Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill gives effect to the Government’s 100-day plan to restore law and order and ensure that New Zealanders are safer in their communities. This is a response to gang membership increasing by 51 percent over the past five years, alongside violent crimes increasing by 33 percent. The Government wants to prevent the current level of violence from becoming a permanent feature in New Zealand society, so we’re giving police additional tools to go after the criminal gangs who inflict fear and misery on our communities.

Over the past week or so, we’ve heard many harrowing stories from the royal commission into abuse in care, including on people who went on to join gangs. No abuse in care is ever acceptable. At the same time, no society can function safely if people are not held to account and held responsible for things they do today. Gangs peddle in misery, and this Government is determined to give police the powers that they need to deal with them.

The bill has been reported back to the House from the Justice Committee. I’d like to thank the Justice Committee and its members for their careful consideration, and the submitters who took their time to share their views with the committee. The Justice Committee has recommended some changes in response to the submissions that will strengthen policy in the bill. We welcome those amendments and look forward to the implementation. That implementation will improve public confidence in how the law responds to gangs. It will stop the violence and prevent the antisocial behaviour of gangs becoming normalised in New Zealand.

The bill does four things. It creates a new criminal offence of displaying gang insignia in public. Insignia such as gang patches cause fear and intimidation to some members of the public. They’re also status symbols the gangs use to market themselves to potential prospects and future recruits. They also have the potential to exacerbate inter-gang rivalries, leading to violence. This ban on gang insignia in public will reduce the negative effects on communities. The bill also contains a provision requiring these insignia to be forfeited to the Crown following a conviction. This will ensure that the insignia cannot be used again to cause further harm to the public.

The bill creates a new dispersal power to stop gang members from gathering in public and, once issued, it will prevent them from associating in public for seven days. This is a tool that will enable the police to act to disrupt gatherings that interfere with law-abiding Kiwis who are attempting to go about their lives peacefully.

Thirdly, the bill creates a non-consorting order. This is issued by the court and will require specified people not to associate or communicate for three years. Coordination planning is required to undertake much of the crime committed by gangs, such as drug trafficking or violent inter-gang conflict. This bill gives the police an additional tool to respond, preventing the communication between these gang members to keep our communities safe.

The bill also amends the Sentencing Act so that judges can give greater weight to gang membership at sentencing. The Government wants there to be more severe sentences for gang members so that they understand there will be consequences for the unlawful activities of gangs. We want to publicly denounce and deter harmful gang behaviour and gang membership.

The select committee has made some important amendments around what gangs this bill applies to. The bill as introduced carried over the list and process for designation that was in the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Act from 2013. The Justice Committee took a close look at that test and the list and has recommended a number of changes. With respect to the test, a number of submitters were concerned about the low threshold to qualify for inclusion. The select committee recommended a number of changes, and I understand that many of these were considerations that police already undertook when providing advice to the Minister of Police considering additions to the list. To be included on the gangs list, the Minister of Police has to be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the group has a common name or identifying signs, symbols, or representation; is currently active in New Zealand; and has members or associates who have committed offences punishable by more than two years imprisonment in New Zealand or overseas. In addition, the offending cannot be conduct that consists primarily of civil disobedience for the purpose of political activism.

With respect to the list itself, the police provided advice to the committee. There were 11 gangs that were removed from the list as they were now considered defunct, and there were also some gangs that were added to the list. To ensure that the list remains up to date, the police will review the entire list each time an addition or removal is considered, and every five years if no changes are made.

The committee also recommended a commencement date of 21 November 2024. The impact of this bill will be felt before Christmas. I am putting gangs on notice and letting them know that this Government is indeed committed to law and order. The bill will enable law-abiding Kiwis to feel safe, and it ensures that there are appropriate consequences for those who engage in antisocial behaviour and think it’s acceptable to break the law. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. We in the Labour Party agree that gangs cause harm in our community. We know that they not only cause violence and hurt not only within their own whānau and social circles but also cause public hurt, and in our streets as well. We know that the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine hits the poorest communities in New Zealand. It fuels retail crime, it causes mental health issues, and it drives violent statistics even further. It causes intergenerational damage and it destroys the very fabric and the building blocks of our community, and we agree on that. But this bill—this bill—does not provide the solutions to that problem.

