then, if the gang members were to be found guilty, to have the patches destroyed. The police support this bill because they know—they know—that the gang patch is the badge of honour for these people. Taking away that badge of honour leaves them with what? It leaves them with nothing. And that is where we should be with these people in New Zealand.

What has been so terribly difficult for the Labour members opposite is that they have found themselves in a trap of having to oppose everything just because they are the Opposition. Members like Phil Goff and Kris Faafoi have found themselves in the position of having to oppose something that they know fundamentally is a good measure and is welcomed throughout sectors like the police and like communities that really know and understand the impact that gangs have on them. Labour members have found themselves in this awkward position of having to find reasons to oppose the bill. So we have had Phil Goff canvassing that perhaps the bill is ridiculous because you could walk along a walkway but what if it has a roof? Well, OK, let us just tighten up the definition in the bill. That is no reason to oppose it. It must have been very awkward for Kris Faafoi when members of the Whitireia Community Law Centre from Porirua came to the committee in support of this bill for very good reason. It must have been very difficult for Kris Faafoi to keep opposing this bill, when his own constituents—his own constituents, his own community—came to the Law and Order Committee in support of this bill.

I am proud of this bill. I think Todd McClay did exactly the right thing in introducing this bill to the House. I think the bill has been well taken up by his colleague Mark Mitchell, who is also a man who understands fundamentally that the measures in this bill will go a long way to addressing the problem of gangs in New Zealand. Of course it is not going to fix the problem—Richard Prosser wants it to, we all want it to, and good on him for expressing that thought—but it will send a message in the strongest terms to the gangs of New Zealand that enough is enough and that this Parliament takes the issue seriously. I commend the bill to the House.

I rise to take a call on this third reading of the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill. I want to say of the member responsible for this bill, Mark Mitchell, that he has very quickly in his time in this House—the same time as I have spent in this House—become one of the respected and sensible members of the National Party. The National Party does not have many, so it has got to hang on to the ones it has got. But the truth is that he has been given a hospital pass on this bill, because deep in his heart of hearts, I know, I am confident, he knows that this is a half measure, it is a non-measure, and it will not achieve half the things that some of the speakers on the other side of the House have claimed of it. The last speaker, Jacqui Dean, claimed all sorts of things that this bill was going to do, and that we just had to tweak a bit here and tweak a bit there. Well, we are past the tweaking stage. This is it. This is the bill. The time of this House is being called upon to pass this bill in its current form—the current meaningless, ineffective, hopeless form that it is in. It simply will not do those things.

I could not go further without acknowledging the words of Richard Prosser, whose torch is obviously burning very brightly tonight. His dream, clearly, is of dancing with Anne Tolley around the beacons of hope for peace and good order, and dancing on the crushed vehicles, the stomping softened only by the leather obtained from the seized patches of gang members. Well, we can all have that dream. We have those sorts of dreams every now and again—or at least some people do. I want to put out to Mr Prosser, however, that a burka is not a gang patch. So the bill is not going to fulfil some of his personal ambitions in that regard.

The truth about this bill is that those in control of Government premises can already take action, meaningful action, and there is ample evidence before the House and that went before the Law and Order Committee to suggest that. The last time I spoke on this bill, in the Committee stage, I adduced as evidence a copy of that day’s New Zealand Herald, that august publication. It had the wit at that time to publish a photograph of the Napier District Court, and in that photograph of the Napier District Court entrance was a little sign that said “No gang patches in this building”. Here it was, a Government building, a little sign saying “No gang patches in this building”, and the report said, amongst other things, that there were no problems with gangs in that building. It was all done without the benefit of this legislation.

Then we had the evidence of the Murupara Area School, which people have spoken so fondly of in the debate today. It came and spoke in support of the bill, but the truth is that when you look at the facts of its situation, it supports the opposite. The school has demonstrated that it can banish gangs and gang patches and leather jackets from its premises without this bill. It did it without the bill. Through good leadership and a good, strong community, the school demonstrated that it could take control of its Government premises without meaningless legislation like this. It can create the culture, it can set the rules, it can make the standards, it can do it—and it did it. The school community, the teachers in it, the principal, and, most important, the children in it have now taken control of their place of learning. It is a good, healthy place to be, and they did it all without this legislation. So the truth is that this legislation will do nothing. This legislation will do nothing.

