Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill amends the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act. The Act creates a civil forfeiture regime for property derived from significant criminal activity. While our existing regime is highly effective, these changes will further improve our success and efficiency at confiscating property derived from organised and transnational criminal activity.

There are five key points I want to make in this third reading speech. The first is the purpose of this legislation. In effect, and putting it into plain and simple English language, we’re going after gang leaders and the facilitators of organised crime, and hitting them where it hurts—in their pockets. Gangs and organised criminals will always attempt to avoid the reach of the law by hiding their illegal profits, and the Government will continue to respond to ensure that crime does not pay.

The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Bill was introduced into this Parliament 10 years ago. It has become a very effective piece of legislation to ensure that those that seek to gain benefit and profit from crime are—rightly—penalised. But over the previous decade, the police have identified an area in particular which, with the evolution of knowledge of these organised criminal entities, has been that organised gangs have sought to put their profits into the names and into the places where it simply cannot be found. Therefore, this bill seeks to close that gap.

Now, our police have a strong reputation internationally for their work with seizing criminal assets, and these changes, essentially, allow them to reach a little bit further. There are two parts to why we’re doing this: one, to ensure that we’re closing off the gaps where those in those organised gangs have worked out where they can hide assets procured from illegal activities but, secondly, to protect the families of those—the ones that are loved by those that are in those criminal organisations. We know, the police know, and those of us that have lived our lives within the communities that understand the nature of gangs and criminal organisations know that there are those that are in their intimate circle, their loved ones, where they are being forced, by dint of their relationships to members in these criminal organised groups—they have been put under pressure to hide these assets. Well, we say no more—we say it’s time to cut off that route.

What we are doing here is that this is part and parcel of our Government’s continued multifaceted approach to tackling the harm caused by criminal organisations. This is the next step in the Government’s work to curb crime and make our communities safer. It will mean that not only do we have more front-line police than ever before but they have the powers to shut down these activities that are causing harm in all of our backyards, and this goes hand in hand with the Government’s support for work within our communities to stop our young people becoming involved in crime and criminal activity in the first place.

Across multiple initiatives across the justice sector, the Government has put over 1,500 more police officers on the front line, we have rolled out the front-line response model, the Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities programme, and we have rolled out the transnational organised crime strategy. We have delivered nearly 1,000 fog cannons so retailers have an immediate deterrent to theft, and ramped up further support for retailers. We’ve established the National Retail Investigation Support Unit. We’ve launched and expanded a Better Pathways package, which aims to place more young people in education, training, or work, to drive down youth crime and the participation of youth in criminal organisations and activities. We’ve put in place a new circuit-breaker response for agencies dealing with high-risk youth offenders. We’ve enacted the Firearm Prohibition Orders Legislation Act and increased the capacity of Te Pae Oranga providers and police to provide additional referrals for rangatahi who have experienced family harm.

This bill complements the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, which will be going through its second reading this afternoon, and that provides new targeted warrant and additional search powers to find and seize weapons from gang members during a gang conflict. It expands the range of offences where police can go after their cars, their motorbikes, and their bling. It increases to up to five years’ prison for a new offence for discharging a gun with intent to intimidate. It befuddled me, as the new Minister of Justice, to find out that we had simply inadequate deterrent measures by way of our penalties to deter people away from shooting armed weapons into public spaces.

We are also providing police and other enforcement agencies the ability to seize cash over $10,000 when found in suspicious circumstances. Like I said earlier, watches, bling, jewellery, precious metals and stones, motor vehicles, and boats are all being added to the list of high-value goods prohibited for sale for over a specified value.

In my introductory remarks, I talked about how there has been pressure on loved ones who are associated with those that choose to participate in criminal organisations, but particularly where our real focus is is on the leadership of those criminal organisations and enterprises. We know that they exploit personal relationships to hide and stash goods. That’s the nature of how, one, it speaks to the efficiency and the effectiveness of the criminal proceeds recovery scheme, but it also shows us that over the past decade, people have wised up to what they can do. So what we’ve sought to do here is ensure that there are appropriate safeguards in place for those that are associates. We’ve sought to define what constitutes an “associate”. It has to be somebody that is more than just a mere acquaintance who’s passed somebody on the street; there needs to be a real and tangible association.

The value of the property that cannot be explained needs to be worth more than $30,000. Now, in my opening remarks on this legislation when we introduced it, I said that we were really open to hearing whether or not that threshold was appropriate—was it set at the right level? Through the course of the select committee, by and large, we heard both views—that it was too high; that it was not enough—and I want to thank the select committee and, in particular, the former chair of the Justice Committee and now Minister of Police, the Hon Ginny Andersen, for enabling some amendments there to ensure that it’s the cumulative amount of the property to result in that $30,000 threshold, and that is indeed the one that we are passing.

We also know that—and I guess it’s been something that’s become clear over the past decade, since this regime has been in place—we do have those that have procured goods and property through illegal activity who seek to flee overseas, and it’s been difficult for the reach of the law to be able to get into those assets. Through the legislative fixes, and through this bill that will become law today and tonight, those issues will be addressed. We will be able to reach into those properties where the police know it’s been procured illegally. We’ll also be able to reach into other regimes such as the KiwiSaver scheme, which in certain circumstances over the life of this bill has been shown to be a place where illegally procured moneys have been stashed.

By and large, what our Government has sought to do in this area of law reform—we want to honour the late Chester Borrows and replicate his words. He introduced poor policy, and he made up for that in his later life. Banning gang patches simply wasn’t evidence-based and what we are doing on this side of the House is evidence-based, and I’m pleased to see this legislation go through this afternoon.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The National Party does support the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill, although we have to look across the other side of the House and see a Government that is completely muddled in its approach to crime. So today, we’ve had the Minister of Justice come in wearing her “I’m tough on crime” hat—that is the hat that she’s wearing today—but it’s the same day that another Government Minister has blamed all the violent crime on white cis males, whatever that is, and has had a very strange approach to law and order, to blame one particular ethnic group for all the crime and refuse to apologise for it. So we’re having a muddled approach to law and order. Then, another time, we have the Prime Minister—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Can you muddle your way back to the bill—

Yes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): —please, the Hon Paul Goldsmith. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. At the same time, on another day, we’ll have the Prime Minister going to Hawke’s Bay and downplaying fears that the community has about crime. So on that particular day, they had a different approach; today, they’ve got the “tough on crime” approach. But then it’s very confusing, because the only other legislation of substance that the Government has done on law and order has been to repeal the three-strikes legislation.

