Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill.

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

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

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to be able to come into the House this afternoon to be able to make this second reading speech. I know that many New Zealanders are concerned about crime and the impact that it has had on their whānau and their community. Our goal with this bill is to stop criminal organisations and other criminals from terrorising our communities, by targeting the kinds of violent and intimidating behaviour that makes us feel unsafe, and by limiting the ability of criminals to profit from crime.

There are five parts to this bill, each of which introduces either a new offence or a new enforcement tool to counteract crime. Briefly, these include a new offence in the Crimes Act of discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. This will ensure that those who use guns to frighten and menace can be adequately held to account.

Secondly, an increase to the number of Land Transport Act offences for which police can seize a vehicle for 28 days. Reckless, dangerous, or careless driving offences are frequently carried out by organised criminal members travelling in convoys, and the amendments in this bill will mean that those who do risk the loss of their bike or their vehicle.

Third, a new gang conflict warrant, which will provide police with new powers to search for and seize weapons. It’s not acceptable for warring gangs to terrorise the communities around them the way that we saw in Auckland last year. This power will enable police to act swiftly and remove weapons whenever tensions between gangs arise.

Fourth, a prohibition on cash transactions over $10,000 for those goods that are most frequently used to launder money. Protections against money-laundering are crucial to limiting the profitability and, therefore, the appeal of crime. By preventing the use of cash to purchase those goods that are at the highest risk of being used to launder money, the bill will limit the ability of gangs and other criminals to profit from the harm that they cause.

Fifth, a new cash seizure power that allows police to seize money found in suspicious circumstances is created. Currently, if police find cash during a search, they cannot seize it without further evidence that it is the proceeds of a crime. However, very few of us innocently carry around tens of thousands of dollars in cash without some ability to account for it. The bill provides that if someone has a significant amount of cash—$10,000 or more—and cannot explain how they came by it, then police can take the cash for a limited period of time in order to investigate its source.

This bill has now been considered by the Justice Committee. I want to acknowledge their work, and I want to acknowledge that they must be one of the busiest select committees due to the volume of legislation that has been coming through. The majority of the committee’s recommendations relate to the gang conflict warrant provisions. It is appropriate that any new enforcement powers receive robust scrutiny, and I’m grateful both to the committee and to those that submitted, who commented on this part of the bill in particular.

The bill, as reported back from the committee, is clearer about the matters a judge must be satisfied of before issuing a gang conflict warrant, and enables the judge to require a search warrant report. This better aligns the new power with the other warrant powers in the Search and Surveillance Act.

The bill also now requires police to provide, where reasonably practicable, a redacted copy of the warrant to the person being searched. This appropriately balances privacy and operational concerns with a person’s right to see the warrant. The committee has also made minor improvements to the new cash seizure powers. If police question someone about suspicious cash found during a search, they must now advise the person of their ability to seize that cash. Any money seized must also be listed in the search warrant report if one is requested.

Altogether, these changes to the bill enhance the transparency of the new powers, and they further ensure that these powers will be used appropriately. To those members of the public that submitted, and for the studious approach that the committee took, again, I thank you. Together with the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill—also now progressing through the House this evening—this bill provides a significant check on the criminal activities of organised crime, and it sends a strong message that these kinds of crimes will simply not be tolerated in Aotearoa New Zealand. To that point, I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call on this, the second reading of the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill. Firstly, can I just take a moment to acknowledge the outgoing chair, the Hon Ginny Andersen, who has become a Minister, and the incoming chair, Vanushi Walters, who is doing an outstanding job and making sure that us on the Opposition are given a fair chance in the Justice Committee. So can I just—

Chris Penk: Don’t tell her that!

Hon MARK MITCHELL: No, well, it’s important to acknowledge that, because we want to continue to operate like that. So I just want to acknowledge her and the work that she’s done. Can I acknowledge the Minister Kiri Allan. I have to say that it’s probably no secret in this House how I feel about the current situation in terms of lawlessness and crime in this country, and I’ve got my own very clear ideas how that has happened and why it has happened. But in saying that, I want to acknowledge the Minister for bringing a bill to the committee that at least has got some teeth in it and will go some way to at least giving the police the ability to be able to respond—what we all saw last year with the gang violence in South Auckland and West Auckland with drive-by shootings; none of us want to see 23 drive-by shootings. How an innocent member of the public wasn’t badly hurt or killed is a miracle.

But we did actually talk a lot in the committee about balancing up or capturing—when you start to talk about fairly broad powers like this, when you start to talk about the police having to respond quickly to try and identify who the offenders are, who the perpetrators are, being able to get warrants issued, and then start to take action, there is a chance that you could end up with a situation where police, thinking they’re doing the right thing, are entering a home of someone that may be on the fringes but aren’t actually directly involved with that gang activity—in fact, may not be involved at all. It is a massive invasion of someone’s privacy, of their property rights, to have police officers burst into their home, and it can be deeply traumatic and stressful on any children that might be in the house.

