Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill

I’m pleased to stand here this evening on the—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do you have a legislative statement?

I do, Mr Speaker, of course I do. I present a legislative statement on the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

This is a big day for our Government when it comes to the measures that we are seeking to put in place to make targeted interventions to ensure that New Zealand is safe. This Government is providing police additional tools to seize the illicit assets of organised criminals through this legislation. The raft of legislative changes are targeted at gangs and are intended to strip gang members of the benefits of those criminal activities. This is about ensuring that crime does not pay and that there are major consequences for criminals and gang activity where those individuals who seek to participate within those criminal organisations and seek to gain from those activities—we say, on this side of the House, that we will not tolerate the participation in those activities. We are being very clear that this side of the House will make meaningful, evidence-based interventions where it is appropriate to do so, and the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill does just that. Together with the criminal activity intervention legislation, these measures will hit the gangs where it hurts the most: that is, indeed, their profits. In 2020, we campaigned hard on working harder and smarter to keep our communities safer, break the cycle of offending, and tackle the root causes of crime—and across a range of areas, this is exactly what we are doing across the criminal justice portfolio.

So this bill contributes to the Government’s election manifesto commitments to respond to organised crime by ensuring enforcement agencies—primarily the police—have the appropriate powers to seize the proceeds of crime, to disrupt organised criminal offending, and primarily to hold its ringleaders—its leaders of those criminal organisations—to account. The new amendments to the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act will ensure that if someone is associated with organised criminal groups, and if it is suspected they can fund those activities appropriately, that interventions will be made.

There are four parts to this particular piece of legislation that we are introducing tonight. The first—and any New Zealander like myself would have been quite “befuddled”, is the word that I used earlier today, to find out that where you have somebody shooting at a home, that there are simply insufficient penalties that the police have to call on—we are introducing a crime: discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. This clause will amend the Crimes Act 1961 and it will introduce a threatening act. The key issue here is that in times more recent—and this was particularly evident last year—we saw, in a heightened time of gang conflict, that you had individuals that were going out there, shooting at homes, and the penalties available to the police at that time were simply inadequate. There is a summary offence of discharging a weapon in a public place—the maximum penalties that were attached to that were simply untenable for a modern country that is committed to ensuring that we keep communities safe.

Secondly, what we are seeking to do here is expand the power of enforcement officers to seize and impound vehicles where it can be shown that vehicles are proven to intimidate or cause concern to the general public. This amendment is included to provide that the owner of a motor vehicle seized and impounded under the expanded provision relating to seizure of motor vehicles, set out in clause 16, with the right of appeal to the police—this appeal can be exercised on the basis that the owner could not have been reasonably expected to know that the operator of the vehicle would commit any of the new specified offences, or took all reasonable steps to prevent the operator of the vehicle from committing such an offence.

The third part of this bill is that we are introducing a warrant to search and seize weapons where there is a gang conflict. This has been the primary focus, and I would just like to acknowledge the work that has been done by the select committee, and all of those that submitted on this particular provision, stewarded through in an exceptional manner by the former chair of the Justice Committee, the now Minister of Police, the Hon Ginny Andersen. The warrant to search and seize weapons where there is a gang conflict—again, this is in direct response to the issues that arose last year. We had well-documented intergang warfare. The police knew what was happening in terms of that inter-gang warfare. They could anticipate who was about to undertake particular types of activities, but they didn’t have any powers to be able to act upon the intelligence that they were receiving.

What this warrant does is it enables the police to go before a judge to seek a warrant, it will be tagged to a particular geographical location, it will be tagged to the particular participating gangs, and it will enable the police to undertake search and seizures for weapons in a specified gang conflict period of time. We’ve sought to ensure that this power, which is a bold power to provide our police, is offset and balanced by ensuring that the police are required to put up a sound evidential basis to the courts. The courts are required to run over quite a coherent test, and the court must be satisfied that there is a sound evidential basis by which that warrant should be provided.