So, on one day, they say that “Our sentences are too tough for our worst repeat offenders, and we’re going to shorten the sentences for those people.”, but then on another day, like today, they say that “We’re tough on crime, and we’re going to make the gangsters pay.”, and I think that is part of the problem. So if you are a gangster in New Zealand, you’re looking and you’re trying to figure out what the Government is doing, and you can’t figure it out because one day they say “We’re going to make sure that you don’t go to prison for longer if you’re a repeat serious offender.”, on another day they say “We’ll give you some extra money to run some meth programmes in the Hawke’s Bay.”, and then on another day, the—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member will actually talk about this bill. The way that he’s actually giving his speech right now is a general debate, but bring it back to this particular bill.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. I did note that the Minister of Justice gave a very wide-ranging speech on a whole range of justice issues and she listed about 15 things that they’d done not related to this bill whatsoever, and so I assume that this was a reasonably broad debate on how this bill fitted within the wider justice policy. Is that not the case?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): This is the third reading of this particular bill.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order, Madam Speaker, just to support my colleague’s point. I listened very carefully to the Minister’s address, because in the debate we should be able to get up and respond to that as the Opposition, and she made a very broad-ranging speech. She talked about youth crime, she talked about youth offenders, she talked about gang leaders, and she talked about the banning of gang patches, and so I would have thought that, as the Opposition, we were entitled to also be able to respond to those comments.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Speaking to the point of order, this is actually a particular bill; it is about gangs. What I’m actually saying to the member is bring it back to the bill. You haven’t even spoken about this particular bill.

I have.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Talk about the bill. Before you actually talk about the world and all the other issues about crime, talk about this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I can talk about this bill, and the purpose of this bill is to make it tougher on gang members, in particular, but people who have made money out of crime. The purpose of this bill is to make it a little bit easier for Government agencies—enforcement agencies—to get some of that money back through the proceeds of crime.

The previous National Government set up a regime where we were able to go after the proceeds of crime and say, “You’ve made a lot of money. We’ll get it off you and take it off you if it is money that’s been made out of the proceeds of crime.”, and then what we’ve got here is the next iteration of what is, effectively, a game of cat and mouse, because the criminals are crafty. They find some way of putting the money somewhere else—to associated parents, to family members—and this legislation is the next step in that game to say, “Well, hang on a moment. If you hand it over to an associate and they can’t come up with any justification of how they’ve got that money and we can show that it’s coming through and it can’t be explained, then we’ll go after that money as well, particularly if it’s over a threshold of $30,000.”

That’s the point of this legislation, and, in so far as it goes, we welcome it for sending a message that crime shouldn’t pay and that the people of New Zealand don’t tolerate it, and they will make an effort to come after you and get some of that money back. So the message that this bill is sending is that this Government will come after the worst criminals. The point I’m making is that it’s confusing because if you are a criminal who has done well out of the proceeds of crime and is sitting on a lot of money, you will see this legislation and think, “OK, all right. The Government is going to come after me and my associates.”, but then it is confusing because while the Government is doing that, at the same time, they are reducing sentences for our worst repeat offenders by repealing three strikes, and they are also giving money to the very same gang organisations to run meth programmes—which nobody can quite understand. You’ve also got a Prime Minister standing up in the Hawke’s Bay when everybody is concerned about law and order, and saying there’s nothing to worry about, downplaying it, and pretending that there isn’t an issue.

So people are confused—rightly—about where this Government is coming from when it comes to law and order and when it comes to crime. They’re even more confused if they listen to the coalition partner, the Greens, who stand up and say that the one thing we need to do is that it’s outrageous that if you’re on the run and you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest, we take your benefit off you, and we should change the rules so you can still get your benefit when you’re on the run and you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest.

So people are quite confused about where this Government is coming from, because they are sending a message that they’re tough on crime, but, really, they’re soft on crime. More importantly, they are soft on the causes of crime, because they don’t do anything around the long-term issues such as truancy, housing, and all those sorts of things—and, Madam Speaker, you would be quite right, if I was to go further down that route, to try and draw me back to this particular piece of legislation. So the National Party supports this effort, in so far as it goes, to give the enforcement agencies a greater ability to come after the people who have made money out of crime and to claw back some of those funds.

Now, there was an argument about the threshold. The threshold set was $30,000, and we rightly made the point that, well, that’s great. So your Harley-Davidson, which is worth $25,000—you can keep that, because it’s not a significant proceed of crime. It’s a small one, so what you do is you give your Harley-Davidson to your mother-in-law and it’s hers, and everything’s sweet. Well, that’s not very effective and is pretty easily dealt with. One of the changes that we insisted on, and it was made during the select committee process, was to make the point that the $30,000 is a cumulative figure. So if you have two Harley-Davidsons, for example, and, collectively, they got over the $30,000 limit, then they would both be caught. But we would have argued for a lower limit—we would have argued for $10,000 and really put the pressure on—and so the Government was a bit mixed in its signals there.

I’d also agree with the changes around KiwiSaver. It would be a bad state of affairs if one way to keep your money if you have ill-gotten funds is to stick it into a KiwiSaver account, and that was regarded as sacrosanct and we’d never get into that. I’m all for people saving for their retirement, I’m all for strengthening the KiwiSaver regime, and I think that’s appropriate and fine, but it shouldn’t be used as a “get out of jail free” card when it comes to ill-gotten gains so that they could never be taken off you. So we agree with that thing.

But I come back, Madam Speaker, to my overall message, which is that this is a Government that is muddled on crime. It’s sending mixed signals, and that is why we have a situation in this country where many New Zealanders perceive that the law and order situation has got worse, and it’s not just a perception, because there has been a clear increase in violent crime over the past few years. There’s been a massive increase in gunshot crime, there’s been a massive increase in ram raids, and all these things—some of which bring extra resources in; some of them don’t—people are rightly concerned about, and they look to the Government and they ask themselves, “Well, what is this Government’s approach to crime?” They see that the only target in the broad justice sector that has been articulated by a Minister as the thing that they’re trying to deal with is a 30 percent reduction in prison numbers.

So they see crime is going up like that—they see violent crime going up about 40 percent—and they see prison numbers going down like that. They try and reconcile those two and they can’t work it out, and they can’t work it out because it makes no sense. It makes no sense at all, other than an ideologically driven reduction in prison numbers, regardless or irrespective of what’s happening on the ground and in the community.

So I come back to my basic point, which is that this is a bill that we support. It will make some difference. It sends a message that society will not tolerate criminals making a whole lot of money and keeping it and that we will come after you. We’ve given new tools for that to happen today, and it may help a little bit in that game of cat and mouse that we continue to play, sadly, with people who seek to make money out of the misery of others and their fellow New Zealanders. We support it, but we just do wish that the Government was more consistent in its approach to law and order, and more consistent in the message that it sends to the criminal fraternity in this country who seek to make money from the misery of others—and that’s our message. But, overall, this is a bill that will help in some small way. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. This is a bill that will make New Zealand safer, and it does it by backing our police to do their job. It gives police additional powers—stronger powers—to seize assets from criminals. In a nutshell, it hits criminals where it hurts the most—in their pockets. It flips the onus, quite simply, that instead of police having to engage forensic accountants to comb through accounts and prove that an asset was obtained illegally or through illicit means, it is then put upon that person associated with a criminal network to prove that their high-value asset was, in fact, obtained legitimately. So it makes the task of police much easier to restrain illegal assets.