So we took that really seriously, and so it was very good to see—and we actually made sure that there were some measures put in place to assure that there was actually a threshold that the police had to meet to get that warrant issued, and also, as the Minister said, to actually provide, even if it is redacted, a copy of that search warrant, so that there is actually some rigour put around the process of making sure—if we’re going to give the police those sorts of powers, then we have to have a high level of confidence that they are capturing the people that need to be sorted out.

In terms of the cash, the $10,000 threshold: fully support that. The Minister made the point that people just don’t have tens of thousands of dollars lying around their home, and so it’s going to be incumbent on them to be actually able to show what is the reason for having that money and where did that money come from. So that’s another very good part of this bill.

I just want to add very quickly—I didn’t hear Marja Lubeck’s last contribution, but I got a text from a retired police officer who served in the Ōrewa Police Station, who said the Ōrewa Police Station’s never been closed. So I’m not sure what she said, but, yes, I can confirm that: the Ōrewa Police Station has never been closed. Perhaps if the member was attending victim support meetings there in the last five or six years, she might’ve realised that that was the case. But I’m very happy to stand and support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just to give a bit of a hand to my colleague Marja Lubeck, I believe she said that it was the police community centre that was closed—because we are all about clear information.

However, I would like to take my brief call on this bill, firstly, to thank the Minister of Justice for her work bringing several bills before this House that do respond to community safety. She is doing an exceptional job in her role and, along with other colleagues in the justice space, both addressing crime as it happens but also the causes of crime and the response to ensure that there isn’t, or is low, recidivism. There is very much a joint response across that ministerial grouping.

It’s a great privilege to be part of the Justice Committee, and, just acknowledging Mr Mitchell’s comments, we are a committee who work really collegially together across some really controversial and difficult issues. So to all the committee members, I do consider it a real privilege to work alongside of you.

With respect to this bill, for me, the key changes were around those search and surveillance powers. The committee spent a lot of time digging into whether we had the settings right. For those, again, who want to see the committee’s analysis, our select committee report is an excellent summary of the issues we considered and the recommendations we proposed on this bill, including, as Mr Mitchell has outlined, the changes to require the provision of redacted information. The committee couldn’t see a reason why that information wasn’t provided, so we sought to have that included. The other one was the recommendation around amending section 123B to require the person possessing the cash to be advised of the constable’s power to seize the cash, which the Minister spoke to as well.

So, once again, this isn’t a straightforward area of the law. This bill and the bill that has just gone through second reading, the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Amendment Bill, do present complex issues. Mr Goldsmith, in his contribution on the previous bill, suggested that, when we’re considering matters like this, we may want to consider things like review and monitoring. I do believe that there is some merit to that, given the complexity of the rights issues that are before us. But I do think that this is a sound approach to the criminal justice space and the issues we are facing, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I feel very confident that if this had been a National Government bill, the previous speaker, Vanushi Walters, would have opposed it vigorously. It’s funny how these things work. But we certainly, on this side of the House, support this Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill.

We do not support criminal activity; we’re opposed to it. This bill is designed to give the police, particularly, and our law enforcement agencies extra tools to deal with—what I think all New Zealanders are aware of—a growing sense of disorder on our streets and in our communities, particularly in relation to gangs and firearms, but also particularly in relation to youth crime. This is not particularly focused on youth crime, but it is focused on particularly the firearms side of things in creating a new offence to discharge a firearm with intent to intimidate.

We had quite a lot of discussion in the select committee process about instances where one would discharge a firearm without intent to intimidate, and there were a few exercises in a public place, and it was pretty clear what we were trying to achieve. The law exists around discharging a firearm in the direction of a house but not unrelated to a house, so that’s one area that it’s supposed to deal with. The second one is around careless driving, but the primary piece which has caused most of the discussion is around a warrant of power to search and seize weapons during a gang conflict, and the power to seize cash found in suspicious circumstances—believed to be over $10,000—and also prohibiting cash transaction over a specified value, also $10,000 for high-value goods.

Now, all of these things limit previous rights available to New Zealanders to be able to buy whatever the heck they wanted using cash, and to be able to have their privacy maintained and not be disrupted by police. And so we don’t crimp and impinge upon those rights without careful consideration; we don’t do it in a flippant manner in any way, shape, or form, because those rights are fundamental, and the free society in which we enjoy is based upon those rights. But we always have balanced them, also, against the need for public safety, and for the rights of New Zealanders and citizens to be able to walk around free of the fear of being intimidated or robbed or injured or subject to some criminal activity—so there’s a balance there.