Let us be clear too about what it does not cover, because that is just as important. It will not cover organisations like the National Front.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Well, what an interesting interposition that was. The fascinating thing was that tonight we saw, as we see most weeknight evenings, the TV3 news broadcast, and it had two interesting stories on it. One was about this bill, and the other was about a cartoon character called the Burka Avenger. One of the stories was full of facts and was fascinating and interesting; the other was a complete work of fiction. It will stun this House to know that the story on 3 News tonight that was a complete work of fiction was the story about this bill. What it did was it gave the impression to any member of the viewing public that this bill is going to somehow clean the streets of New Zealand of gang members and those wearing gang patches. We know, and anyone who has taken a moment to read the bill will know, that it will do nothing of the sort.

I might say—bearing in mind that I began my contribution tonight mentioning the burka—that I was very impressed with the Burka Avenger. If we could have the Burka Avenger, the avenging Islamic woman, coming down and cleaning up evil wrongdoers and all the rest of it, she would have a very important role to play in this country, unlike this bill—unlike this bill.

The point I was making at the time of the dinner break was that there are plenty of things that this bill will not do. For one thing, there are nasty, insidious gangs that this bill will not go near. One of them is the National Front. Its members wear a uniform, all right. They wear attachments and wear their hair in certain styles—the skinhead. They wear tattoos. They wear dark clothing. They intimidate, they stand over, and they do evil things, but this bill will not do anything about them, and these people will continue to turn up in public places and they will do their intimidation. They will do their standover stuff. And all the bleating from the members opposite will not make a tinker’s cuss of difference to organisations like that.

The reality about the National Party members is that they come to this House, they puff out their chests, they sound tough, they talk tough, but they do not know what they are doing, and they do not care. They do not care about the vast majority of New Zealanders who want to go about their workaday lives in a safe, peaceful community. They want window dressing. They do window dressing. Whether it is the streets of Feilding or whether it is the streets of the far north, they will do the window dressing. That will get them a few points in the next poll, but it will not fix the real problems of New Zealand.

So what about particular areas that this bill covers? Well, it says that it covers Government premises. What about kids’ parks? What about the beach? What about those places where you go and have a barbecue on a sunny Sunday evening? It will not touch any of those areas. What about city council - controlled areas like parks that are full of trees and without a single man-made structure? Gangs turn up there when families are trying to have their family picnics. The bill will not make a blind bit of difference to that situation or to those people, so the gangs wearing their thuggish patches can carry on and do their thing.

We all know the problem about gangs, and we do not shy away from that problem. We know that they are criminal enterprises. Some of them are pretty dopey and some of them are very cunning, but at the end of the day what underpins the gangs is a criminal enterprise. So what that needs is genuine, serious measures to address those problems, not flimflam fluffery like this, and not puffery that looks like it does something but does nothing. We need real measures. It starts with the people. It starts with the social problems and the economic problems, deals with the bad conduct, and provides real measures to deal with bad conduct—the standover tactics, the intimidation, the theft, the violence, the burglaries, and all the rest of it. It actually takes real measures, the sort of stuff that the Hon Phil Goff introduced when he was a Minister of Justice. The one thing that Phil Goff did not do was he did not leave it up to members’ bills to look like and give the appearance of doing something serious about a serious social problem. He took the responsibility himself because he was a good Minister. We have not had a good Minister of Justice for at least the last 5 years, and that is part of the problem. We have members—backbenchers—having to parade through this House, looking as if they are doing something serious. Well, that is not happening. If we want to get real about organised crime and get real about gangs, we need real legislation that is going to address the real problems.

David Clendon from the Green Party was right—and I was at the Justice Coalition launch this afternoon—it is time to get smart about crime. It is time to get smart about crime, and when it comes to the gangs, it is about understanding the gangs, understanding what drives them, dealing with those issues, understanding the antisocial conduct they engage in, addressing the antisocial conduct, and working with communities to make them safer, as the Murupara Area School has shown it can do, the principal of which tonight said that he was very concerned about this legislation because he did not think it would work. We need to actually take real steps, not the half measures that are represented by this bill.

I rise to unequivocally support the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill, which is in the name of my colleague Mark Mitchell, the member of Parliament for Rodney. I want to pay tribute to the work that Mark has put into shepherding this bill through the House. It has been interesting for me, as a new member, to see how he has applied his previous experience as a police officer to inform the very constructive contribution that he has made during the debates on this bill.