Now, I think that it’s important to note in this space and acknowledge Mr Goldsmith and the fact that he is voting for this legislation, and a potential reason why he is supporting the legislation was that this piece of legislation was, in fact, in National’s gang action plan back in 2008, but, unfortunately, it was not delivered upon in the nine years that they were in Government, so it’s good to see this bill passing into law now. This bill will form part of a suite of legislation that will give police the rules and the tools to fight organised crime. Legislation that has already been passed to give police additional powers in this space is the firearm prohibition orders bill—another bill that was listed in the 2008 National Gang Action Plan and not delivered upon.

The other piece of legislation I would like to refer to will receive its second reading, hopefully, in the next few days while the House is sitting, and that’s the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, which includes new powers to seize firearms, to seize highvalue goods, and also to target vehicles that are being used by organised criminal groups in motorcades. This change in the law will make it easier for police not only to restrain and forfeit property of gangs but also to help cripple organised criminal networks, and this will work quite closely alongside the fact that police will have 700 dedicated front-line officers specifically to organised crime.

Having this legislative change alongside more police will give ongoing operations such as Operation Cobalt more ability to continue the good work they do to seize weapons, seize drugs, and arrest organised criminal members. We’ve already seen record numbers in that space, and with this legislation alongside additional investment in the front line, we will continue to see results in that space.

This Government has backed the police, and that was part of a Budget bid in last year’s Budget that invested $94 million to cripple organised criminal networks—the single biggest injection that we have seen in New Zealand. That investment will continue to see results as we see the front line being appropriately resourced to tackle organised criminal groups.

The one other power I would like to mention is that power specific to respond to transnational offending. Just today, I spoke at the transnational organised crime conference, where groups from across the world have come to New Zealand to meet and share ideas on how we tackle transnational organised crime. This additional power will be welcomed. It will enable that when we have someone who is offshore and is using money-laundering and other tactics and using New Zealand as a platform, it will enable police to restrain an item, even if that person is offshore, and require them to justify and verify where they got that asset from, whether it be a house or a high-value good in some other form. If they are unable to do that, then police will have additional powers to also restrain and forfeit that particular item. So it enables us to cooperate and work more comprehensively with our transnational organised criminal partners to tackle crime in this space.

To conclude, this bill delivers a law that will hit criminals where it hurts—in their pockets—by crippling them financially. That is a far smarter way of working and to dismantle organised criminal networks. It is just one bill in a suite of legislation that works to make our communities safer by tackling organised crime. This, alongside additional police, more tactical resourcing, and investment in that space should give New Zealand strong confidence that this is a Government that puts New Zealand’s safety first by backing our police to have the rules and the tools to do the job. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Firstly, I just want to say that it’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the third reading of the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill. I agree with the Minister of Justice and I agree with the previous speakers that these bills are important, and we do support them because we want to continue to apply pressure to gangs and organised criminal groups inside our country.

I’ve been very clear that in relation to this bill, although we’ve worked together—and I acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee now, Vanushi Walters, who is in the House. We have tried to work together across the committee to strengthen this bill. Ultimately, for me personally, I was completely aligned with Chris Cahill and the Police Association in being very clear that if we really wanted to have an effective bill and if we really wanted to provide the police with a tool, then we would have reduced the threshold from $30,000 down to at least $10,000.

There have been some changes made around the ability to have a cumulative test applied, but, ultimately, we could have made this bill much stronger and a lot more effective for the front-line officers who are stretched to breaking point at the moment in trying to deal with a massive increase in crime over the last four to five years, and we could have done better. We could have done better as a select committee and we could have done better as a House to give them better tools to go out there and fight and deal with what they are currently, which we all agree in this House is gang leaders that are out of control.

The Minister sort of referred to gang leaders, and I’d just like to make a comment on that. Gang leaders in this country have never been as strong as they currently are. There’s been a 50 percent increase in gang members over the last five years. They’ve got more members, they’ve got more avenues of being able to launder money, they’ve got a greater ability to be able to hide assets, they’ve managed to extend and grow their international networks, they’ve become more violent, and they’re more likely to carry firearms. So, unfortunately, today in New Zealand, gang leaders are much stronger and have a lot more influence than what they did five years ago.

They’re more sophisticated. You’ll see them often out now on social media running PR exercises trying to respond and help with the state of emergency. Let me be very clear: they are, quite simply, PR exercises to try and pull the wool over people’s eyes. These are nothing more than organised crime entities that are out there, fully focused on peddling methamphetamine and drugs, using standover tactics and intimidation, having a presence in licensed premises, theft, conversion, and money-laundering. That’s what their core business is, and that’s what it will continue to be.

I want to just touch very quickly on this. The Minister also raised youth crime. Youth and juvenile offending, as we’ve seen, especially in the last 12 months, is on a sharp increase. A big part of that—and I’ve always said, and there’s been many people in the academics and everyone else, and the hand-wringers say, “Oh, these youth and juvenile offenders—it’s just random. They’re not organised. The gangs have got nothing to do with it.” Make no mistake: the adult gangs are actively involved in working with these youth and juvenile offenders, because having a youth or juvenile offender go out and do their dirty work insulates them from the adult criminal justice system, and they’ll continue to recruit and use these young people.

It’s very sad that in our country—in New Zealand, which should be the safest country in the world—we have lost some of our innocence, because now when we talk about juvenile and youth offenders, we’re not talking about them going out and meddling in a bit of shoplifting, getting in with the wrong crowd a bit, and sort of pushing the boundaries; we’re talking about youth and juvenile offenders that are exposed to a constant diet of violence on social media and that are posting on social media and goading other youth offenders and youth gangs to go out and commit worse crimes.

We had the awful situation in Beach Haven about two weeks ago, where a young guy in his mid-20s, who was trying to get home in the evening like most people do, had had a minor fender-bender, and the two offenders in that vehicle, a 14-year-old and a 17yearold, allegedly went back—because I’m conscious of the fact that this is still in front of the courts—to that vehicle and stabbed that young guy while he was still sitting in the vehicle’s seat.

💬 Shanan Halbert: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I appreciate that the member Mark Mitchell is raising the issue of Beach Haven. I do understand that it is before the courts, which the member acknowledged. The details that he is putting out in this House this evening, in my view, are not accurate, and so I’d just ask him to consider that and maybe just come back to the bill and avoid that particular example.

Speaking to the point of order, Madam—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I haven’t made a ruling on that point of order, but I would ask the member to just keep to the bill, and matters that are still before the courts—I would prefer that you don’t even cover allegations. Please just go back to the bill.