Banning gang patches typifies the approach that this Government takes to law and order: it is cosmetic and ornamental. It would like to not see the problem, and it thinks that if the problem is not seen, then it goes away. But it fails to address the root causes of what drives organised criminal activity in New Zealand, and it’s for that reason that this bill is a failure. This Government has focused completely on looking tough, and we’ve just heard the Minister say that he’s put gangs on notice. But what I would like to know is what this bill does to stop young people growing up in homes where they see and experience family violence on a daily basis. How will the banning of gang patches or the issuing of a dispersal notice make any difference in making our communities safer?

Dispersal orders—let’s take a look at those. We had a good look at those in the Justice Committee. So the way it’s going to work is that if there’s is a gathering of some gang members and they will be intimidating by being there, that’s not OK. So the police officer or officers who approach that group will go up and say, “We’re going to issue you with a dispersal notice and we’re required to do that in writing, so could you give me your email, please? mmm69@yahoo.com—oh, you haven’t got an email. Right, so if you haven’t got an email, would you please accompany me down to the station and I’ll print one off at the office and provide it to you so you can take it home.” I kid you not, Madam Speaker, this is the process outlined in this bill. Dispersal notices will be provided to gang members by asking them to provide their email address, and if they don’t have one, they are then required to accompany an officer to the station to get a printed copy. You couldn’t write it, but, in fact, they have, and it’s in legislation and we’re debating it tonight.

What will happen is there won’t be an anything noted. There won’t be any recording apart from in the police intel, and what will happen then if that is breached? Then that person is up for five years in jail. There is no other law in New Zealand, or even overseas, that we can find where someone who doesn’t even get a written notice delivered to them is up for a five-year imprisonment penalty.

We already know that police resources are stretched. We know that for sure because Vote Police received a $107 million less in this Budget compared to the last Budget. The Police Association themselves have said that the risk of this bill is it threatens to undermine the credibility of police when there are some parts of New Zealand where it just won’t be able to be enforced, and that is of real concern. There are parts of New Zealand where there are insufficient police and insufficient resources to be able to enforce this law, so it might work in urban areas, but it definitely won’t work in parts of rural New Zealand.

The concern and the sad irony of this bill is that while it’s packaged to look like it’s making our country safer, it is, in fact, part of a range of policies that just take us backwards, because you can’t just take this issue in isolation—we know that. So what we’ve seen is that the Minister of Police has written a letter to the Commissioner of Police—he’s very proud of that; he says it’s the biggest thing he’s done since being the Minister of Police—and he has said he wants more foot patrols and more visibility, and he wants gangs to be controlled, with no taking over of the streets. That’s very clear, and he’s said it a number of times.

The police have got $107 million less in the Budget and they’ve been required to be more visible. Well, something’s got to give, and it has—it’s called family violence. There were 3,000 fewer family violence investigations since December this year. In addition to that, there was a 29 percent reduction where the victim has known the offender. So that’s family violence—a 29 percent reduction in investigations.

This is my problem: why is it that for this Government, public violence and intimidation is intolerable, but having that happening in our own homes is somehow different? That is my question. Why is it that our young people are left to grow up in homes where they witness and experience family violence, and there is no one there to pick up the phone when they ask for help? No other social services have received funding. Police have gone and there’s no one else coming, and this is what our answer is. What happens to those young people? Do we start up some more boot camps so that we can look after those young people in boot camps when they haven’t received the support and care and love that they need, because they’re being exposed to family violence? This is the integrated problem that we’re dealing with, and the solution that we’ve had is that we’re going to email gang members and tell them to take their patches off.

Right, I’ll just wrap this up because we’ve only got a few minutes left. This is a Government that wants to look like they’re delivering a safer New Zealand, and, in reality, it is absolutely cosmetic. I mean, I challenge the Government to show us in these speeches and to come forward and have a debate tonight about the types of engrained issues that gangs provide to our community and how that’s interrelated with family violence and young people being exposed to family violence as they grow up, the lack of social services currently available to provide that support, and about how we address those engrained problems that, in New Zealand, we need to face up to.