I want to address the fact that every single aspect that we have sought to do as a Government isn’t to respond in an emotive manner. What we’ve sought to do on this side of the House when it comes to tackling the criminal justice issues that have found themselves before us is to make sure that we act and that we operate on a sound, evidential basis. There is a sound, evidential basis for the introduction of these measures that we are seeking to introduce tonight. What some may say is a knee-jerk reaction—to the contrary. What would be a knee-jerk reaction is introducing evidence-less measures like banning gang patches, where the late Hon Chester Borrows, who introduced that measure in a little place called Whanganui, later came to be of the view that it was absolutely ineffectual, as testaments were made from this side of the House at the time, that that measure simply would not work to intervene and interrupt and disrupt gang activity. We know that what will intervene and interrupt and disrupt is making sure that we target those gangs where it hurts the most, and that is always going to be in one’s wallet.

So I’m proud of this bill that we’re bringing forward tonight. I’m also proud of the additional measures that this Government has introduced to tackle the root causes of crime; that we have provided a plethora of other avenues to ensure that those young New Zealanders who feel helpless and feel like there is no other place for them, who might be lured into the seductive life of those gang environments—that we are providing alternative measures, whether that’s through work, whether that’s through training, whether that’s through wraparound services to support those young people to make different choices. I’m confident in our Government’s approach to the broader crime and criminal justice portfolio. These measures here will provide our law enforcement officers with the much-required tools that they require. So I’m pleased to commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very happy to stand and take a call on the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill in its third reading. I’d just like to acknowledge our advisers to the committee, who waited around in Parliament tonight to come in for the committee stage, which was truncated, and they weren’t here for long. But I want to acknowledge and thank them because not only did they support us and help us with advice on this bill but they helped us with the recovery bill also.

We support the bills that have been brought to the House, because I think everyone in this country recognises the fact that over the last five years, we have seen an enormous growth in gang numbers, we have seen gang members now that are prepared to carry firearms, and the worst thing about it is they’re showing that they’re willing to use them, and, unfortunately, in this country we are seeing evidence of that on a weekly basis. I guess what may have expedited and sort of prompted the Government to act a bit more quickly around this bill was the fact that last year, we saw 22 or 23 drive-by shootings.

There’s been a report come out recently from the police that clearly indicates that these drive-by shootings that we all assume are inter-gang rivalry and they’re targeting other gang homes—the only problem with that is that I’m sure there are, often, innocent children that are in those homes. I don’t know how—it’s just through the luck of the Irish that we have not had a member of the public or, worse still, a child seriously injured or killed in one of these drive-by shootings.

But the recent information that came to light is the fact that they are indiscriminate. These drive-by shootings aren’t always targeted at gang homes. Innocent members of the public have been caught up in it and have had their homes targeted, and I don’t think anyone in this House would accept that. It’s bad enough that gang homes are being targeted, but it becomes a whole new level when innocent members of the public have their homes targeted in drive-by shootings.

This bill is important in the sense that it does give the police a wider-ranging power to be able to have a warrant issued so that they can start to target the two gangs that are involved in the conflict. So we fully support that. We think that that is important.

The other thing that I’d say in relation to gang conflict is that the Minister referred to this bill targeting the leaders. This bill doesn’t talk to or comment—it has nothing to do with targeting the leaders of the gangs. I’m hoping—I’m hoping—that some of the leaders of the gangs are captured by this legislation. It’s probably highly unlikely, because—as you know through your own wide and varied experience, Mr Deputy Speaker—often, the leaders will try to insulate themselves from this type of activity. It’s not them that go out and actually do the drive-by shootings; it’s their foot soldiers that they send out there to do it.

The other issue that I did want to raise—and the Minister raised this in her closing comments—is that she keeps coming back and keeps talking about the Hon Chester Borrows in speaking about gang patches. In my view—and that’s why I want to clarify it—she seems to think that the banning of gang patches is not going to prevent drive-by shootings. I understand what she’s saying, but the only thing that I would comment to that is that the 23 drive-by shootings that we saw in South Auckland and West Auckland and on the North Shore last year were sparked through a dispute over a gang patch—that’s what actually started it.