Just speaking to the point, though, Madam Speaker, the issues that I’ve raised today are nothing that haven’t already been in the public arena and have already been reported.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): They are, however, still within the court system right now, with—

Yes, and that’s why I referred to alleged offenders.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Yes. Please just don’t refer to allegations; just come back to the bill. Thank you.

So the point that I was making, Madam Speaker—because I am speaking to the point that was raised by the Minister around high-risk youth offenders. The fact of the matter is we have come out with some very strong policies on this side of the House, so instead of mocking them, which is what the Government did, I’d actually ask them to look at them seriously and recognise the fact that—certainly, the one around a youth military academy is directed specifically at youth offenders aged from 15 to 17.

I’m seeing looks of horror on the other side of the House that this fascinates me. I’ve been involved in what’s called the Limited Service Volunteer Programme for 12 years. It targets young people from 17 to 24 that are off the rails, they’re making bad decisions in their lives, and some of them have been in prison. They go into the Limited Service Volunteer Programme, which is Defence Force - led with support from the Ministry of Social Development and police, and 70 percent of them get their lives turned around and come into employment and are successful. They have the best role models and mentors that we offer as a country around them and they get proper investment in them.

Quite simply, what we’ve said with regard to those 15- to 17-year-olds, who often have the adult gangs’ hooks in them, who are making very bad decisions and poor decisions in their lives, and who are a risk not only to themselves but the communities that they live in, is that we would take them and we’d put them into a programme and we’d extrapolate that over 12 months, and we would invest heavily in their education. We’d get them making good decisions in their lives so that they’d have some aspiration and that they’d be set up and equipped to take advantage of all the opportunities that this country offers. That is how you would start to deal with some of those really tough, crunchy issues around youth offending.

I just wanted to raise the issue that the previous speaker, Ginny Andersen, raised around firearms prohibition bills. She spoke about the firearms prohibition bill and said that National had failed to bring a bill to the House. Well, we’ve brought three members’ bills to the House over the last six years. Every single one of them was voted down by the Labour Government, and then what did the Labour Government do? They bring a—[Interruption] Well, that’s exactly what happened. So what did the Labour Government do? They brought in a firearms prohibition order that’s got no additional warrant for search powers—it’s basically useless. So I’ll be very interested to see just how much the firearms prohibition order that was passed in this House is actually practically applied and used by our front-line police officers, because it certainly doesn’t give the ability to—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): In the last two minutes—

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): —can the member come back to this particular bill.

Well, I’m referring to the issues that the Minister raised.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): And you have actually addressed that, so I’m now asking you to come back to this particular bill.

Yes. Well, there was another issue that the Minister raised, and the last issue that she raised when she was talking to her bill was banning gang patches. She raised the Hon Chester Borrows, and I want to acknowledge Chester—rest in peace. But she raised gang patches, and let me tell the House something: I myself took a bill through this House about six years ago that banned that banned gang patches—

💬 Hon Barbara Edmonds: Point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to bring your attention to Speaker’s ruling 129/2, in relation to a third reading of a bill, that “the member should summarise and discuss the bill in front of the House, not what another party might do in place of that [bill].” I’m just wondering if you’d give some consideration to that, please.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Thank you for that assistance. However, I have been trying to get the member to come back to this particular bill at a third reading. Please do in the last minute.

Just seeking your advice, Madam Speaker, I would like some genuine advice on this. The Minister herself raised in speaking to her own bill—this is her bill, and the Minister raised and spoke about the banning of gang patches.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): She did—

Why do I not have the opportunity to respond to that?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): —and there are other issues that she raised, and you have also spoken about those. I am now asking you, as the Speaker in this House, because it is a third reading, to please come back to this particular bill—in your very brief one minute.

OK, I’m just wondering why the Minister wasn’t brought back to the bill and why the Opposition members are being asked to be bought back to the bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Most of the speeches, they were really relevant—they were speaking to the bill most of the time. I let you actually cover other things in the bill. I’m just asking you in your last minute to please come back to this particular bill.

Well, all I’m going to say in my last minute is quite simply this. It is that for Labour members to stand up and say, “We’re being tough on crime” with a bill like this—to me, it’s sending a message to our front-line police officers that, actually, in this House, we’re not willing to give them the tools that they really need for this bill to be effective.

We’ve put a bill through, and we all agree that recovery of assets is really important—and our police are very good at doing that, and they’re very successful with their prosecutions in court. But we’ve left a threshold of $30,000 in this bill, and so that’s going to make their job much harder. They’re going to have to try and work out and calculate and get an estimate of actually what the value of the goods are that these gangs have, and we shouldn’t have done that. In this House, we had the opportunity to give them a bill that genuinely allowed them to go out there and be quick and efficient in actually taking down these gang leaders that the Minister was talking about.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to make some brief remarks in relation to this bill. I do want to comment on the select committee process that I was part of, and, in particular, to thank Ginny Andersen for ushering this bill through that process. I’ve said this before of the Justice Committee, but I do think we take our role very seriously, and the role of select committee is a very sacred one in the democratic process. We’re tasked with the difficult challenge, often, of walking into the room with open minds and really wrestling with some of the tensions—the difficult tensions—that we need to make a call on.

So for those who haven’t read through the select committee report and who are interested in this area, I suggest they do. But also a number of colleagues have referred to the Police Association submission, which I did think made some excellent points, and, again, it didn’t attempt to engage with some of the tensions.

One of the big tensions for many of us in the room was the inclusion of the term “associate” and exactly what was meant by that. The Police Association made the excellent point that section 5 puts some boundaries around that term but also—and perhaps more important to me and others in the room—they made the point that section 51 of the principal Act allows the judiciary to exclude a respondent’s property from asset forfeiture in the case of hardship. A number of us were very concerned about that, but it was clear that there’s already legislative protection in that area.

The second tension was one that’s been mentioned by my colleague Mark Mitchell, and that was the threshold for seizure. But I do think we met that balance in terms of applying the cumulative standard to that $30k, but still keeping it at $30k.

The final tension which really stood out for me was the requirement for formal evaluation at the point of restraint, and I think, as a committee, we had a really good discussion about how, practically, that would be quite difficult for the police to do, but it may also trigger an alert to the respondent, where they would dispose of the said property. So where we landed was inserting a clause which confirmed that the Commissioner of Police would only need an estimate at that stage, and then once you have restraint, a more formal evaluation could occur.

So it was an extremely robust process. We did discuss in detail across the National Party colleagues and the ACT Party colleagues where we would sit. I do think we’ve come to a fair result, and I commend this bill to the House.

Oh, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call Golriz Ghahraman.

Sorry, it felt like the Hon Mark Mitchell was taking a second call—God forbid! Sorry, Madam Speaker.