I should also acknowledge Mike Sabin, the member for Northland. It is so great to see members using their practical, real-world experience in law enforcement in supporting our communities at the front line, which is something that perhaps members on the other side might know a little bit less about. Those National members are using their practical experience to improve the law, which deals with some of the most destructive, unpleasant, and violent entities in New Zealand.

I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Hon Todd McClay, who originally introduced this member’s bill to the House, and whose stewardship of this legislation was interrupted only by his elevation to the executive.

I am delighted to support this bill, because it puts the rights of the majority of law-abiding, respectful, and good citizens of our beautiful country ahead of those of the tiny, hard-core, criminal minority who terrorise with both their offending and their reputation. It is the reputation, in particular, of these gangs that this bill seeks to neutralise. This bill strikes the right balance, in my view, between protecting the public in a practicable way while not going so far as to create unintended consequences or counter-productive situations. For instance, gang patches—that is, the signs, symbols, and representations used to commonly denote membership or affiliation with a criminal gang—will not be allowed on the premises or grounds of our Public Service departments, courthouses, police stations, local authority offices, and schools. But there is a specific exclusion for Housing New Zealand residential dwellings. The line has been drawn, in my view, in a very sensible place, and we will not see families ejected from their State homes because of admittedly ill-advised associations with gangs.

Similarly, tattoos or non-removable insignia are not included as grounds for banning under this bill, so those with permanent marks of gang affiliations—perhaps as a result of stupid decisions made in their youth—although they may be stigmatised by society, are not going to be anathematised for life from setting foot on Government premises. One has to hope that they take the opportunity that this exception provides for to visit a public hospital—the very fine public hospitals we have in this country—and have their gang tattoos removed by laser treatment so that they can rejoin decent society.

I want to focus on one particular element of the bill, and that is the ban on gang insignia in schools and preschools. I support a ban on gang insignia in all governmental premises in general, but I especially endorse the banning of gang insignia in schools and educational institutions. I single these places out because it is crucial that the rangatahi, the young people, who represent the future of our country are protected as much as possible from falling under the dark thrall of the gangs. In those areas where gangs are present, it is crucial that we take a strong and determined approach to crack down on gang culture and all that it represents—the lawlessness, the violence, the disrespect of other people, the ill-treatment of women and children, the trade in narcotics, and the people-trafficking, not even to mention the more petty but still harmful activities that gangs perpetrate—and prevent these ills from being visited upon the next generation of young Kiwis.

Unlike the other parties, with the exception of those who are supporting this bill—and I acknowledge the member Richard Prosser for his passionate speech in favour of this legislation—I believe that if, through this bill, one single person is diverted, one single child is taken away from a wasted life of crime in the malevolent criminal underbelly of this country, then that would make this measure worthwhile. I actually believe that many, many kids will benefit from this bill indirectly thanks to the clear message that it sends, rejecting the culture of organised criminality. Schools around this country, particularly in the most affected areas, agree with this.

As other members have done before me in this debate, I would like to draw a small quote from the submission to the Law and Order Committee by the chairman of the board of trustees of Murupara Area School. Jacob Te Kurapa JP, the chair, said that “Murupara Area School is in support of this Bill for the following reasons: 1. Children and students do not need to see gang insignia plastered about our school they need to be protected from it.” He also said: “The introduction of gang insignia into our premises would create tensions and unnecessary negative behaviour and we want to discourage that type of behaviour from our school. We have our own form of ‘insignia’ and that is the wearing of our uniform, something for our children to be proud of.” I am sure most members in this House would agree with those sentiments.

I was quite surprised when Kris Faafoi made reference in his previous speech to hearing that submission. He expressed his concern and his sympathy, but I think that the people of this country, the children of Murupara Area School, and all concerned citizens deserve more than concern. They deserve more than fine words. They deserve firm action. That is why I am proud to be part of a Government that is delivering it, and proud that I have a colleague like Mark Mitchell, who is actually giving the people of New Zealand the action that they deserve and that they need. So I have absolute pleasure in commending this bill to the House.

I understand that the next call is a split call.