Just for the Minister’s information, I took a bill through this House about six or seven years ago. It was actually Todd McClay’s bill, and it was a member’s bill because he was having serious gang conflict in Rotorua at the time between Black Power and the Mongrel Mob. It bans gang patches and gang insignia in hospitals and schools and Government buildings, and the police use it. What it means is that parents with their children don’t have to see gang patches walking around the school grounds. Gang patches, quite simply, as you and I both know, are there to intimidate. They’re there to try and strike fear into the community that these gang members live in, and it’s been effective.

I attended a public meeting down in Taradale a few years ago after a drive-by shooting in the middle of town during the middle of the day, in which a toddler’s car seat ended up with shotgun pellets in it. It was open warfare by the gangs in the middle of Taradale. I was talking to the police officers down there, and they said, “We use the gang patch bill. We enforce that. It’s a good tool for us to use.” So I just wanted to alert the Minister to the fact that that piece of legislation actually has been quite useful for police to reinforce and put pressure on the gangs and put a line in the sand and say, “You will not wear those patches in our schools. You will not wear them in the hospitals.”

And, by the way, hospitals are a big problem in terms of gang presence. We saw recently an example of that in Christchurch, where the gangs have taken over the car park, they had a big presence in the emergency department. I actually had an experience of this myself just recently in North Shore Hospital, where my son was being treated, and the gangs had a heavy presence in the ward that he was in. It’s intimidating for people. I want to shout out and acknowledge the medical staff, the nurses, and the doctors who try to work around that and try to make it work and try to avoid conflict and confrontation because they don’t want to place more stress on the patients and the people that are actually using the ward or the hospital at the time.

So, although I support this bill, I just wanted to address those comments that the Minister made, for whatever reason—I don’t know why—and thank you for allowing me to do it, Mr Speaker, because it’s not actually relevant to the bill at all, but I did want to at least speak to it.

In relation to the seizure of vehicles, this is a good one, but, again, because we have got a problem in this country now, where gang members, in particular, feel that they can get out on roads, they can take over public spaces, they can drive into oncoming members of the public and force them off the road, they can intimidate them, threaten them, and take over intersections—and we shouldn’t tolerate that. When you’ve got law-abiding citizens out there trying to stick to our road rules, and they see gangs taking over the roads like that, they shouldn’t tolerate that. We shouldn’t tolerate that. So I support legislation that allows the police to take action.

The only problem that I have with it is that the bar has been set very high, with “careless, dangerous, and reckless use”—that is a very high bar that has to be met, in terms of triggering the ability for the police to be able to seize those vehicles. I hope that it can be operationalised. My fear is that they’re going to have real problems and real issues with it.

So I’m very happy to stand and support this bill. Like most of the legislation that we’re standing and supporting, we would have gone further. We are very sensitive to the fact that, at the moment, we should be fully focused on what our front-line police officers need in a practical sense to be able to apply the legislation and start putting genuine pressure back on the gangs. I have to say that a lot of the legislation that comes through the House has got some intent there, but it goes halfway and it doesn’t go the whole way. On saying that, I’m happy to stand and I’m happy to support the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill aims to make our communities safer in New Zealand by addressing the harm caused by criminal offending. The bill does this in a number of ways; it creates new powers and offences to assist front-line police to better prevent and respond to the harm caused by criminal offending. The offending targeted by this bill is most commonly associated with gangs, and includes offences such as money-laundering, dangerous behaviour on our roads, and the use of firearms. The bill provides additional powers to address a gap in the legislation to discharge firearms with intent to intimidate; gang conflict that poses a risk to the public when firearms and other weapons are used; and high-risk and illegal behaviour on our roads, such as dangerous or reckless driving; gangs laundering the proceeds of drug sales; and also other illegal activities, where higher amounts of cash are being used.

I’m going to touch on just two of these areas, to keep this to the point. First of all, I want to talk about the new warranted powers to address gang conflicts. So when intergang conflicts are occurring, as we have seen in New Zealand over the past recent months and years, violence may be committed by any number of gang members, and weapons are frequently moved between locations. This provides police with some particular challenges. This bill provides a new warrant-to-search power, authorised by a judge, that will enable front-line police to rapidly search properties associated with gangs for weapons. The quicker that police are able to locate and seize weapons, the less harm is likely to arise from conflicts, and the ability to prevent harm to our communities is done. The warrant would be authorised by a judge for a maximum of 14 days, and it would cover the homes and vehicles of gang members and non-gang members who are encouraging or assisting in the conflict. This will assist police to work and de-escalate situations before our community is put in harm.