We got plenty of advice from the Ministry of Justice as we weighed up those issues, and it’s my view, and the National Party’s view, that these are reasonable steps that have been taken. In some cases, we would want to push further, particularly in the warrant powers for searching for weapons. It’s our view and it’s our policy that prescribed gang associates should be given the firearms protections orders, and that will enable the police to search for those firearms in cars or wherever they need to, because we cannot have a situation where we continue to have a significant increase in firearms, crime, and shootings, as we’ve seen in Auckland. We don’t want to become like Chicago or other places around the world. In Auckland, we don’t want to feel like we’re living in a TV show in New York with the permanent sound of a chopper flying overhead and sirens wailing in the distance, which is what it feels like at the moment. And New Zealanders, and Aucklanders, are rightly concerned about the commitment that the Government has to restoring that law and order.

The problem that we have—our fundamental criticism of this Government is that they have been sending mixed signals when it comes to gangs. On the one hand, they want to be tough; on the other hand, they give them money for their projects and drug rehabilitation like they have in the Hawke’s Bay. So that’s sent a very mixed signal. And in firearms policy, there is always a tendency to add an enormous amount of cost and compliance on law-abiding gun owners, confident in the knowledge, as all New Zealanders are, that it’s the unlawful gun owners who are causing the problems, and they carry on causing their mayhem. And so people rightly want to have a Government that’s focused on the needs of law-abiding citizens, and will be firm on crime. Unfortunately, we’ve got the worst of both worlds at the moment, where we have a Government that’s both soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime, because we continue to have a situation where those long-term drivers of crime are complete chaos when it comes to truancy from school, thousands of kids continuing to be raised in motel rooms, and all those long-term sort of drivers of crime not being dealt with effectively. And then, actually, when we get to the crime situation, mixed messages and no consequences, particularly for younger people.

So, look, we’re worried about the drift of law and order under this Government, but we are pleased that this bill, the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, goes some way to giving police and law enforcement agencies extra powers to deal with gang activity, in particular with discharging firearms with intent to intimidate, and also to bring some improvement to search and seizure powers for weapons during a time of gang conflict. We think and we hope that that will be interpreted widely, but that’s something that only time will tell.

Again, yes, the previous speaker did refer to my previous speech on this kind of sister bill that has come through. It does put pressure on that balance between rights and liberties and the need for law enforcement. I do think it is important, like all good legislation, that we give it time, and we hope that we will have a chance in Government to take stock five or six years after this has been introduced to make sure that it is achieving what it set out to achieve, and it is, in fact, having an impact, making it fundamentally more difficult to pursue criminal activities in New Zealand, because, make no mistake, the only way to deal with organised crime is to continually harass those involved in it day in, day out, make their life a misery, and make it difficult for them to get ahead. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole. It is relentless and it needs to be relentlessly pursued by all involved.

If a Government takes its eye off the ball for only a short period of time and wanders off into the mists, getting confused, sending mixed signals, coming up with a culture of excuses for criminal activity, it won’t take long before many flowers bloom, and we have a crime situation like we have on our streets at the moment. And so the police and authorities do need these extra powers outlined in the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill.

This being the second reading, I would want to acknowledge the work of the committee under the guidance of our former chair Ginny Andersen. There weren’t a huge number of submissions on this bill, 14 submissions, which indicates, I think, a reasonable level of support for the legislation. We think it was a useful process, and the National Party commends this bill to the House.

Kia ora, e te Māngai o te Whare. I am pleased to take a call on this bill, as a member of the Justice Committee that has worked hard and collaboratively on what is—and I’m grateful to my colleagues Mr Mitchell and Mr Goldsmith for acknowledging—a difficult balancing act.

So for those watching, a quick praecipe. This is the pigeon pair, the partner, of the bill we got through at second reading earlier today. That one targeted the proceeds of crime and further legislation to make organised crime uneconomic for those who engage in it. This one gives the police more powers to tangle with street crime and street manifestations of organised crime.

So we’ve got more search warrants, more search powers, and more ability to seize weapons where there is gang conflict escalating. We’ve got the increase in the ability of the police to seize weapons and vehicles and motorbikes when they are behaving badly on the roads. We have a new offence of discharging a gun with the intent to intimidate—odd that we haven’t had it before; we’ve got it now. We’ve got the ability to seize cash when people are carrying unfeasibly large amounts around and to target the sorts of goods that are usually used to fence—

Simeon Brown: And how much was given to the Mongrel Mob?

Dr EMILY HENDERSON: —and pass these off. Not as much as your Mr Key or your Mr Muldoon gave, Mr Simeon.

