Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill.

This bill is a bill which is unfortunately needed in New Zealand. It should be a clear principle that taxpayers’ funds are not to be provided to gangs who perpetrate violence and misery in our community. But unfortunately, under this Government, we have seen millions of dollars been taken from the proceeds of crime funds, and given to an organisation run by life member of the Mongrel Mob Harry Tam, who is then using their money in a dodgy meth rehab programme—millions of dollars going, effectively, to the Mongrel Mob.

So this piece of legislation is unfortunately needed. The reality is we have a gang problem here in New Zealand. We’ve had a 40 percent increase in gang membership under this Government’s watch—a 40 percent increase in gang membership under this Government’s watch. And we see it every single day on the streets, we see the violence that they perpetrate, we see the misery that they create, the meth that they peddle, and we see the harm that they are causing.

But it’s not just that which is a problem; we’re also seeing how this increase in gang membership is flowing through to this Government taking a closer interest in the gangs. We’ve had Ministers meeting with gang leaders in the Beehive. Willie Jackson meeting with members of the Black Power. We’ve had Marama Davidson meeting with members of the Mongrel Mob. We’ve had the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt, going along to a Mongrel Mob gang pad, and giving not only a kōrero, but giving a donation—a taxpayer-funded donation. He didn’t even take the money out of his own pocket—the $200 donation, he could have taken it out of his own pocket, but he took it out of the pocket of hard-working taxpayers and said, “Thank you for letting me come and speak at your gang pad.” But the icing on the cake of this problem was what came out in the middle of last year, which was that this Government took $2.75 million—$2.75 million from the proceeds of crime fund and gave it back to the Mongrel Mob. The reality is, as the Police Association said, this looks like one of the most successful money-laundering schemes in the history of mankind.

The police in Hawke’s Bay are hard-working men and women. They work incredibly hard, as do our police up and down New Zealand—incredibly hard. And they recently busted the Mongrel Mob and took about $2 million off them—the Mongrel Mob who peddle meth and misery through the Hawke’s Bay had $2 million taken off them under the proceeds of crime legislation. And then what happened? They had $2.75 million given back. As the Police Association said, it’s not only a money-laundering, “money-go-round”, but they got the money back with interest. They got it back with interest.

💬 Nicola Grigg: Inflation!

And with inflation, the cost of living going up, the inflation rate—they got it back with not only the interest but the inflation. And then it was given to Harry Tam and his organisation to be able to do their dodgy meth rehab programme, which they are apparently running at a cost of about $275,000 per participant—$275,000 per participant. Well I tell you what, the good people, the volunteers in Victim Support, they receive about $400 per person that they assist in New Zealand—$400 per person. Yet the Mongrel Mob gets $275,000 for every person they put through their dodgy scheme. And Harry Tam, lovely man, went on TV and said, “PM seems to trust me, why don’t you?”—“The PM seems to trust me, why don’t you?” And those sleazy words, as they came out his mouth, made New Zealanders have some creepy feeling go around their spine as they realised, again, how much these gangs are causing the misery in our community.

But it’s not only the Police Association, and it’s not only the general public who were up in arms about this, but also Justice Collins who noted, when he was sentencing a number of people in the court in Hawke’s Bay, how Sonny Smith, who is one of the leaders of this programme, is also one of the people who is at the centre of peddling meth and misery in Hawke’s Bay. So money’s going back to the very people who are peddling the misery in the first place. And these people are meant to help to solve that problem.

And so that’s why this piece of legislation is needed, because of a principle which this Government has broken—that public, taxpayer funds should not be going to gangs. That is why I’m putting this piece of legislation to the House. I’m calling on all parties in this Parliament to stand up for taxpayers and stand up against gangs in New Zealand and to support this piece of legislation to select committee and, ultimately, into law.

So what this piece of legislation does is it, effectively, amends the Public Finance Act to make it so that public entities and agencies are prohibited from funding gangs in New Zealand, whether indirectly or directly, and that they must do due process when assessing funds—where they’re going to. It also makes it an offence under section 76 to do just that. As I said at the start, it is unfortunate that this has come to this; we should not be in the position where Parliament needs to be passing legislation to point out what, quite frankly, should be obvious—and is obvious—to New Zealanders up and down the country. As the Police Association said, “It looks like money laundering.” Well, it is money laundering—taking with one hand, giving back with the other.