It isn’t a pleasure to rise to speak to this bill, actually; it’s a bit of a disappointment, as the Greens speaker and former member of the criminal bar. This is a bill that everybody who has spoken so far has commended as if it’s going to do something meaningful in the criminal justice system by way of somehow disincentivising crime. It is, in fact, a bill that does a lot of what the previous National Government did around lowering due process standards, lacking focus on actual criminal activity, and certainly ignoring all the evidence of what, in fact, causes crime. In lots of ways, it becomes more harmful, the more you think about how we focus our energy and congratulate ourselves as a House of Representatives every time we bestow more and more and more powers upon the police force without focusing on what in fact it means to be tough on crime itself, which is to say that we prevent it.

This bill goes so far as to allow us, as a Government, as a society, to remove property from people based on it’s being tainted. It’s so alarming to me, as someone who’s come through a justice system context where things normally have to be proved with evidence, to say that we are talking about a standard as vague and amorphous as tainted property being removed, and that property tainted by crime—not obtained as a direct result of a proven crime; just tainted—can be owned by someone who is an associate of one or more members of an organised criminal group.

So what does “associate” mean? We’ve heard that, apparently, there are boundaries around that in section 5. What does “tainted” mean? Don’t know—we’ll have to litigate that out somehow. Who is going to be litigating that? People on legal aid, apparently, are just going to rely on a broken legal aid system to fight back against who the police happen to see as being an associate of a criminal group and whose property is tainted by crime.

So we’re very, very far, here in this bill, from talking about actual crime or criminals, if that’s a term that we want to use in terms of who we are disincentivising and what kind of activities we’re sanctioning—very far. We’re also very far from the usual standards of criminal justice proceedings, which say that the standard of proof is beyond reasonable doubt and that the onus of proof remains on the Crown from the beginning of the proceedings until the end.

The standard of proof here is balance of probabilities. So it’s not asking was there actual criminal activity, was there an actual association, and was there property that was obtained as a result of that criminal activity, but is it probably the case, and, of course, then we come to the onus, which is reversed. So there is a presumption that your property was tainted and that you are an associate of a criminal group—probably—and if you want to reverse that probable assumption, you have to prove it.

So this bill isn’t actually talking about criminals or crime or keeping communities safe. It’s not about disincentivising violent crime, at all. It seems to be a lot about either revenue gathering by way of taking people’s property, or what seems to be more the way that we’re going in this House, unfortunately—on both sides of this House—about making politicians look tough on crime. It’s making us look like we’re doing something about crime.

What’s kind of heartbreaking about the fact that we’ve chosen to lower the standards, reverse the onus, and use amorphous and unclear words is that we actually have a lot of hard evidence and data about what, in fact, causes crime. If we say that criminal offending has gone up this year, or in whatever period we’re using, and if we’re saying violence is an actual issue that we need to address—well, great! We’ve got the evidence of what causes our communities to become unsafe and what causes violence—we know that.

Unfortunately, instead of it becoming a revenue-gathering exercise or something that lends itself well to knee-jerk simplified responses like this bill, it requires us to invest resource, and it’s weird because—actually, I did hear Paul Goldsmith very briefly refer to this—we can look at what’s happened over the past year. We have a cost of living crisis. We have poverty and inequality on the rise at record levels. We have a mental health crisis. We might have a truancy crisis, if anyone could agree on the stats. But what we know in the criminal justice sector, based on all the research, is that when young people come into the custody of police and then are sentenced to detention, 89 percent of those young people—that’s under-19-year-olds—are then diagnosed with a serious learning disability. So investing in inclusive education is a criminal justice response.

We have mental health, and addiction treatment, we have inclusive education, we have housing and incomes—all as categories of criminal justice responses that we know that the data shows would help keep our communities safe. Instead of talking about tainted associate property that maybe comes from some crime that we haven’t proved or can’t even name, we could actually look at the evidence and listen to the experts, and listen to the people on the ground.

So, unfortunately, this isn’t a good bill. Unfortunately, it’s just in line with an old pattern of politicians doing what makes us look slightly tough or good, and I am disappointed that this Government has gone that way.

We have the solutions, and next term, with a bigger Green heart in Government, we’ll get to those. I don’t commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand in support of the third reading of the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill, and before I start on my address, I’d just like to talk to some of the issues that the Green Party member Golriz Ghahraman brought up. I actually understand exactly what she says when she talks about, you know, “This is all about the criminal proceeds and it’s about the punishment, and we’re not looking at the causes of crime.”—and I understand what you’re saying there. But on reflection, I too have to think, well, the Government, and the Green Party with them, have had five years of being able to look at what it is that causes crime, and then try to implement some of their ideas on how to address it.

What this particular bill is about is how we deal with those assets of the ill-gotten gains and how we look after victims of crime, because from the Green Party, what I hear about is the criminals and we very rarely hear about the victims. I would hope that rather than it being purely a revenue-driven bill that we put through, maybe some of these proceeds of crimes could actually go back to the victims as well, but that would be another bill for another day.

The purpose of this bill is to prevent individuals from profiteering from significant criminal activity—not just any criminal activity; it’s got to be significant criminal activity—and we’ll do this by improving our civil forfeiture regime. ACT agrees that we do need to target the illicit profits of leaders and facilitators of organised crime and transnational offending, just as it is outlined in the introduction to this bill.

Throughout the select committee process and the committee of the whole House stage, we fleshed out—as my colleague across the floor there Vanushi Walters talked about—all the different areas within the bill that we went through. We did have some little disagreements, but we pretty much came up with the agreement across the House—well, across the select committee—as to how we were going to proceed with this. We have also recorded in the Hansard, through the committee of the whole House stage, our expectations on how certain clauses within this bill are meant to be worked by both police in their application, and by the courts when they deliver their seizure orders.

It’s really important, I think, across the entire House that when we talk of taking people’s assets, of forfeiture, and of seizure—and we are also including associates—that we did have significant debate around what an associate was and who could be caught up in this regime, because quite often it would be family members. You know the old saying “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family”, and to have your assets taken because of something that a family member has done, of course, is not anyone’s ideal way of making law.

So we’re changing the way that we address criminal profiteering by creating a two-tier restraining and forfeiture order system so that we can make restraining orders against organised criminal groups, who have been structuring their affairs to avoid the existing restraining and forfeiture legislation, and I would note that it is important that we have this now. There has been over a 50 percent increase in gang members in New Zealand. We’ve had a rise of gang members higher than we’ve had police recruitments.

We’ve had a promised 1,800 police that would be delivered by 2020, 2021, 2022, and we’re now hoping it’s by election 2023, but the reality is that the criminals and the proceeds of crime are becoming more attractive to other potential gang members—or prospectors, as they’re called—than what we can get by recruiting police. So we need to make sure that we take that significant criminal activity of theirs and we make it harder for them to utilise their funds and their criminal activities for recruitment, and we focus on making sure we have a robust and strong police force able to tackle them, as well.