Now, what is interesting, though—and what I do want to talk about—is the previous speaker, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, discussed this as a game of whack-a-mole. If you treat it like a game of whack-a-mole, then it’s always going to be a game of whack-a-mole. This is part of a suite of measures to cope with the full range to tackle organised crime from the beginning to the end, and that needs more than the approach that takes a mallet to it. And with that thought, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call, on behalf of the Greens, on the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill. Just on my reflections on some of the speeches over the night, and in particular the speech from Mr Paul Goldsmith, I really felt that he’d been watching too many cop movies, too many cop shows. It felt very Hill Street Blues, NCIS, CSI—and I would encourage that member to perhaps pick another TV subscription and maybe tune into some rom coms or something like that, to get a bit of balance in one’s life.

This bill is an omnibus bill and it changes a number of Acts. One of them is the Crimes Act 1961, the Land Transport Act 1998, and the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. We have a number of issues with this bill, and those were canvassed during the first reading by my colleague Golriz Ghahraman, because we come from this in terms of what we must do for our communities, right? We’re not actually living in the cop shows that Mr Paul Goldsmith vehemently described. Also, if you don’t like the bill, don’t vote for it. But what we really need to make sure is that when we look at this, we need to think about—and knowing that crime and gang activity, they’re related to making sure that we have secure, livable incomes, secure housing, inclusive education, mental health care, and addiction treatment available to all of our communities. These are the things that must underpin it. So this bill is an attempt to be hard on crime, tough on crime, but what we need to be is tough on poverty. We need to deal with those underlying issues within our society. If we do that, it makes everything else easier.

I just want to turn to the bill just briefly and just point to the amendments of the Land Transport Act 1998 where, in the case of that sanction, it would require impounding a car for 28 days. That could be incredibly, incredibly harmful to a low-income household. Cars are not gang-affiliated. We don’t know what that car might be doing on one day and what it might be doing on the next day. Maybe it’s being used by not just one family but by a number of families. Maybe that car is being used to take children to school. We don’t know that. So if you remove that vehicle from that low-income family, it becomes an issue and it exacerbates the poverty and the problems that I was just talking about just earlier.

Detaining someone and requiring their DNA is normally reserved as a power to be applied to the worst criminals. Again, we see this as overreach. The balance hasn’t been correctly struck here, and the concern for us is that often with the police, they are not necessarily able to make the distinction about who’s in the gang, who’s associated, who’s a relative, or who’s visiting as well. So the application of these new powers will be, and could be, unevenly applied. Also, taking cash money away for suspicion of a person that is affiliated with a gang or not even a gang member, even though we may not know whether they’re involved in a crime, is a new and very expensive breach of community rights.

All of the concerns that we brought up in our first reading speech have not been addressed through the select committee process and have not been addressed in terms of the comments that have been made around the House tonight. What we need is those livable incomes. What we need is warm housing. What we need is to make sure that we look after our families. Dealing with the underlying socio-economic factors that make sure that we look after our families—that is what we do before we do anything else. So we will not be commending this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak to the second reading of the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, another bill that we are supporting this evening—one that we also feel doesn’t go quite far enough but it goes further than what we had, and, with that, we want to support it.

There were 14 submitters. We had organisations and individuals, and six people gave oral evidence. The officials included the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Transport, and the New Zealand Police.

The bill creates new powers and offences to assist police to prevent and respond to harm caused by criminal offending. It includes search powers for weapons when gang conflicts are occurring and tools to disrupt potential money-laundering activities.

This bill amends four Acts. The Crimes Act 1961 is the first one. It’s about discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. I don’t understand why we are amending this bill and I do not understand why we are putting this clause into the Crimes Act legislation. It’s already in the Arms Act legislation at section 48, where there is an offence for discharging a firearm, airgun, pistol, or restricted weapon in or near a dwellinghouse or public place. The difference is that, under the Arms Act, the offence is liable for a conviction of imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or a fine of $10,000, and it will be placed upon a person “if the person, without reasonable excuse, discharges a firearm, airgun, pistol, or restricted weapon in or near a dwellinghouse or a public place so as to—(a) endanger property; or (b) endanger, annoy, or frighten any person.” The difference here is five years with no fine as opposed to six months and $10,000, and the Labour Government is making a hoo-ha, saying they’re actually doing something, when they already had legislation which was not being used. We now have two sets of legislation.

We’re also amending the Land Transport Act 1998 so that vehicles can be seized and impounded. Amending the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 gives two new powers: allowing the issue of a warrant to search and seize weapons during a gang conflict, and the power to seize cash found in suspicious circumstances and over $10,000. The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing Terrorism Act 2009 is also being changed to prohibit cash transactions over a specified value for certain high-value goods.