So my challenge to the Government members tonight—my challenge to the Government members tonight—is will they stand with New Zealanders, who are sick and tired of the increased gang presence that they’re seeing in New Zealand, the 40-percent increase in gang membership under this Government, over 8,000 gang members in New Zealand. Will they stand with New Zealanders and send a message that they will be, actually, taking some action to try and address this issue, or will they stand with Harry Tam? Will they stand with Harry Tam when he said, “Jacinda Ardern seems to trust me, so why don’t you?” Well, the Prime Minister, I think, was reportedly saying, “It doesn’t matter what I do because I’ve had that label”—sorry, Jacinda Ardern responded to that, basically trying to brush it off, by not really wanting to draw on whether she trusted Harry. But the real test is actually tonight with the Labour Party’s vote as to whether she also trusts Harry. Does the Prime Minister, does the Labour Party—do they trust the Mongrel Mob with taxpayers’ money or will they actually vote tonight to send a very clear message that this is unacceptable, that it should be stopped, and that this should never happen again?

So my challenge to them is put this to a select committee; let the public have their say; send a clear message and make sure that the law is tidied up once and for all. But I have a funny feeling that they’re not going to, but I hope not. I hope that they will stand with New Zealanders—

💬 Chris Bishop: Greg O’Connor wants to vote for it.

—do the right thing. I know—Greg O’Connor, former president of the Police Association. Chris Cahill, the current president of the Police Association, came out slamming this $2.75 million. He put out a press release against a funding decision the Government made. It’s not often the Police Association put out press releases like that. The Police Association are incredibly reasonable, and they make very considered statements, and they objected fully to this. So I ask the Government and I ask all members of the Parliament to vote for this bill, send it to select committee, and send a very clear message that no taxpayer money should be funding gangs here in New Zealand. I commend the bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you. What a nasty little bill. What a vile, small-minded, smug, insincere little bill. A bill that appeals to the basest instinct, a bill that drums up fear, a bill that, frankly, stands in the way of helping people. And you know what the word Simeon Brown used most often in that speech was? “They”. Not “us”; “they”. “Those people over there that don’t belong, that aren’t one of us, that I want to vilify.” Well, I won’t vilify anyone. Everyone in New Zealand belongs to—this House of Representatives should represent them. And, you know what? Who are these peddlers of meth? You know, you can vilify them like that, but they are brothers, fathers, sons. They are people. And, look, who is a gang associate? Now, it might be some nasty person, or it might be some frightened 18-year-old who is doing the bidding of someone much nastier than him. Do you say we shouldn’t help that person? Well, I don’t. And if there’s a way to get into that person’s organisation, to reach out, to stop being arrogant and be a little more humble—so much for your serve in leadership. How about a bit of humility and saying, “I want to reach out.”?

This is a nasty little bill that others an entire section of our community and absolutely prevents agencies that want to help from doing what is best. It is the broken National Party approach of yesteryear, and if we want to try to do things better, we will continue to try and we will make progress—because for 100 years we haven’t—and we will try new things. This is a bill that dog whistles to people that want to build a wall. This is a party that’s afraid of calling a holiday Matariki, because it’s “a bit too Māori.” I don’t want any part of that kind of approach. This is a bill that would—[Interruption]—thank you—this is a bill that would address the woeful inequities in our health system by abolishing our Māori Health Authority. This is the party that would address the fact that 13 of 18 Ngāi Tahi marae don’t have reticulated water by preventing water reform. This party would address Māori overrepresentation in prison by building a bigger prison. And this is exactly the kind of thing we’ve come to expect from that broken National Party. It’s an ill-thought-out, knee-jerk reaction. Frankly, it’s childish.