The second area I’d like to touch on is: shooting in a public place to intimidate. Again, this focuses on targeting where weapons have been used. There are a number of existing offences related to discharging a firearm; however, discharging a firearm with the intention of intimidating a person who is in a public place, rather than in a house, presents a gap in our existing firearms legislation. This bill creates a new offence of discharging a firearm with the intent to intimidate, with a maximum imprisonment term of five years.

The other areas where this bill creates new offences to assist front-line police are: dangerous and intimidating driving, and also gangs moving money. I know there’ll be some people within police who are very happy to have this bill providing police with a power to seize cash in suspicious circumstances above $10,000.

I’d like to close by saying that this bill provides police with new offences and powers to better respond to criminal offending. It sends a very strong message to those who create a disproportionate degree of harm in our communities that their offending will not be tolerated. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I speak on this bill, the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, which the National Party will support, but it’s a bill from a Government that is tired and rotten, as we’ve seen tonight, with a replacement of a Minister that has reached new lows in terms of ministerial activity. We’ve just heard from the current police Minister, and I hope and pray that her career doesn’t end in the same way as her predecessor, because we in this country have come to expect certain kinds of behaviour from Ministers, and we haven’t seen that tonight. And what we’ve seen from this Government instead has been the tolerance of low standards of conduct and—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Goldsmith, the bill please.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And so what we’ve also seen from this Government is a very muddled approach towards crime. And so this bill, the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, is a useful piece of legislation that does some things that will make it easier for the police to do their job and to hold, particularly, gang members to account. It does bring in particular offences about discharging a firearm in a public place. Yes, OK, that’s useful, and it gives some warranted search powers for weapons in responding to gang conflict. Notably, the Government hasn’t done what it should have done in terms of making it easier for police to have warrantless powers to search for weapons and cars as a general course of event for gang members, as the National Party has suggested. But it’s useful. They’ve expanded the range of factors that can be dealt with in terms of vehicle empowerment, and we’ve heard a long diatribe from the previous speaker on that, and it’s given the police powers to seize cash if it’s gathered in certain circumstances.

So all those things, yes, will make a modest improvement. But the problem is that the gang members are sitting out here and they’re looking at this Government, the Labour Government—this tired and rotten Government—they’re looking at them and saying, “Well, what is their attitude towards us?” And they can’t work it out because every now and again they pass a law like this which makes their life a bit more difficult, but, the other half of the time, they’re making their life easier; they’re giving them money to do drug rehabilitation programmes, or they’re passing—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Goldsmith, let’s help the gang members out by talking about the bill, so they know what it’s about.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker, but I’m giving the context for this bill, and I’m perfectly entitled to give the context to this bill, and what I want the people of New Zealand to understand is that this bill is in a context, and it is in a context of a muddled Government when it comes to law and order. They’re not sending clear messages to the gangs, which they are saying, and the Minister of Justice said in her speech only three or four speeches ago, are the target of this legislation—to make their lives more difficult in terms of the criminal activity. The point I’m making is that while they are doing that, on one hand, on the other hand, they’re passing legislation such as repealing the three-strikes legislation, which reduces sentences for our worst repeat offenders. And so people are confused as to what the purpose of this Government is. And, at the same time as they’re passing this legislation, which says that gangs can’t move and convert large sums of cash, they’re also giving money to gang associates to run meth rehabilitation programmes. So it’s confusing and people can’t understand what the purpose of this Government is.

And it’s not surprising that over the last five years, we’ve seen an increase in crime; we’ve seen an increase in violent crime. We’ve seen these very strange, conflicting trends in our justice figures over the last five years where we’ve seen the increase in violent crime going up like this and we’ve seen the number of people going to prison going down like that. People can’t work that out. They look at it and they say, “Well, what’s going on? Why is the only clear target in the justice sector from this Government a 30 percent reduction in the number of people in prison, irrespective of what’s going on on the street and irrespective of the level of crime on our streets, they want to reduce the prison population?”