We’ve only made amendments, as a select committee, to the search and seizure provisions in the bill. We have new sections inserted by clause 20, amending the Search and Surveillance Act, where a judge can issue a warrant for search and seizure if he is satisfied that, first of all, a gang conflict does exist—that there is one or more gangs involved—and, by issuing the warrant, the community will be better for it because the potential harm will be gone. The warrant can be issued in respect of either a place or a vehicle, and the committee decided to amend the bill so that the provisions around either a place or a vehicle could be applied either separately or together.

Another provision in the bill is that the occupier who is the subject of a search, either of a vehicle or of a property, should receive a redacted copy of the search warrant—redacted because there’s a possibility that there will be multiple occupiers at multiple addresses or with multiple vehicles that are still to be searched, so the redaction would relate to whom else is on the list to be searched. However, there was a requirement that if the officer did not have that warrant upon them, then they would have seven days in which to provide it after the search. The committee decided to amend clause 22 of the bill so that if a warrant was issued under section 18D(2) and 18D(3) of the Search and Surveillance Act, which relates to searching a property and which is where a warrant is issued after a judge is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds that gang conflict and property ownership by specified persons criteria are met, then the seven-day pass to provide a warrant should not stand because those being searched had already been fully identified and there was no reason why a redacted warrant should not be available. However, if the warrant issued is done so under section 18D(4) and (5), which relates to vehicles, then another amendment the committee made includes how that warrant should be executed and allows the seven-day right to produce that warrant if it’s not immediately available.

There is the introduction of a clause that allows police to dispose of any weapons that they seize, and I asked officials multiple times during the select committee process the advice for what happens if, say, the weapon seized is found to be a stolen firearm from a legitimate owner. I questioned whether or not that firearm would have to be destroyed or whether it would be returned to the owner if the owner is found. I was advised by officials and New Zealand Police that all attempts to find the legitimate owner and return the property are made before any destruction process is undertaken. And I wanted to speak so that it is recorded in Hansard that the expected outcome of finding stolen firearms that were legitimately owned is that they are then returned to the rightful owners, and that details around processes to identify the legitimate owners are undertaken and can be requested by the Official Information Act. There is nothing in the legislation to protect legitimate owners who are also victims of crime and ensure that they are told that the item had been found and to apply for their possessions to not be destroyed; however, upon questioning, I was assured that this would not be a problem if police knew who the legitimate firearm owner is.

There is a new clause in this bill that introduces the ability for police to seize cash found on premises equating to $10,000 or more, where a satisfactory explanation for why that cash is there and where it came from is not given. Police can apply to hold that cash for a short period of time, and if the occupant searched can produce legitimate reason for having that cash and where it came from, they can get it back pretty smartly because of the short time frame that police have to actually be able to hold it. But there was a clause that allowed police, via the Governor-General, to be able to change that $10,000 threshold either by increasing or reducing it, and this concerned us as a committee—that the threshold could decrease, especially when we know that some of our Pasifika immigrant families often have cash that they send on to their families back in the islands. The change we have made means that rather than having a provision that allows the threshold to change by amendment, it has to change by prescribed regulation instead.

We changed requirements around the reporting of executing search warrants so that cash seizures have to be reported back to the issuing officer. Reports will need to be included as to whether the search warrant was actually executed, the type of weapons that were seized, and whether other powers were also exercised, like the seizure of cash, and any criminal proceedings that eventuated because of the items found from the executing warrant.

There’s a few amendments here that we have made that we again had robust discussion about during select committee, and I’m grateful for everybody’s contribution to be able to get to a point where we could—even though we’re not quite 100 percent happy, we’re happy enough to support the changes going through, because we need to show a harder stance on criminals, on organised activity, and for those that use weapons.

So we on this side of the House are happy to support this bill through its second reading.

This bill is a good example of a Government getting on and solving a problem. Police identified that they needed some extra tools to crack down on gang activity, specifically—in this bill—to disrupt gang conflict as it was going on. The Government responded with this proactive piece of legislation which gives police those extra tools that they need to disrupt that kind of activity, but in a proportionate way.

You’ve heard speeches around the House tonight which have acknowledged what has been a fine balancing act, and I want to thank the members of the Justice Committee who have brought their practical expertise to bear. You heard from the previous speaker, Nicole McKee, about the way that she worked with officials to make sure that the practical implementation for firearms owners was going to be something which worked for that community, and I thank her for that. You’ve also heard from the Hon Mark Mitchell about the way that he worked with officials, based on his experience in policing. That is experience which has been invaluable to the Justice Committee, and I thank him for that contribution.