I rise to take a short call on the Government’s Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill. There are some of us in this House who know a thing or two about gangs, having worked before coming to this House in our community’s efforts to try to stop gang activity from happening in the community or in our efforts with the community to try to stop our young people from getting involved in gang-related activities, whether they be legitimate or not, but primarily they have been about drugs, violence, theft, and, in the main, criminal activities. We on this side of the House, as I am sure is the same for many others throughout this House, have no patience at all for gangs. I oppose gangs, and Labour opposes gangs, and Labour opposes this particular bill. I will go through the reasons why.

Despite what my colleague Kris Faafoi has said about the sincerity of Mark Mitchell in bringing this bill forward, the reality is, when you really get down to it, this bill really addresses the gang’s dress code. It does not address criminal activities perpetrated by gangs. It does not address the drug dealings that gangs get up to or the use of young people to sell drugs. It does not address the thefts, the crimes, the violence, the beatings that they give, or even, in some cases, rape and murder. This bill does not address any of those serious issues whatsoever. So Labour is saying to this Government and to the New Zealand public that this bill is a waste of time.

Regrettably, what this bill does and what the community is expecting this Government to do are two different things. Yes, this Government has talked tough about criminals. Yes, it has talked about how it was going to get tough with gangs, but the reality is that this addresses only what gangsters should wear in a Government department. It does not take away or address the substance or the character of the gangster who is wearing the patch, and does not address the intimidation that the gangster will impose on members of our public.

I do not know whether the member who has now taken up this bill is aware of the changing environment with the gangsters. Most gangsters—most gangsters—no longer wear patches. Yes, you would see motorcycle clubs wearing patches, but most gangsters do not. Most gangsters are either doing their dealings deep underground, or particularly out in the open wearing T-shirts. This is why I have made the point that this law does not address the substantial issue that the community is concerned about—criminal activities by gangsters. It does not address that. So it is a waste of time.

Look, in 2010 the Otago University did a study of the cost of legislation and found that on average an Act costs around $3.5 million and a regulation costs around $530,000. That is how much money that this Government is spending on a piece of legislation that, effectively, will not address the issues that this community demands of this Government that it address.

In fact, talking about the links between what this Government is doing and the gang-related activities, or the reason why some of our young people continue to go into gangs, there is a clear link by the evidence that when there is unemployment, when there is poverty—and the kinds of unemployment that we have seen recently in the household labour force survey of 16.3 percent unemployment for Pacific and 12.8 percent for Māori—that is the kind of thing that this Government is doing that is perpetuating the kinds of activities that we see. So instead of the Government addressing the hard issues of putting people into jobs and paying them decent wages, it just prefers to deal with a dress code—a dress code—which does not address any of the problems that I have outlined, which our communities throughout New Zealand are concerned about. Criminal activities—

The member’s time has expired.

I rise as the Green Party spokesperson on human rights to speak to the third reading of this Prohibition of Gang Insignia on Government Premises Bill. The Green Party opposes this bill. It has been designed to feed the existing widespread fear of gangs, without any chance of reducing the crime associated with these gangs. This bill says that it seeks to restrict the display of gang insignia “on the premises of Departments of the Public Service, Statutory entities, and Local authorities in New Zealand.”, and it defines “gangs” as “gangs listed within regulation”. The bill will allow police to without warrant arrest a person who the officer has good cause to suspect has displayed a gang insignia on Government premises, and seize and remove gang insignia that has been or is being displayed. It also enables the police to stop vehicles to exercise powers of arrest or seizure.

We have heard so much vitriol from the Government side of the House about criminality and the evil of gangs, yet none of us here is suggesting that gangs are actually benign associations that contribute to our society. I join my Labour colleague in sharing my experiences of working in the community and working in women’s refuges with women who have escaped violence associated with gangs and have had to move cities to be able to find freedom outside of that environment. I have worked in youth health, and I have seen young people being recruited by the gangs. I have seen their vulnerability and the danger that the gangs present to them, but it is for these reasons and based on these experiences that I oppose this bill and the Green Party opposes this bill, and I would like to share some of the reasons why.

I am thinking particularly of those young people whom I have worked with. In the recruiting of young people, gang patches are not part of the process; colours are. This bill cannot do anything about that, and if it sought to actually make the wearing of colours illegal, we would see how truly ridiculous this is.

💬 Mike Sabin: Colours aren’t a patch.