By treating gangs in isolation and demonising them and taking their patches off, it does absolutely nothing for the next generation of young people, who need hope and who need something to look and to hold out for that things will get better. Providing them with answers like getting tough on gangs and putting them on notice and setting up boot camps for young people does nothing but drive these issues underground. It merely ticks a box that serves a purpose in a focus group to give a couple of extra points to the National Party or to ACT or to New Zealand First to show that they’re delivering and getting tough and they’re going to show who’s who and what’s going to happen, but, in reality, there are no real answers, and that is the sad part. This Government has failed to provide any real answers or any real solutions to a problem that those members campaigned so heavily about.

If restoring law and order—if that’s what it is—is taking off a gang patch and giving gangs a dispersal notice, then I am deeply concerned for where our country is heading, because it is going backwards. If that is the solution that this Government provides to an intergenerational problem of organised crime and the violence, the havoc, and the drugs they deal—if that is their answer, then I am absolutely dismayed at the lack of ability to fix a problem.

This is a cosmetic solution that looks good on the telly, that gives you a sound bite, and that might even get a TikTok video if you’re Paul Goldsmith, but it does absolutely nothing to make our communities any safer, and I think that the police will struggle to be able to actually enforce this law in some parts. So we will watch—we will watch—from this side of the House to see what happens as this legislation is rolled out. Let’s see what those operational instructions look like for the police service as they struggle to be able to figure out how to even deliver a dispersal notice, and let’s see—let’s see—what organised crime does in response to a tick-box, cosmetic solution to a problem that runs far deeper than this Government has given the time to even consider.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I rise this evening to reaffirm our opposition to the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill. The main reasons for that are, first, that it completely fails to address the reasons that gangs were created in the first place, including the State’s role in that creation and political choices that lead to our communities living in poverty, which fuel the presence of and membership into gangs. The second reason is because the surveillance-and-suppression approach is ideologically driven and isn’t informed by evidence; instead, it is driven by political expediency, and it has been completely designed to win votes, as opposed to making our community safer. The third reason that we oppose this bill is because giving police more powers means an increased interaction between marginalised communities and the criminal justice system. These tools—the non-consorting orders, the dispersal notices, and adding being a gang member to the aggravating factors within sentencing—will disproportionately impact Māori, as we have seen in other jurisdictions around the world where indigenous people bear the brunt of tools like this.

Last week, we had the release of the report of the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in State care, detailing the abuse of 200,000 children by the State and faith-based institutions between 1950 and 1999, and this was the person who was on the cover when that dropped last week. [Holds up newspaper] This is Eugene Ryder. He came and spoke to us at select committee about what this bill means to him and how he found his way into a gang in the first place. I want to make it really clear that not every person that was abused in State care became a gang member, but we know that almost every gang member has been traumatised, abused, raped, or tormented within State care, which sows the seeds for a lifetime of shame, violence, addiction, and fear.

The link between abuse by the State and the formation of gangs in New Zealand is undeniable. I spoke about this connection in the first reading of this bill, and now we have had the largest royal commission of inquiry that our country has ever seen showing us exactly where gangs come from and I want to pull this from the submission that Eugene Ryder made to the Justice Committee. This is what he said: “A lot of reference has been made already to the formation—the why—gangs exist. I was a state ward, I was abused while I was in care, and I found solace in the Black Power community here in Wellington. The reason I found solace with them is because we shared similar, if not exact, experiences within state care. At the time, there was the people that were put in charge on behalf of the state to care for us. They were raping us. What we learnt from them was violence, extreme violence.”

That’s echoed by Alf, who was spoken to by Aaron Smale, who is a member of the Mongrel Mob. He was passed around different care institutions like Epuni Boys’ Home until he was put into Lake Alice psychiatric hospital, where he was stripped naked, subjected to horrendous racism, and drugged and raped by both the staff at the institution and also by adult patients within the institution. Alf would be made unconscious by drugs, and when he was an adult, he would black out and take out his rage on those around him because he was taught that violence was the only chance that he had at surviving.

Within State care, children learnt that violence can and should be used as the main tool that they used to navigate life. They learnt that if they spoke up and tried to communicate, by using their words, they would not be believed and this would lead to future harm. They learnt that you must always be on edge and on the defence. They learnt that authorities and institutions were not to be trusted, because those who were meant to care for them abused them, and when they ran away, the police would bring them back into the care of their abusers. They learnt that there was safety and strength in numbers, and that in order to feel safer, they should join a group.