I’m left to think of how our organised crime has changed over the last few years. You know, we used to just have thuggery in our gangs around New Zealand; now it’s become organised thuggery, and we don’t even see a lot of our criminals even walking around in patches any more. I’ve seen some that are driving the latest Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs and they’re wearing suits—

💬 Shanan Halbert: Back to the bill, my friend—back to the bill.

—so we need to make sure that when we do go after them—and I am talking about the bill, because when we are talking about people that are driving around in a Mercedes-Benz, these are significant criminal activities obviously purchased by criminal funds. So this is relevant to the bill.

The forfeiture orders will now fall under two types: either type 1 or type 2, and type 1 relates to the organised criminal groups. If the court is satisfied that a person who has had a type 1 restraining order applied against them has been either a member or an associate of an organised criminal group and has property that they cannot explain financing for where the value of the questionably obtained property exceeds the current $30,000 restraining threshold and that the property isn’t tainted, then that order is likely to be successful. But the onus is on the applicant—which is the police—to show the court that the criteria has been fully met.

So it’s not like we can just apply for this type 1 order on anyone. It has to be significant criminal activity and it has to meet these other thresholds, including the $30,000 accumulated asset amount that they are wanting to forfeit. The respondent, in turn, may be required to actually prove that their purchases were legitimate and not from the illgotten gains of significant criminal activity, should they indeed wish to keep them.

I note, again, that in my member’s bill—which did not proceed past the first reading—we could have approached two key areas of concern to society within this legislation, with the two areas being gun crime by unlicensed criminals, and an asset or financial deterrent to possession of illegally held firearms. Perhaps that’s something we can look at in the future to make this legislation even stronger for our victims and to ensure that illegally held firearms stop being used in the way that they are in our communities. The $30,000 threshold would not have been required, in this instance, to be met if a firearm or arms were found during a raid on an organised criminal group and that firearm was held illegally. So I do think it is something that we should address because we’re hearing daily reports, again, of firearms being used in criminal activity.

The type 2 forfeiture orders must meet the same criteria as type 1, in that they’ve got to be a member of an organised criminal group, they can’t explain their assets based on their income, and the value is over the $30k threshold. But type 2 orders must be made on specific property, and it will exclude the value that can be explained by the respondent’s legitimate property. If the respondent can prove that ownership is legit, then an order must not be made.

Under the type 2 regime, orders will not be made where it’s not in the interests of justice to do so. For example, taking the 1980s car away from a mum of four because she cannot show how she legitimately had the funds to purchase it and it is likely that over time she actually could have legitimately paid for it, think of a disclosure source order—sorry, I’m getting mixed up in my own notes. When we have a mother who has the vehicle, the 1980s car—I’m just—bugger the notes, sorry.

When you’ve got a mum that has four kids, she’s got a 1980s car, and she can’t show how she legitimately paid for it, but it can be shown that she did work—and probably could—she’s likely to keep it. But if she’s the one driving around in the latest MercedesBenz and she’s on a benefit with her four kids and can’t prove how she could afford to do it, then that becomes part of the type 2 asset forfeiture.

A further change to this bill was agreed when we discussed self-incriminating statements that could be made by respondents when responding to production orders, examination orders, or disclosure of source orders. The change we made is in allowing those self-incriminating statements to be used in any civil proceeding under the Act. But we also directed a change to the bill so that respondents are made aware of this when they are provided a disclosure source order. This change to the criminal proceeds Act will take a tougher stance on asset forfeiture for significant criminal activity, and we’re proud to support that.

Thank you. The time has come for us to break for dinner. I will resume the Chair at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be the first one to kick this one off after our dinner break. I’d like to begin, as this is a third reading, by thanking all of our submitters who took time to present or write in to the Justice Committee, as well as the officials and advisers and my colleagues on the select committee for their mahi on the bill. It has been evident from the previous contributions that there were some complex issues to consider in this bill, and the select committee worked its way through those challenges very competently and brought the bill to the House in the improved shape that it is in now.

This bill contributes to the Government’s election manifesto commitment to respond to organised crime by ensuring the enforcement agency has the appropriate powers to seize the proceeds of crime, disrupt organised criminal offending, and hold its ringleaders to account. As Minister Allan said so eloquently in her speech, “We say no more.”

Currently, organised criminals can structure their affairs to avoid their assets being restrained or forfeited. They do this by creating distance between themselves and their assets by putting property in the name of associates. The Minister has already explained in her speech that the definition of “associate” was one of those complex issues that the select committee had to consider, and there were several submitters, in fact, that gave their views on this particular point, with one of those being the New Zealand Law Society.

The bill is about ensuring that crime doesn’t pay and that there are, in fact, major consequences for criminal and gang activity. The bill is the next step in the Government’s work to curb crime and make our communities safer, and, as the Minister of Police, Ginny Andersen, said before, it will mean that not only will we have more front-line police than ever before but also those police will have greater powers to hit the gangs where it hurts. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.

I call Simon O’Connor for a five-minute call.

Oh, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s always good to let the House know that I’ll only speak for five minutes, or close to it—it won’t be a 10-minute oration.

Look, National—as per the earlier speakers—is supporting this bill. I’ve used the quote before, and members will know it. Dr Emily Henderson will know this quote from Voltaire: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”, and, ultimately, we think this is a good bill. It’s not a perfect bill. It’s not the absolute—I don’t know—sinecure or solution which the Government is putting forward. There are positives to this bill, but it does not go far enough, and I suppose that at this third reading, the other message I’d like to put out to the public is that in some ways this is just a very light touch on what should be some more substantial—again, to repeat that: more substantial—legal changes required.

So the idea that we can better recover ill-gotten funds from those New Zealanders involved in crimes—particularly gangs—is a good thing. I don’t think anyone in this House disagrees with that. I’m no lawyer, but it’s a bit of a legal switch from normally the onus of proof being usually on the Crown to prove that you have gotten these gains inappropriately, shall we say, but this bill says that, ultimately, we go to the person who’s got thousands of dollars of cash or motorcycles, houses, or whatever gains, and say, “How on earth do you have these? You need to prove to us that you have not got these through illegitimate or”—of course—“criminal means.” So, conceptually, we’re all for that.

As other speakers have touched on, part of the rub around this bill was that it expands it to not just the likes of gangs and well-known criminals but their associates. So we’re talking family members, in particular, but also friends, and let’s be really, really clear that it’s incredibly well-known that—and I’ll just use gangs as an example. I want to stress that it’s an example; it’s not the example.