So it’s all very well to pass legislation like this, which does a few things. It creates new offences for discharging a firearm in a public place, and the Minister will stand up and she’ll say, “I’m tough on crime. Aren’t I tough on crime? I’ve introduced this legislation that has a new warranted search power for weapons when there is a gang conflict. Aren’t I tough on crime?”, but then, on the other hand, the Government is doing half a dozen things which make it easier for our worst repeat offenders to carry on their work and to create new victims.

That’s why we’re willing to support this legislation, but we’re not at all convinced that this Government has a clear and coherent set of policies on law and order. And that’s why the National Government promises to restore law and order in this country in October when we get a chance and, hopefully, there’ll be a by-election before that and we will be able to run those issues out before the people of Napier, because that’s what this country needs and deserves. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. My electorate office in north-west Auckland is in Massey. Last week, I sat around the table with a member of our West Auckland police force and we discussed this area of law, both the powers they currently have but also some of the gaps, as they address issues in West Auckland. I also spoke to a family who live in West Auckland, who were visibly distressed about some of the community safety issues they face. It’s undeniable that this is real for people, and it does mean that we do need to respond.

But to my Green Party colleagues, it’s also undeniable that whenever we create a new search power, we need to ensure that we’re being very cautious about that. Once again, I’d like to commend the Justice Committee, who I do think held the role that we took on in this space very seriously, and one example of that is the change that the committee recommended in clause 22, amending section 131, which concerns the information that is required to be provided to occupiers before a search is carried out. What the committee traversed is what information is provided to others under similar warrants, and we found that this search power required less information to be provided. So the committee was very clear that we felt that the bill should be amended to lift that information provided to individuals.

It is an incredibly difficult space to traverse in terms of getting the balance right, but I do think what we need to be mindful of is that while this is a Government who put forward a set of legislative measures—as well as policy initiatives that cover prevention and punitive measures, as well as rehabilitative—there are parts of our legislative framework that do just need to address the very real community safety issues that people are facing. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And I do want to begin by acknowledging, as my colleague and friend Vanushi Walters has just done, that, actually, the issues that are purportedly being addressed by this bill are real for our communities. For those who experience violent crime or property crimes or any kind of disturbance in our lives, it’s real, and people who are victims of those crimes do need support, and they do need to see us, as their House of Representatives, taking meaningful action to keep those communities safe.

I say those issues are issues that this bill purports to address, because I don’t believe—and the Green Party certainly doesn’t believe—that this is, in fact, a good bill that does much to keep communities safe. It does, to begin, purport to create a new offence of discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. And as much as we call it a new offence, we have to remember that, actually, threatening acts committed with a firearm are already offences that this bill repeals to replace, in part, section 308 of the Crimes Act with this apparently new Act. Now, is that going to do much more to keep our community safe? It’s only an extension of the maximum sentence to five years from three years. If so far we’ve had so much trouble and we keep raising imprisonment maximum penalties and we keep asking ourselves why it’s not working, is this really anything new, is it really effective, and is it fair for us to tell those victim communities that it is new, that it is a solution, and that it will work?

We move on to, in Part 2, a part that, again, tries to respond to conduct which occurs during gang convoys. However, this expanded power can actually be used by police to apply to protesting convoys, to anyone that seemed to be driving recklessly or dangerously, and to say that a vehicle can then be immediately impounded. Putting that together with what we know of policing in our nation and the kinds of communities that are seen as being a threat of criminal activity and without having laws in place that require police to have a reasonable belief, based on evidence, of actual criminal activity, expanding that power that can be applied to anyone—including just reckless behaviour that the police might suspect is to do with gang violence—without an objective criteria that normal police powers have, and to take a family’s vehicle away, then, in those circumstances, for 28 days, that’s a pretty big power, and it’s not connected to criminal activity, and it’s not being applied to an objective standard. So are we really keeping communities safe with that extended power? Again, are we just making ourselves look a bit tough on crime?

So Parts 1 and 2 actually don’t necessarily apply to gangs. It has that word in it somewhere, but it can be used by police to apply to anyone, and it does extend powers that already exist beyond what is reasonable. In our estimation, it does weaken policing, actually, because it doesn’t require police to meet the evidential standards that they normally would have to meet, and so are we really even applying them to criminal activity, let alone gang activity?