With hundreds of thousands of children enduring unspeakable torture and abuse, who could they turn to for comfort? They couldn’t afford counselling or therapy and they couldn’t trust the institutions set up to support them; they could only turn to each other, and that—right there—is where gangs come from. Understanding that connection between the abuse in State care and the formation of gangs is important because the abuse of children in State care still happens today, and if you don’t want to see gangs, then we need to make sure that children are not being taught that violence is the only tool that they can use in order to navigate their lives.

I want to talk now about the ineffectiveness of gang-busting policy. There have been some really good articles that have come out over the weekend about this from a whole bunch of academics within the criminology space. They’ve come out and they’ve said that the Government is employing an ideological basis for their policy and that cracking down on gangs and taking the approach of suppression and surveillance has never worked. It’s been the only approach that we’ve tried for the last few decades and it has not decreased gang membership at all. How is it that prisons are the number one place where people are able to recruit and increase gang membership? There are no patches worn in prison, so eliminating their visual presence in some communities is not going to reduce their membership, at all.

This bill is actually quite useless, because all of the powers that are in the bill already exist. So gang activities that cause issues in public are already an offence under the Summary Offences Act 1981, including disorderly or offensive behaviour and associating with those convicted of theft, violence, or drug-related offending; gang patches are already banned from all public buildings and structures through the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Act 2013; and if arresting our way out of the problem and eliminating the visual presence of gangs worked, we wouldn’t have them anymore, because that has been in our legislation for more than 10 years.

Finally, I want to talk about the use of some of these tools within the bill. We know that where non-consorting and dispersal orders have been used in other jurisdictions, they have been disproportionately used on indigenous people. I spoke to Senator David Shoebridge over in New South Wales, who sent me this report, which is about the use of non-consorting orders in Sydney, and despite the fact that indigenous people only make up 2 percent of the general population there, the non-consorting orders have been used between 50 and 75 percent in all of their jurisdictions within New South Wales. This just contributes to the over-surveillance, over-policing, harsher sentencing of Māori communities. It does nothing to make our communities safer, at all.

One thing I do want to say is that I want to encourage the Government to speak to gang leaders. This is something that I’ve been talking about for a while now. There was some refusal from Ministers, like Minister Mitchell, who refused to meet with gang members, but I think he’s coming around to the idea that if you want to influence communities that are already hard to reach, you need to go and talk to the leaders of those communities. I know that Minister Stanford had a meeting with Eugene today and that he will be able to assist you in implementing all 138 recommendations of the royal commission. But they’re just normal people. Go and have a chat with them. I think you’ll find they’re quite nice. They will manaaki you—hopefully—and you will probably learn a lot of lessons.

If you want to reduce the patch, those conversations are already happening. Samantha Hayes did a really great article on visiting Whakatāne, visiting the Black Power there, and on how they’re potentially moving away from the patch. But talk to the communities, rather than creating a hostile environment between gangs and police who have to enforce these rules, and then we might make some traction towards eliminating the presence of gangs.

Nothing fuels gang membership and the presence of gangs and the activities of gangs like poverty. Poverty and misery is where gangs thrive. So if you don’t want them to exist, then let’s start by enforcing all of the recommendations in the royal commission. Let’s listen to people who have got experience and respect within the gang community, and work with them to figure out how we can make our communities safer and better. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise this evening to speak in support of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill. I actually was enjoying the first few minutes of the Hon Ginny Andersen’s contribution, when she outlined what a scourge gangs are in New Zealand, and the damage and harm they cause. This coalition Government has promised a crackdown on crime, and that is what we are delivering.

Over the past five years, gangs have recruited more than 3,000 members—that’s a 51 percent increase—and we’ve seen a significant escalation in gang violence, crime, public intimidation, and shootings. Nothing was done under the previous Government, so we are bringing in a different approach where we are actually tackling head-on the issue of gangs and a number of other criminal justice issues.

Police will be able to issue dispersal notices and they will be able to enforce gang patch bans. We want to put these tools in place because we do actually want to focus on cracking down on these gangs, which are causing a lot of misery and crime.