Colours are not a patch—exactly. But they serve the same purpose in the recruitment of young people and the association of that gang. We would see, if we outlawed the wearing of red T-shirts, how absolutely ludicrous this is.

Secondly, for me as a youth worker it was really important to be able to see that, because it showed me those young people who were at risk. It enabled me to have those conversations with them and also for us to be able to go to the gangs at the time when we saw patterns develop, and actually call them on the safety of those young people. If we drive this underground, if we hide this, then we actually limit our ability to be able to work with those young people to help them actually find safe pathways to their own futures. Thirdly, the gangs thrive on their outsider status. The more we take away and demonise the regalia associated with the gangs, then the more we build their status as outsiders and the more alluring they become to those who have been ostracised, or feel they have been ostracised, by society. Fourthly, we do not need this legislation. We have the Summary Offences Act. We have numerous examples of police stations and schools being able to say: “No gang patches on this site.” There is no need for it. There is an ability to decide, as a community, about whether the visibility of patches is appropriate in a specific place.

The Green Party is not pro-gang, but we are pro - solutions that work—not solutions that demonise people but solutions that work with people and communities. This is not one of them.

That speech from Jan Logie ensured that the Green Party poll next time around will be well under 10 percent. The Green Party says that it does not support this Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill but it does supports getting smart on crime. What does that actually mean? What that actually means is the Greens co-leader Metiria Turei getting on television and encouraging families to grow cannabis, advocating the growing of cannabis as a legitimate and OK thing to do. That is what they think getting smart on crime is.

I want to just touch a little bit on those who have brought this bill to the House, Todd McClay initially, before becoming a Minister, and Mark Mitchell. I want to acknowledge the contribution of both of those members. I also want to acknowledge the contribution of the New Zealand Police to making New Zealand the safe society that on the whole it is. The police are a bunch of men and women who do a very, very good job for this nation. You do not have to go too far in the world to see that they are a fine body of men and women serving the interests of this country well, and I want to acknowledge them.

Ninety percent of organised crime in New Zealand is gang related—90 percent of organised crime. Gangs exist for a few reasons, but the core of them is to facilitate criminal activity. At the top of the list is drug dealing, and right underneath that sit prostitution, money-laundering, and standovers and intimidation. Often they all roll into one. That is what gangs are there for. They are not clubs. They are not groups of people who are doing any benefit to society whatsoever; they are outlaws. Everything that Parliament can do to diminish their power to do what they do to society is a positive thing.

The gang patch and what it means is more significant to them than anything else. Sometimes it is more significant to them than life itself. To earn a patch, gang members will have to inflict on society the most heinous of crimes—robbery, grievous bodily harm, and rape, to name but a few. But if a gang member wants to get an instant patch, then it will be a homicide, and many have committed homicide simply to get that patch. To them there is some badge-of-honour element to it. There is some badge-of-honour element to it because to them it means everything, and trying to take it off them is not a case of just having a sign up.

The member Kris Faafoi—ironically his constituency of Mana includes Porirua, where the police recruits are trained—tells us the Porirua Police Station has got a sign saying “No gangs”, so that is OK, and we do not actually need this bill. Courts have those signs as well. But what do police stations and courts generally have? That is right—lots of people involved in enforcement and security. What do school-grounds, pools, parks, and the like have? None of that. This bill will give the police the opportunity to get there and to lock those gang members up. If we followed Mr Faafoi’s logic—although I am not sure that logic and Mr Faafoi are two things that would go happily in one sentence—then all we would need to do is have signs around the place about not committing crime: “No robberies here”, “No rapes here”, and “No murders here”, and that would take care of it because signs are going to take care of all criminal activity.

He went on to say that what we really should be doing is focusing on stopping youth getting into gangs. I absolutely agree. My question to that member and to those on the Opposition benches is: why do they vote against every initiative that we are putting in place to give those young people a chance to get into work? Putting aside what we are doing with the economy, why do they vote against the welfare reforms that support 16 and 17-year-olds having the chance to have the skills and the wraparound support that they need to get them work-ready? Why do they vote against the youth starting out wage, which will give young New Zealanders an opportunity to be employed and help break down the barrier that young people often face? Why do they vote against the 90-day trial?