But one of the later parts that actually concerns me more than anything is Part 5, where there is no requirement for a belief that cash is an instrument of crime but only that a suspicion is there. So we’re then talking about pretty broad powers of police to take away, again, people’s property in circumstances where we’ve taken away any requirement that they have and that they have to meet an objective evidential standard that we normally have in our laws that an actual crime might have happened. So are we really ensuring that our police, as a front-line institution entrusted to keep our communities safe, are actually doing that? Or is this a revenue-gathering exercise? Or is it, again, another power that we’re giving our police force in order to stand in this House and say that we’re doing something about what concerns our communities?

Again, we have to read this bill and look at these expanded powers that aren’t about evidence-based policing, and put them together with all of the research that our Government last term actually commissioned—all that independent research that’s just sitting there—that says that police, when their powers are expanded, are exercising them against certain communities, and those communities don’t necessarily fall into the category of people actually committing crimes, actually making our communities less safe?

It’s policing without legal standards that we recognise normally in our system, which then, by definition, is tyranny. It’s not keeping communities safe; it’s just police powers that can be exercised with prejudice. Again, and I hate to say this in this House too many times in one night, but the most heartbreaking thing about introducing a bill like this that does so little but lowers standards is that, again, we know what actually stops violent crime. We know what stops our young people from joining gangs; we know that 89 percent of under-19-year-olds that we lock up that commit what we call “serious crimes”—serious enough that they get locked up—actually then get diagnosed with a serious learning disability. So inclusive education is a means of keeping people—young people—out of gangs. Are we investing in that? No.

Mental health care; addiction treatment that’s accessible and inclusive; housing; incomes that are livable. If we want to ask ourselves why—if the stats are to be believed—violent crime has gone up by so much among young people, in particular, over the past year, then let’s look at what we know prevents crime that might have also gone up over the past year. That’s inequality, and it’s a mental health crisis. Instead, we’re providing more police powers—more police powers that can be used in amorphous circumstances like this without even the objective standard of belief that the crime has happened.

So this is a bad law and it’s a bad direction that I feel sad about with the Labour-led Government. But, hopefully, as this right side of the House has said, it looks forward to October, I think that I can say confidently that with a bigger Green heart in Government, we’ll do a lot more with justice that’s effective and actually keeps communities safe and inclusive next term.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party in this third reading to support the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill. We support this bill, although we do believe that at least one of the changes that is being made is unnecessary, but let’s get to the four Acts that are being changed, making this an omnibus bill.

First of all, we have the Land Transport Act 1998. That’s going to be changed so that the seizure and impounding of vehicles can be made easier by police in circumstances where we see things like a procession of gang members in a funeral procession overtaking the streets, overtaking intersections, running amok, hanging out of their vehicles, hanging out of their utes, and just generally being bullies. This is allowing us to be able to impound their cars for 28 days.

The Search and Surveillance Act 2012 is also being amended. It will give two new powers. The first one allows the issue of a warrant to search and seize weapons during a gang conflict, and the second is the power to seize cash found in suspicious circumstances that amounts to over $10,000. Now, allowing the issue of a warrant to search and seize weapons during a gang conflict is becoming something that is absolutely necessary, and, unfortunately, we are seeing, again, another increase in drive-by shootings. We’re seeing innocent family homes being targeted. We’re seeing a whole lot of gang influence in our communities by those that just want to be absolute thugs. Now, I’ve got absolutely no sympathy for them at all. If you want to behave in a way where you go against the law, then you should feel the full force of the law, but, unfortunately, with some of the pieces of legislation we have, we’re finding situations where the police are unable to or do not use the law that they have. So we are giving them those extra powers so that they can keep our community safe.

There is an Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 change as well, and this will prohibit cash transactions over a specified value for certain high-value goods. That’s, basically, meaning that the person who turns up with 40 grand in their back pocket in cash can’t go about buying that Harley-Davidson that easily. It means that we will have some sort of countenance to where the cash has come from, and also responsibility for the sellers and the buyers to ensure that the transactions are legitimate and legal.