We won’t sit on our hands and take the same failed approach as the National Party of demonising people with addiction issues and taking an alarmist and utterly wrong approach to the meth issue. What we’ll do is we’ll take advice. We will build on knowledge. And the programme that gave rise to this alarmism, it was advised by the Ministry of Justice, Corrections, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Education, Police, Treasury, Oranga Tamariki, and the Chief Science Adviser. That is a list of a lot of thoughtful people who said, “Do it. It’ll work.” And you know what? Here’s the thing, Mr Brown. It did work. It’s recognised that it had a very high success rate. News flash: people who have had addiction problems can help people with addiction problems. People like you and me, Mr Brown, cannot enter into these communities. We can’t communicate. We can’t connect. We need people in those communities who have been there, who can connect. And that’s not you and me. Sure, we need to be tough on crime, but what we really need to be is tough on the drivers of crime. If we’re just throwing people into prison for their broken addictions, we will perpetrate it. We know for a fact that as soon as we send someone to prison, the likelihood of them going there again escalates dramatically. But that’s the answer of Mr Brown: don’t try anything new. Just take a broken system and perpetrate it again.

This bill is far too broad. Even if it had a germ of an idea in it, it says that the public funds can’t fund any agency directly or indirectly. So who’s that going to capture? Well, that’s going to capture all kinds of things. It’s going to capture a food bank that provides food parcels into gang families. There you go, we’re supporting a gang community. Are you going to stop feeding tamariki because it’s financial assistance to a gang?

What’s more, this is not the National Party of yesteryear. We know for a fact that the ministry of Māori affairs, under the National Government, liaised with gangs. That was something that went on frequently. John Key himself had a tackling methamphetamine action plan, half of which was aimed at rehabilitation. And here we have someone saying: “No, no; no rehabilitation. What we don’t want is to get communities to help communities.” This is an absolutely retrograde step. It’s smug, insincere, and supercilious. It’s grandstanding. The idea over there is stuck in the Mosaic law: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It’s 3,000 years out of date. This bill will do nothing other than further alienate and demonise communities. The idea that we can’t use funds in a way that best addresses the problem to draw people in, to connect communities, to build bridges, to recognise that we have to have a conversation—that those who are in the communities are best equipped to reach further in, to lift people up not push them down.

Mr Brown, if you want to talk meaningfully about how to address gangs and the drug problem, come over here; I’ll talk any time. But the first thing we need to do is stop using the word “they” and start using the words “us” and “our”—our communities, our people, they are suffering, they are broken. Some people commit crimes and they need to be addressed through the justice system. But first and foremost, we need to address the drivers of crime: poverty, addiction, health, and intergenerational trauma. Those are the things which you don’t seem to understand. We shouldn’t be coming to this House with a high-handed arrogance that “others” everyone else, that says, “I’m better and here’s what we’re going to do to them.”

We need to come here and say, “How can I serve your community—a community I don’t know well, but a community I need to know more about. How can I become connected? Who in your community can reach out to me and help me do that?” And if that happens to be a gang member, to do that effectively, to lift people out of the place that they’re in, we need to spend Crown money. It’s money well spent. And, what’s more, it’s money spent that will assist that community and it will assist the wider community. A community that is more equal and equitable is a safer and better community for everyone.

So, Mr Brown, this bill is a short bill, but it’s amazing how much venom you can fit into two pages—a nasty little bill. We will not be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. There are times when speaking one’s mind ceases to become a moral duty and it becomes a pleasure. Chris Bishop got up a couple of years ago during a members’ evening and talked about how there are two types of bills—earnest bills that have no hope of getting any kind of passage in the House but are sort of grand designs trying to solve a large problem; but also very narrowly focused bills that actually might have a chance of making it through the House that are going to actually fix a problem as well—and they generally fall into those two types. This is a third category of bill, which is the bill that’s designed to generate social media content for the person who’s promoting it and, other than that, for no other purpose whatsoever. It’s entirely political, it will last no longer than its first reading, and it’ll be a great pleasure to bury it along with others of its ilk.

It is my pleasure to get up and speak on the “Public Finance (Don’t Give Any Money from the Pockets of Hard-working (White) Mum and Dad Kiwi Mum and Dad Investors (White) Mum and Dad Kiwi Taxpayers to (Brown) Gang Meth Pedlars) Amendment Bill” in the name of “younger Sméagol” over there. I have to say that it is a great pleasure to bury this bill and to ensure that this House wastes no more time on it.

“Younger Gollum” over there, in his speech, when he started off—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. Order! No, no, no.