This piece of legislation and the one previously have been difficult, technical exercises of landing the right balancing act. I think this bill does that. When the Greens speaker Teanau Tuiono said, “If you don’t like the bill, don’t vote for it.”, well, I do like this bill, I will be voting for it. I commend it to the House.

Simon O’Connor—five minutes.

Thank you very much. Look, it feels like Groundhog Day—it’s the same excellent people speaking in almost the same order, but it’s a different bill. This is the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill second reading. And in many ways, we could just copy and paste from Hansard my contribution to the previous bill—which would probably confuse a few people—but by and large, it accords to me that this is some good steps in the right direction. Police are calling out for more tools, particularly to target gangs. This is making some steps, but, personally, I’d prefer that we’d be running much faster and stronger.

It’s good in some ways. Yes, there are more constabulary powers to seize money if they find $10,000 or more in the back of a car. At current inflation, that won’t be much at all—sorry, a very bad joke—but there are some good elements there. The firearms one: yes, it does sound good; it does seem appropriate. But again, Nicole McKee has hit it quite well, if one can hit something to do with firearms—that’s a whole different kettle of fish. That member probably could. But, no, the long and short: the Arms Act already covers a lot of this, so are we just repeating things?

So there is a certain element on this side of the House who, while we support the bill, think that it’s just a bit of a veneer over things. I mean, even the whole notion of discharging a firearm in order to intimidate—yeah, I mean, of course that’s appropriate. But by and large, 99 percent of the time when you discharge a firearm in a public place, you are attempting to intimidate. There are some questions around how a gang conflict is going to be determined to exist. I know I’ve raised that a few times in the select committee, wanting to be absolutely clear that there’s no ambiguity and that when multiple gangs are gathering, it doesn’t matter if it’s Mount Maunganui or in Tāmaki or wherever, it’s really clear and the judges can’t—I don’t know—try to find some way to sidestep around it.

So I think the bill is doing OK in this space, and I suppose that’s the overall sentiment I’m wanting to give with this somewhat incoherent speech—and it’s only a Tuesday night. Ultimately, these are some good steps, but they could go a lot further and much, much stronger, so it’s something that I suspect we will revisit into the future. But I would certainly say to my constituents and those following this: don’t be completely fooled by this bill. In many ways, I think it’s just casting a bit of a veneer over things.

My last thoughts are actually to turn to what the Green Party member was raising. A little bit, again, like the last speech, they were saying, “Hey look, this bill could cause harm to some people’s families in that if the car was taken, the kids couldn’t get to school.”, and so forth. Yes, I mean that could be a reality for some, but, again, that is making excuses for behaviours. First and foremost, if those engaged in criminal activity are smuggling cash or discharging firearms into the public, do you know what? They should think about that, including the fact that they can’t take their children to school if they’re going to lose their car. The responsibility sits with the criminal, not society, as to be doing backflips to make excuses for them.

People—individuals—need to take responsibility for their actions, and we will end up in a very strange position if we attempt to excuse away everybody’s actions, because, ultimately, if that was the case—and I think the Green Party is pushing it—all of us could get up to all sorts of mischief, criminal or otherwise, and then just explain it away with a whole lot of circumstances in our lives, and that’s not how it should operate. So I appreciate the Green Party raising that, but, actually, it’s the responsibility of those undertaking criminal activities to, first and foremost, think about their families and the consequences.

Ultimately, we spend a lot of time in this House—rightly—creating legal consequences for those who choose to break behaviours and cause us harm. So I’m happy, rather than pleased, to support this bill to the House.

Tangi Utikere—five minutes.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Thank you. It’s a privilege to take a call on the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill. I want to actually echo the sentiments of the chair of the Justice Committee, Vanushi Walters, in acknowledging Minister Kiritapu Allan for her focus on community safety, because that’s what this bill seeks to address.

It is a five-part bill, as members have referred to this evening. Each part is active in its own right. It creates a new offence provision or an additional enforcement tool to address criminal activity. Mr O’Connor has already referred to the discharge of a firearm for want of intimidation, but there are other provisions here, such as a broadening of the scope related to the 28-day seizure order for motor vehicles—such as bikes—that might be undertaking reckless or dangerous forms of activity; again, forms of intimidation out in the community; or, again, the introduction of a new warrant—a gang conflict warrant—where tensions between gangs may lead to that warrant being executed around search and seizure.

What I do note from the select committee report is a linking with that provision with that contained in the Search and Surveillance Act to ensure there is a report-back opportunity to a judge or issuing officer who, effectively, issues the warrant to ensure that it has been executed and the circumstances within which the execution of that has been undertaken and any objects that may have been seized as a result. So these are good tools to address organised criminal activity. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill. As previous speakers have traversed in the House tonight, the purpose of this bill is to ensure that police have the tools that they need to address criminal activity in our communities, including activity from gangs but not just limited to gang activity.