Crime is committed by many people outside of gangs, but gangs are prolific. They put those ill-gotten gains into the hands of their family members to, in effect, hide what they’re doing. This bill does go some way to address that, and the Justice Committee spent a lot of time trying to tease this through to make sure we were targeting the right associates and that there was the right threshold—for want of a better term—in order to initiate this, and the right abilities for those people to be able to speak and to challenge what is happening. I think we’re in an OK place, and I use that term quite specifically. I don’t think we’re in a great place, and I want to be really, really clear in this third reading that I don’t think that’s a failure of the select committee or MPs or whatever. This is just a very difficult area, and so it would be my expectation that we will end up revisiting this law at some point to try and tighten it up.

The other element which was of concern was the threshold, which I think is at $30,000. There’s been a lot of debate across the House over whether that should have been lower. I certainly sit on that side. I think it’s better to trigger the law and trigger this particular piece of legislation earlier rather than not, and then to allow the process to follow through. As I said at the start, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and I think National, ultimately, is happy to see this go through, but we would of course like to see a lot more.

If I could return to where I started: overall, I think, for the general public to understand, the Government is making some moves, but these are very, very small moves in an area which is crime, and we are seeing much, much more crime—much more violent crime, in particular—in our communities. To the public: do not be fooled that these are actually substantial steps towards a solution. They are steps indeed, but not sufficient for what is required.

My last plea, particularly when we are talking about crime, is a call—particularly with the events in recent days—for the laws to be rightly and justly applied to all people in all circumstances. I don’t want to go down the rabbit-hole of the protests of the weekend, but it’s the plea to those in justice and the police that when it comes to criminal activity, prosecute the law without fear or favour towards all people, regardless of circumstance, politics, or ideologies. It’s incredibly important that the rule of law be maintained and that the police undertake the activities and the protections of all New Zealanders, of all their basic freedoms and rights, at all times, regardless of the politics. Sadly, I think that in recent days we’ve seen the failure there, and, doubly so, the failure to protect women in our community. But, on that, I commend the bill to the House.

Tangi Utikere—a five-minute call.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a call at the third reading of the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill. This goes hand in hand with another piece of legislation that’s on the Order Paper, the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, but that’s for another day.

In this House, we often look at legislation, and titles can serve as a main descriptor, and for this bill, it certainly does that. This bill at third reading will allow for new powers that would specifically target associates of crime but, in particular, associates of organised criminal activity and criminal groupings as well, and that’s quite defined and quite specific.

I want to commend the Justice Committee, which worked through this process. I want to commend the Minister of Justice, who has brought this to the House.

When I have a look at the bill, there are a number of tools there. One that does jump out is, for example, the introduction of a new court order that would be based, for those that are located internationally but who have some assets here, in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the onus is being placed on them to ensure that they can provide some evidence to, effectively, indicate that they have obtained those items or assets legally in New Zealand.

So that is one example of a tool that will give more power to authorities to crack down on criminal offending that is targeted for associates of organised crime, and that is a good thing. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. It’s a pleasure to make what will be my third speech on this bill. You would have heard me last time very passionately speaking about the process which the select committee has been through. The Justice Committee is a hard-working committee and we have gone through this bill with a fine-tooth comb to really tease out what “associate” means in the legislation, but also whether that threshold was appropriate. Ultimately, the committee arrived on the threshold of $30,000 being the appropriate level, and that’s what I will just touch on tonight in a brief call.

It’s my view that there are appropriate safeguards around the powers that police are being given in this piece of legislation. This actually goes part of the way towards Labour’s manifesto commitments at the last election to ensure that police had the powers that they were asking for to tackle organised crime, and it’s an important tool in a suite of changes, including the increase in front-line police officers that this Government has overseen. It’s 1,600 now, and it’s on track for 1,800 by June.

But this tool is around seizing assets from associates of gangs. These are people who are known to be close associates of people who are organised in committing crimes, and it’s important that we are able to give police the power to investigate and then seize assets that have had some kind of ill-gotten gain element to them. But the thresholds here ensure that the value of the property that cannot be explained away must be worth $30,000.

The committee had a lot of discussion about what sorts of assets they would be—and I note the previous speech from Nicole McKee. The committee spent a lot of time understanding whether, say, a mum and her kids driving a car that couldn’t be explained necessarily by her income—were she a beneficiary or a minimum wage worker—would be included in this.

I think it was on all of the members of the committee that we really understood that we didn’t want the police pursuing those types of cases and that this was really about targeting organised crime rings hiding assets in the families’ assets, and that is something the Government wants to protect these people from. It’s important that we design a system where gang members aren’t putting pressure on little old mum, on their sisters, on their children, or on their teenage daughters to hide their assets in their names and own things like houses, Mercedes-Benzes, boats, and things like that. It’s important that the police have the power to seize them. That’s why this is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s been a really interesting bill, actually. I think we’ve had a lot of good discussion, if I may say, at the various stages, including at the Justice Committee and about the select committee proceedings—and, of course, the focus of that was the second reading, but I think some of the points that were made by submitters have, rightly, been raised by those contributing in this, the third and final reading.

The rights issues, I think—as always—should be taken seriously, and, for what it’s worth, I commend the Greens for bringing to the attention of the House some of the ruleof-law issues that we have. But I think it’s actually worth analysing what’s being done in the bill quite precisely before we get too far down the track of determining whether the onus of proof—the presumption of innocence right—is engaged. I just do want to speak to that, partly because I think it’s the most important aspect of the bill for those who are concerned with civil liberties. There’s also freedom of association, but that I’ll get on to, if I may, should time permit.

But the most important thing in terms of understanding people’s rights and responsibilities, too, in relation to the criminal proceeds forfeiture and seizure is the idea that things might be taken from them and might be presumed to be gained as a result of illicit activity, and, of course, the general rule in the criminal law—and I emphasise the criminal law—is that there’s an onus on proof whereby if a thing is said against a person that they’ve done a thing that’s wrong, that needs to be proved against them positively. In the absence of that, then it’s presumed that they didn’t do that thing and that they are innocent, and, of course, that’s a very longstanding tradition, and more than a convention—in fact, it’s an ultimate requirement of our criminal justice system.

But I think it’s worth drawing the distinction between what we have here, which is presuming that people are in certain circumstances that might indicate the likelihood of property having been obtained in an illegal manner, on the one hand, versus being presumed to have conducted an illegal act to have gained it. So, actually, what we’re doing is establishing a two-stage process, where the goods can be seized on the basis of that presumption—it’s the other way round—and then, of course, there’s an opportunity for proof to be made that, indeed, notwithstanding the starting point of illegality, nevertheless the person had a right to own that significant asset of property by fair means and not foul.