I withdraw and—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No. Sit down. I haven’t ruled yet. You don’t know what I’m going to rule. The member well knows other members are to be referred to by their correct name. Don’t do it again.

He started his speech over there by saying that the Government had met with gang members in the Beehive! Well, how about that? There’s actually photographic evidence of the John Key - led National Government, led by John Key, of the Prime Minister—who was John Key at the time—meeting with gang members in his office, which was owned by John Key at the time! There are also photographs of Rob Muldoon—who was not John Key but was also a National Party Prime Minister—also meeting with gang members in his office on the ninth floor of the Beehive at the time. It turns out that these two former National Party Prime Ministers met with gang members in the Beehive! And you know why? It’s because they had the wisdom and the experience to know that if you wanted to solve a social problem you actually needed to engage with people who are involved in that problem. That’s why they invited them into the Beehive, and that has been a tradition that has crossed across this Parliament, no matter who has been the Prime Minister, no matter which party has been in Government. People have had the wisdom and the experience—unlike that member—to know that if you wanted to solve the problem, you needed to engage with the people who are involved in that problem.

I hope, I pray, but I don’t hold out much of a candle, that eventually that will sink into that member’s experience and he’ll know that, actually, if you want to solve that problem, you need to get involved with the people who are involved in it, because that’s where the solutions are: it’s involved with the communities and the people who are suffering from the experience that they are suffering from.

It is a great pleasure to stand up and speak on behalf of the Green Party, and many others in this Parliament and this country, and to say that this bill is merely social media content so that that member can try and appeal to a narrow and nasty portion of the community and build his voter base. We will have nothing to do with it, and we’re not going to vote for this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think it was really difficult for me to sit in the House and to listen to the first speaker, the member who’s sponsoring this bill, because as Dr Duncan Webb referred to, he keeps saying “they”—the reference that he had in his first speech to “they”. Well, I have news for that member: the “they” are members of my family. Am I an associate because they are a member of my family? Am I an associate because some of my very close neighbours are gang members where I actually live? This bill is so fundamentally flawed, fundamentally flawed, it doesn’t even provide a definition of what an associate is.

There is no way I can stand here and support this bill that takes food from the mouths of children of gang members. There is no way I can stand here in this House and support a bill that takes away education from children of gang families. There is no way I can stand here and support a bill that takes away vaccinations from both gang members, from family members, from children.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: You’re not.

And one of the members on the other side of the House says it doesn’t. But actually have you read the bill that you have tabled because it said “indirectly and directly funding programmes that have association”. Whānau Ora providers may have associations. Schools may have associations. So again, taking the example of myself, who may be considered an associate because I have very close family members who are in gangs—again, not all of us are brought up in privilege or silver spoons or with money in our parents’ bank accounts. But I stood on a board of a school. So me, an associate of an organisation that receives direct funding from the Crown, which is through Budgets, Vote Education—

💬 Simeon Brown: School’s not a gang.

It is in your bill. Read the bill. An associate of a gang who runs a programme—I’m a board member of the board of trustees. That is a school. So therefore a Whānau Ora provider, one of our food providers—and again, if the member actually read the bill and got some research into his actual bill, he’ll realise he’s actually amending the wrong Act.

So the whole reference to the example you used was around the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act. Now the member, if he had done some research, would have seen that the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act—it was Cabinet in 2009 who decided they would allocate funding outside of the normal Budget process. Therefore, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act is actually the Act that you need to change if you want to stop criminal proceeds of crime funding, which the member used in his speech in relation to a programme in the Hawke’s Bay. If that is the one that he wants—beg your pardon. If the member wants to use that programme as the example for the driving of this bill, then the member should have paid some time to have a look at what funded that programme: the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act, which the Cabinet decided in 2009 to allocate funding outside of the normal Budget process.

So I will say again, I’m not going to stand here and support a flawed bill. I’m not going to stand here and support a bill that will actually take money away from children who need to be fed, money away from education providers who need to educate children and families of gangs. These children and some of these families have no choice. Not all of us are brought up with a silver spoon. The “they” as referenced in the first member’s speech—many people within this House, we will be considered associates by neighbourhoods, by families, and by other measures. I commend this bill to the House.

Members, this debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō mārie.

The House adjourned at 9.58 p.m.