Those members vote against every effort. They will stand over there with their disingenuous chanting and ranting about this Government needing to do this and needing to do that, but they will vote against us when we do try to do it. I am saying that members cannot have it both ways. They seem to think they can, but the New Zealand public have woken up to that. They are just wandering around in a sort of yesteryear of how the Labour Party used to operate, and they do not get that New Zealanders have woken up to that.

The member the Hon Phil Goff, who has some considerable experience in this area and, certainly, in Parliament, says that this will be an offence at a school pool but it will not be an offence down at the rugby league ground, and that it will be an offence under the bus shelter but it will not be on the footpath beside it. Well, here is a bit of news for Mr Goff. If he wants to read through the Summary Offences Act and the Crimes Act, he will find that there are actually many offences that have location as a specific ingredient, OK? This is not unique legislation. I do not see him wanting to repeal all legislation that says something is an offence in a public place but not in a private place.

💬 Moana Mackey: That wasn’t his point. The point was that it’s unworkable.

Well, the point is that Mr Goff does not have a point—he does not have a point. Mr Goff has to oppose, because Labour members have painted themselves into a position where all they know is to oppose. If you ask any New Zealander: “Who on earth would oppose this?”—other than the Greens, because we expect that because the Greens are sort of pro - criminal rights, and forget about the victims that the criminals create—there is no one. There is no one. Well, at least the Labour Party can be guaranteed a few votes in the 2014 election, from a few gang members—not that they tend to vote very much, but it might pick up one or two out of that.

Mr Goff also went on about the drivers of crime, saying we must address the drivers of crime. Well, that member’s party had 9 years to do something about the drivers of crime that have fed gang culture and have ensured that gangs have exploded on to the New Zealand scene in recent years. One was methamphetamine. They sat back there and did nothing, saying “Oh, no, this problem is all under control. Nothing to see here. It will all go away.”

What has this Government done? There are just a few things—just a few headliners. There is the Methamphetamine Action Plan, banning precursors. The Government has ramped up border controls and strategies around dealing with international transition of precursors and drugs. It has changed search and surveillance laws significantly. It has refocused the police to a focus on prevention and drivers of crime. It has changed bail laws and put the onus on serious criminals to prove that people will be safe. It has got tougher sentencing laws for the most serious crimes. It has introduced drug courts. It has doubled the amount of treatment in prisons—actually, we could go on and on.

The reality is that Labour Party members will stand up and say “Oh, they’ve got to do something about this.”, but there is a reason that crime is dropping. There is a reason that crime is dropping. It is not some sort of global trend that is occurring. It is actually about smart, prudent policy, and about a Government that commits and does. Opposition members have been decidedly defensive about this, saying “Oh, we don’t want to be getting soft on crime.” Well, what else can it be?

The thing that I find most astounding is that here is the Labour Party and—well, as I say, we expect that from the Green Party; that is the watermelon patch way. When we look at the Labour Party, it is opposing the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Bill. We are actually fixing up what was actually a loophole left just quietly on the side there by Helen Clark some years ago. We are actually fixing that up and putting tighter scrutiny and controls around this. But no one in the Labour Party would say we need this legislation; they say we need a review. Well, it is not about a review. They oppose the Government Communications Security Bureau legislation, which is designed to protect us from international terrorism and those in New Zealand who are active in that, and they also oppose legislation about domestic terrorism. That is what gangs reap on society.

I think that is a fairly sad indictment that the Labour Party has got right out of touch with New Zealand, because they are opposing those two pieces of legislation that are very deep in the hearts of New Zealanders. What is the Labour Party actually standing up for? It is not standing up for New Zealanders. And will this bill make a difference? Well, damn right it will make a difference. As a former police officer I know how much it will make a difference to be able to take that patch off that gang member, and how much it will make a difference to be able to reduce the intimidation that gang members inflict on us. They are nothing more than a parasitical blight on New Zealand society. They are a cancer, and they feed off their host, and their host is the children of New Zealand citizens.

Who else, other than the Labour Party and the Green Party, would actually think that voting against this was a good idea? Well, they are all listed in the bill. There is a whole range of gangs. No one other than those people would vote against this. To me it is a sad indictment and a demonstration that they are out of touch. This is a good bill.

💬 Darien Fenton: Spit it out.

In a minute. This is a good bill. It will be effective law. The public want it. The police want it. The gangs do not, and the message from this Government to the gang members is: “Gang members, no more patchies for you.”