Another change we make is to the Crimes Act 1961, and it’s discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. This is specific for drive-by shootings. I said it in the second reading, but I’ll say it again: ACT believe that this is unnecessary legislation, because there is already law in place to address the discharge of a firearm unlawfully, and that’s in section 48 of the Arms Act. The difference here is that the word “intimidation” is being put into the clause, and there is a difference in the penalties. This, I think, is an attempt by the Government of the day to show that they are going to try and be hard on those that misuse firearms in drive-by shootings, but the reality is it’s already there; it’s just not being used. What we could have done is increased the penalties in the Arms Act for those unlawful people, and added intimidation. Instead, we have just introduced another clause doing the same thing, and I think it was an unnecessary waste of taxpayer time and money.

The bill is wanting to address the harm that is caused by criminal activity, including that that’s caused by gangs, in order to make our communities safer. That’s what we say in the introduction to this bill. But ACT doesn’t support creating laws when there are laws already in place in the hope that a new law will be used when the old one with the same wording but harsher penalties is already in the tool box to be used. So let’s get back to actually keeping our communities safe with the laws that we’ve got and the laws that we are making and actually use them so that we don’t have to go about creating new laws the next time we go under urgency.

Nevertheless, if it means that there becomes a consequence for targeting homes, for targeting families, for targeting our innocent kids while they’re sleeping with illegally possessed firearms, then we will absolutely support it. We just consider that we could’ve been supporting the use of existing legislation many years ago instead of trying to do the same washing in a different machine.

We have new clauses in this bill, where a judge can issue a search and seizure warrant if he’s satisfied that a gang conflict exists, that there is one or more gangs involved, that by issuing the warrant the community will be better for it because the potential harm will be gone, and that the warrant can be issued in respect of either a place or a vehicle. This is there to help protect our communities when gang conflicts are occurring or are expected to occur, because usually it’s all about retaliation. When one event happens, there is utu or retaliation by the other, and you can see it coming. In some of the communities, you can feel it coming. So this new power will allow the police to go to a judge and ask for warrants to be able to go in there and actually look at seizing weapons to try and prevent this gang conflict. As I said, we can all see it, and we can get involved in it, not because we want to but because we’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s why it’s so important to have this legislation. We know that gangs have often shown no respect for our communities, no respect for our families, nor for our tamariki when they are out there looking for revenge. So we need to stop that way of thinking in their minds.

These changes will allow police to search and seize weapons in an attempt to deescalate this conflict between the gangs, and it also allows for what we hope will be the successful execution of those warrants at multiple addresses and on multiple vehicles all at the same time. This bill isn’t just about finding and seizing firearms; it’s about finding and seizing weapons—any weapons that could be used in a gang conflict—and this includes cars. Where vehicles are used inappropriately, they can be seized and impounded for up to 28 days. Where the seizure relates to weapons like bats, knives, and guns, they can be destroyed.

It’s important, again, that I point out that where firearms have been stolen from legitimate and licensed owners, police have verified to us that it is their policy to ensure that if they know where to direct the stolen firearm back to, they will return it instead of destroying it. Nothing in this legislation to protect property that has been stolen has actually been written into this piece of legislation, so I thought it was quite important to bring it up so it is recorded in Hansard that there is that protective right of property for certain owners who had it legally and then had it stolen.

There is a new ability for police to seize cash that they find, where it’s $10,000 or more, and of note is that the police are not allowed to hold on to that cash for too long. In fact, it’s a very short period of time in which the person who’s had that cash seized from them must actually show how they legitimately got it. If they can do that, they get it back quick smart; if they can’t, then the police will either apply to hold on to it for an extension of time or will actually seize it fully.

Finally, we have a reporting clause in this bill as well. The cash seizures have to be reported to an issuing officer, and that’s really quite important. Full reports will need to include whether the search warrant was actually executed; the type of weapons that were seized; whether other powers were also exercised, like the seizure of that cash; and any criminal proceedings that eventuated because of the items found from that executing warrant. That’s how we’re going to know whether or not this bill, which will become law, will actually work—whether we’re on the right pathway, whether we need to make changes—by having reporting and having data to tell us how it’s working.