On that note, I did just want to point out, just following some of the member from the ACT Party’s comments around the role, I guess, of both Parliament in setting the law but also the police in addressing and implementing that law and that there is that separation there. Our job as parliamentarians is to respond to police when they say that they need more tools in order to protect our communities and respond to crime as they see it.

I wanted to particularly note—because I’ve read through the legislative statement, which sets out why changes have been introduced around a particular piece that the ACT member mentioned, which was around discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. What the legislative statement clearly states is that there is a gap in the law, and that police have identified that the law needed to be updated in order for them to be able to respond to these scenarios—in particular, that this bill amends other pieces of legislation; one of which, I note, is around disqualifying people from holding a firearms licence. So what the police identified was that the particular law that they had in front of them in the Arms Act wasn’t sufficient in order to be useful if people did discharge a firearm near a dwelling or in a public place in order to intimidate and that they needed further tools.

So this is an excellent bill. I commend the Justice Committee and the Minister for their excellent work on it. I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Others have referred to the fact that we’ve had a couple of pieces of legislation that are very similar tonight, the contributors to the debate are very similar. I myself am similar to myself. The problem, of course, with repeating in this way can be summed up as repetition, repetition, repetition.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Stop it! Ha, ha!

CHRIS PENK: It is therefore the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): It’s too much!

CHRIS PENK: It is too much, it is. I know; I feel it too. Well, if you’re feeling like that now, Madam Speaker, imagine in 9½ minutes from now! But don’t worry, it will seem like much, much longer. So Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill, and this activity that I’m engaging in—you’ve attempted to intervene already, Madam Speaker, but, actually, it’s a pretty serious subject that we concern ourselves with, and that’s for a couple of reasons. One is that community safety is, of course, hugely important, and speakers all across the House have acknowledged that, but so too are the rights and freedoms of New Zealanders, including those associated with gangs. I don’t say that, of course, to sound or wish to sound at all as though sympathetic to those who commit criminal offences, but, of course, as others have alluded to—and my colleague and friend the Hon Mark Mitchell has made reference to this—we do have, you know, pretty serious and heavy powers of the State that are engaged, and it’s right that those are exercised in a way that is not unreasonable and protects as far as possible the civil liberties of all concerned.

So with that sort of thematic overview of what we’re trying to achieve here, others have talked about the discharge of firearms in public places, and there’s a bit of a theme in the legislation of looking to cover gaps in existing law. Most of these concepts—and almost the offences themselves—aren’t new, except to say that they’re variations of offences that already exist and we’re just refining, a little bit, their coverage. So, for example, we are looking to ensure that a firearm discharged inside a dwellinghouse, which is currently illegal if it’s conducted to intimidate, isn’t matched at the moment in the law with an equivalent attempt to intimidate with the discharge of a firearm in a public place. That does seem like a bit of an anomaly. I wasn’t around at the time, of course, when that original law was put in place. If I was better prepared, I suppose I could’ve looked up the Hansard to see if it was deliberate, when that law was being made, as to whether it was quite narrow that the law was confined in that way, or if it was merely that it was responding to a particular incident and the legislature at the time said, “Well, let’s do it in exactly this way.” and didn’t think that there were other situations that could be covered.

Nevertheless, sadly, it’s the case that in New Zealand, in recent times—whether that’s within West Auckland, South Auckland, or elsewhere in the country—there have been incidents of this nature. It is necessary now to respond to the fact that there have been discharges of firearms that have caused intimidation of the public and do need to be rendered illegal, because, of course, community safety is important. That’s not just physical safety—although, of course, that is the highest importance in terms of us as lawmakers having a duty to protect the New Zealand public—but also understanding that if there’s intimidation, whether deliberate or not, the effect will be that New Zealanders don’t feel safe to move about their community in a way that everyone should be able to, quite frankly.

So we see, for example, that the way that the legislation attempts to achieve this kind of balance is with new warranted search powers. Of course, any time we’re adding additional ability for the State to enter a private home or other domain of an individual, we need to move carefully, but it’s worth placing on record that a warranted search power is superior to a warrantless search power, because there is, in the process of applying for a warrant and the warrant being granted and then the terms of the warrant, a measure protection, because it’s forcing the long arm of the law, the power of the State, to prescribe, at least to some extent, what it is that is being sought.

So it is that we see detail that needed to be provided in the warrant of the gangs that it relates to, the required time limit—which I’ve read must be not greater than 14 days—and the known property that’s occupied, possessed, or owned by known members of the specified gangs within a specified region or regions.