The other aspect that the Green Party member Golriz Ghahraman touched on in discussing this burden of proof is the standard of proof, so that’s how sure we have to be to make a determination. Whereas in the criminal law, to decide that a person’s done a thing wrong that could result in them having their liberty deprived from them, you need to be certain beyond reasonable doubt—I don’t mean you, Madam Speaker. Although you’re as close to a judge as one can get without being a judge, I suppose, in a way, so I should be careful what I say, shouldn’t I? Even as a speaker, I should be careful what I say, so it kind of works the other way. But you have great judgment, Madam Speaker, but not necessarily in that sense, without an “e”, the first “e”—anyway. So, anyway, I’ll keep moving—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): If the member could stop digging and just come right back.

Thank you—I was getting close to digging my way out of the hole. Anyway, the Green member rightly pointed out that we’re operating on the balance of probabilities. So she said, “Well, whether it’s likely or not”, and that’s shorthand, I suppose, for 50 percent likelihood, or slightly more than 50 percent, that the property was ill-gotten gains—just to use the vernacular. But, of course, we’re not talking about a standard of proof by which they might be convicted of having conducted the crime; it’s actually about making it unattractive to have operated in a way that’s generally illegal, ending up with the assets, and not being able to prove that they were gained lawfully.

So I think that’s all able to be squared with our consciences as good lawmakers. In any case, the policy considerations are very strong, so I suppose that even if one decided that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act minimum standard of criminal procedure were engaged such that a person could be determined to be guilty despite their right to be presumed innocent, nevertheless there’d be a strong argument for it being a justified limitation.

There’s sort of a related point, actually, that I don’t know that I had a chance to mention at previous readings and others might have, and, if so, that’s commendable. But, just to be sure, I do want to place on record the work that the select committee did in relation to the status of self-incriminating statements.

So it’s well-known, even by people who don’t particularly claim to be au fait with the law, that you have the right to remain silent, and in the context of making a statement that would indicate that you’ve done a thing that’s wrong or criminal, we’ve got the right, all of us—and have had for centuries, if we go back far enough—to remain silent and not offer a defence. Of course, what’s done with that in different quasi-criminal contexts might be interesting in itself, but suffice to say, the select committee I think did a helpful thing here. I didn’t have any part in it, but in reading the report, it’s clear that they’ve turned their minds to the question about: if a person is required to say where they got some property from, then, in doing so, they have to speak up and they have to explain themselves in a way that could indicate that they had actually done a crime. As I say, a starting point in our law is that you don’t have to offer a defence in those circumstances, and so the select committee, in their wisdom—no doubt backed by some excellent advice to encourage those members to come to that conclusion—say that self-incriminating statements can only be used for civil proceedings about an application for type 1 assets forfeiture, and so on.

In any case, the point is that this seizure of assets regime can’t lead via the statement someone is required to make about how they got the assets to them being charged with a crime in a way that wouldn’t have been possible without that kind of mechanism. I may have gone about that the long way round, but I think it’s an important thing to put on the record that we don’t want people to be forfeiting their rights in that way. We’re not requiring that, and if it should ever come up in a court situation that it could be said that this legislation is ambiguous in that regard, then I would ask the court or the decision maker to bear that in mind.

The freedom of association piece was really, of course, in relation to people who might be an associate of a gang, and there might be family members that might otherwise be connected. We heard from Arena Williams, I think it was, who was talking about this, and of course she’s right in saying that for policy reasons, we don’t want people to be able to hide assets by putting them in the name of a family member, because that would defeat the purpose of the law, which is, of course, for the person themselves who has conducted the illegal activity, or the allegedly illegal activity. But, actually, in a funny way too that protects the person, because if a family member or an associate can’t put property in your name and thereby escape the long arm of the law, then they’re less likely to do that in the first place.

So it’s a bit counterintuitive, perhaps, but I think, actually, it’s quite helpful to have a regime where it’s known that someone can look past the ownership on paper of an item and go, “Actually, where did it come from?”, and if it really came from illegal activity conducted by person A, where maybe it’s a member of an organisation, be it a gang or other criminal organised group—let’s say B—and it ends up in the property of person C, then actually it’s to the protection of the last-named person that, ultimately, that asset could be brought back. It’s sort of an equivalent of piercing the corporate veil, as they say in more of a commercial law context, but it’s the same kind of principle, at least in my mind, which is that we’re really interested in the true ownership and the true control of an asset. Of course, the control of human beings, as in a situation where there might be manipulation or there might be a person taken advantage of by a family member or an associate—that’s obviously something we want to avoid as well.

So, for all those reasons, I think that’s quite an important aspect of the law that associates are protected, I would argue, in that way. Of course, the fact that that’s not 100 percent clear in any given case who an associate is and that might be contestable, and to the extent there’s a lack of certainty in the law, that’s something that we would ask the courts to determine as carefully as possible. But, of course, to maximise the flexibility and to meet those policy aims, it’s important to have at least some lack of definition, and that’s quite deliberate. It’s a feature of the system, not a bug, albeit, of course, that that’s the trade-off that we make by providing less certainty and more flexibility in the statutes that we pass.

So with those reflections adding to those of others who have spoken in support of the bill, I reiterate at this, the third and final reading, that the National Party supports this bill. There are many other things that the Government could do in this space, but this is good as far as it goes, and we commend it to the House.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise to give the final contribution to the debate on the third reading of the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill. Quickly, I’m going to go over what this bill does. For those watching at home with great excitement as we go through this bill—and I know that you will have been waiting with bated breath because the learned discursions of the previous speaker, while learned and detailed, maybe didn’t quite pick up what we’re doing here. As a member of the Justice Committee, I do need to say Mr Penk is one of our favourite members who occasionally attends the Justice Committee, and it was lovely to hear him “discurse” at such length. But, basically, this bill is after the proceeds.

So when my children were small and did something bad, they did not get to keep the proceeds of their crime. They did not get to keep their ill-gotten gains. This bill is about giving the police the tools and the rules, as Ginny Andersen said, to prevent people from profiting from their crimes.

We’re going to do it in two different bills at the moment. The later one will be heard later this evening, and that one really targets the physical assets. This one goes after the money. So it enables us to look at property where there’s a piece of property there that the person who is holding it didn’t have the money to acquire it, and the suspicion is, on the basis of their close association with a member of an organised criminal gang, that that member of the organised criminal gang has given them the money to acquire this asset, and that’s how they’re hiding their ill-gotten gains. So, up to the value of $30,000 or more, after you get to $30,000, we will be able to restrain that and seek from them what is the basis of their having it. If they can’t prove to us on the balance of reasonable probabilities that they got it from a reasonable source, then the State will have it.

The same will apply to people who have KiwiSaver contributions that they can’t explain; the same will apply to people going overseas. Normally, if you whip off overseas, you can avoid these things—not any more.

It’s a good bill. It’s a sensible bill. It does a small and necessary piece of work that is going to give our police the tools to continue to crack down on organised crime, along with Operation Tauwhiro, along with Operation Cobalt, and along with the bill that will be passing, I hope, later this evening. I commend it to the House.