The need to disrupt gangs and their violence is well overdue. No more families should be hurt. There should be no more loss of innocence to our kids, and we shouldn’t allow any of that to occur. In that respect, ACT will support this bill through its final reading. Thank you.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. “Man hands on misery to man, it rises like a coastal shelf.”—those are the words of Philip Larkin, the English poet who knew something about dysfunctional families and the impact that they have on dysfunctional lives. I quote that as I rise to take a short call on this bill because I do want to acknowledge the point made by the Green Party: that the roots of criminality are deep, they are intergenerational, and, yes, this bill is not going to bring an end to those intergenerational patterns of trauma. The fact that we need to deal with gang violence on multiple levels, from the intergenerational; from the need to build houses, as we are doing; from the need to raise incomes for our most vulnerable, as we are doing; from the need to improve services to children, as we are doing. These things do not mean that we do not still have the responsibility to do what we can to deal with the problem that is immediately before us.

The problem that is immediately before us is that our gangs are becoming difficult and dangerous—they’ve been difficult and dangerous, as Mr Speaker knows, for many, many years—and we need to give our police more tools. These tools need to be carefully designed, because it is a very tricky and sensitive matter to begin to introduce new search and seizure powers. There is no two ways about it; we risk freedoms if we do not take care. Therefore, I am glad that all of the members of the Justice Committee who have risen—including myself now—have spoken to the care and concern that we put into our deliberations on this matter. It is not an easy matter to contemplate the extension of search and seizure powers, but we do believe that this is proportionate in circumstances.

So I want to run quickly over what it is that this bill does. First is that it is the pair to the one we passed earlier: the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill—the devil’s in the detail, and the obvious is in the name. The proceeds bill targeted cash and money and accounts and the passing on of the proceeds of crime into other hands for associates to hold on to it.

This one is a little more targeted. This one is about either seizing large amounts of cash found because—I don’t know about you, Mr Speaker, but in my experience, no one wanders around with $10,000 in cash in their back pockets unless there is something odd going on. It also targets the capture of what the Minister earlier called “bling” and the possession of gold and jewels and watches where there is no explanation other than money-laundering.

It then goes on to put a new targeted warrant and search power for gangs, where there is a gang conflict, where there may be guns. And finally, it gives a new offence which fits in between the very mild initial ones that we have for discharging a firearm with the “intent to annoy”, in the Arms Act, right through to the 14 years’ worth of “discharge with intent to do grievous bodily harm”. This one fits in the middle, the “discharge of firearm with intent to intimidate” is now something that police can deal with, and, on top of that, it enables them to deal with dangerous and disturbing behaviour with driving in convoys.

It isn’t the answer to gangs, but it is the answer to helping the police deal with gang violence in the immediate future, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Bummer! You’ve still got 20 or 30 seconds to go, and so I’d better take a speech. I want to start by acknowledging the Christian community, actually, in Nashville—I know it’s another country, but to acknowledge a wider community, if you will, that I am part of. Three children and three adults are dead, and the shooter—and just to assure that community, long persecuted, that they are in our prayers. I’d also point out to Marama Davidson that the shooter and murderer is not a white cis male.

This bill is a good bill, but it’s a little bit like the earlier bill that we touched on: it’s only putting a veneer over what should really be done. We are going to support the bill—I know the ACT Party and others are supporting it too—but we don’t feel it goes far enough. The one illustration I want to mention is that we need warrantless searches for the likes of gangs. This bill adds bureaucracy to right intention. What I mean by that is, yes, being able to seize firearms, seize cash, seize vehicles, and so forth is a positive, but it’s still wrapped around a number of bureaucratic, unwarranted processes. We feel that we can, and should, go further.

As we’ve heard from others, this bill should be about banning gang patches, it should be about non-associative powers, it should be about dispersal notices from gangs; instead, we have this bill. But, as I say, with the earlier one, when we were talking around criminal recovery, it’s not bad—it’s not a bad bill. We’re happy to support it, because it’s a little step in the right direction, but it’s certainly my encouragement, in closing this speech, that the Labour Government will take crime seriously and demonstrate that by bringing actually serious, substantial legislation to this House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The House is suspended and will resume at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 9.57 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)