So while there is a bit of latitude for saying that a search can take place, there’s a bit of a check-and-balance in the fact that the warrant’s needed and then that it’s got to be somewhat detailed in terms of what actually is spelt out, and then what actually plays out in terms of the search taking place. Now, that said, it’s also possible that a search can take place and something can be found that is in plain view, so to speak. This, again, is an example of a gap that the Government—through justice Minister the Hon Kiritapu Allan and then the Justice Committee likewise—are looking to cover, are looking to close that gap.

The test appears to be that reasonable grounds are needed to believe that the item could have been seized under a search warrant or another search power. So whereas, of course, you learn in law school about fishing expeditions and the fact that it’s not right for the State to have its officers engage in activity that might—you know, they hope or expect, but without really reasonable or solid grounds—yield some kind of criminal activity evidence.

It’s therefore the intention of this Parliament—and we placed it on record, I suppose, by speaking about it in the debate now for the benefit of avoiding any doubt, for the benefit of the court interpreting later and so on—that we do intend for searches to be made on a reasonable basis. Then we refer to that general principle, whereby if something is found that was outside the terms of the search—it was incidental to the search being conducted—then the importance in relation to public safety of that find defines the extent to which it should be legitimate to use that in evidence in court for another matter.

I was quite interested by the subject of cash—I’m always interested in the subject of cash, of course; aren’t we all? But, actually, in terms of the bill, it’s actually quite specific in terms of talking about what cash is. So physical currency, which is, you know, what the Americans call “greenbacks” or—don’t they call them “Benjamin Franklins”, or various presidents that are on the different ones?

Angie Warren-Clark: Or “fiddy, fiddy, fiddy”.

CHRIS PENK: Or “fiddy, fiddy, fiddy”—that’s right. My gangster-learned colleague across the House has helped me out there. Thank you. Anyway, so cash in the way that you’d know and expect it, but, also, there are negotiable instruments and gold bars or gold ingots. Thankfully, there’s no reference at all to cryptocurrency, and I would hate to think that a select committee could invite “crypto bros” to submit on a piece of legislation and express their undying devotion and fandom of those things, because, I mean, I get tired of hearing about it even on twitter.com, and that’s quite enough for me. Anyway, cash, per se, is significant in the legislation. Of course, the reason for that is because transactions in cash avoid evidence of a transfer which can be useful, of course, for proving that something is legitimate or not.

Arena Williams: Tell us what you like on twitter.com—what do you like on twitter.com?

CHRIS PENK: What do I like? Oh no, no—we’re not talking about twitter.com, Arena Williams.

Simeon Brown: What are you talking about: Twitter?

CHRIS PENK: Yeah, no, I’m not talking about Twitter—and, now, I’m talking about not talking about Twitter, which is stupid because it’s now gotten quite circular. Anyway—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Has the member seen this?

CHRIS PENK It’s a copy of the bill—it’s very much like the other one that I spoke on for 10 minutes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I just invite him to—

CHRIS PENK: I know. I feel it too.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): —in his remaining dying seconds.

CHRIS PENK: In my remaining time, that’s right. One minute left of the speech. So dollars are important because they can be used to fund further criminal activity, and also because of that general principle that we have, whereby we don’t want people to be able to profit from crime. So there’s an element of deterrence, but there’s also a very practical element of not wishing to fund further criminal activity and, of course, perpetuate or sustain a lifestyle which those of us who believe in community safety would not approve of.

There are some safeguards, again, further, in terms of cash being seized, and these are set out in the bill. Roughly speaking—without going into the detail—basically, if cash is seized in the circumstances described in the law, then that transaction, if we were to call it that, can be undone. So after a certain period of time, if there haven’t been proper proceedings initiated by police for a restraining or forfeiture order, or if one has been withdrawn or dismissed, and, of course, in the circumstance where someone can actually state and prove, in effect, that they had it legitimately in the first place, then that’s fine too. So lots to consider in terms of the detail, but the overarching principle we’ve said we support—likewise, the bill itself—which is that we must allow the police to do their job on our behalf but with due regard to the safeguards needed.

The member’s time has expired—Marja Lubeck.

Thank you. After all that talking about cash, I think Mr Penk should shout me a coffee next time we go to Coppers. As my colleague Arena Williams said before, the police in New Zealand have asked for legislative changes that will give them more tools to crack down on violent offending and other criminal activities. So what the changes to this bill do is actually set down some practical and targeted measures that will help the police keep the community safe. We are interested in real solutions and not empty slogans. The police need effective but proportionate powers to disrupt criminal activity, including that which is perpetuated by the gangs. This bill responds to that need and will enhance community safety. Therefore, I commend it to the House.