We’ll be doing some other things as well, as a Government. We’ll be putting a cap on the discounts around sentences, we’ll also be doing some things to ensure that the victims of crime are prioritised, and—importantly—we are actually delivering 500 more front-line police by the end of 2025. We want to actually see a reduction in the victims of crime in New Zealand.

Now, just turning to the bill, I do want to thank my fellow members of the Justice Committee. Actually, all of the amendments that the Minister spoke to and accepted were passed unanimously by members of the Justice Committee. The Justice Committee has representatives from all of the parties, and they unanimously recommended the amendments that we are speaking to tonight.

As has been outlined by the Minister, we will see with this bill the prohibition of gang insignia, or gang patches, and some fines and imprisonment time for gang members who breach that—that’ll be enforceable by the police. We have these dispersal orders to stop gangs gathering in public and intimidating people. Police will be able to intervene and actually break up these groups of gang members, and then we’ll also have these non-consorting orders—again, stopping gang members associating with each other.

This is a very important piece of legislation, but it is just one piece of this Government’s law and order plan to turn New Zealand around. One of the more interesting things—and the Minister did reference this—is that this bill has a fixed date on which it will come into effect. That was so that the police could actually be prepared and ready to implement these laws, and that was something that the committee took on board. So, with that, I want to conclude my comments, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the second reading of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill. I must say that I spoke on this bill in the first reading with tremendous confidence that we might get full support around the House on this bill, and I was slightly dismayed at some of the comments that were made by the Opposition. That, unfortunately, has continued. The view of the Opposition seems to be very different from that of the Government.

Unfortunately, I must say, as I said in the first reading, gangs are intimidating, and there’s no doubt that across New Zealand people find gang members and the way that they act is intimidating to them. It is fearful for the majority of New Zealanders. As we are going about our daily lives, because of gangs and the way they act, it is that fearfulness that it puts into communities that makes all of us feel unsafe. That is one of the reasons this Government and New Zealand First support this legislation to give the police some more tools in their tool box to actually go after gangs and make our streets safer and our communities safer so that we don’t feel as intimidated and we can go into our daily lives and just live how we want to live. Gangs, unfortunately, are involved in organised crime. We all know that, and to hear Opposition members continuously get up in this House and through the select committee to support gangs and their way of life—which, as we know, is around organised crime—is, to me, extremely disappointing.

In the 2023 election, while on the election campaign, I and many people on this side of the House heard continuously that New Zealanders want some action around gangs because of the way that they are intimidating people and putting fear into New Zealanders’ lives. I heard on the campaign trail that we wanted action. Since 2017—and this is the biggest part of this—there have been 5,343 registered gang members. By 2024, going by what the Minister of Police said in his press release recently this year, there were 8,607 registered gang members. That was a 61 percent increase in gang members under the Government of members on that side of the House, who were soft on gangs, and their way of fixing it was to give millions of dollars to gangs and to hand out money. “We will fix the gang problem”, they said, “by giving the gangs money.” How ridiculous is that? After their failure to keep gangs under control, we saw an explosion in numbers, and in our communities was that explosion of fear and intimidation.

This bill is trying to achieve some fresh signals from this Government towards raising the issue of prohibiting gang insignia in public places, enabling police to issue dispersal notices, and empowering the courts to issue consorting prohibition notices, which all signal to gangs that the game is up. No more intimidating behaviour and—importantly for New Zealand First—if someone is in court, it will be an aggravating part of their sentence.

We heard numerous discussions through the Justice Committee, and it was sometimes to the amusement, I think, of the Government side that it was almost suggested by members from the other side of the House that the police couldn’t issue a dispersal notice. This debate went on for weeks and weeks, to the point where the New Zealand Police came in a number of times and actually showed how a dispersal notice would be issued. Yes, personal service is, basically, the most common way that you would give a dispersal notice. At the time of the offence: “Here is the notice.”, and it is done. You can give an email—yes—or you could go to the police station. But it’s not rocket science. This is giving the police a tool in their tool box to give a dispersal notice to gang members that will actually say “Hey, you’re not allowed to be here—out.”, and, to me, for those members to say that the police could not issue a dispersal notice is absolutely ridiculous.

Also, non-consorting orders can be made around specified gang offenders. It would have to be a specified gang offender, and that is another tool in the tool box that means that certain gang members cannot interact together. But it is a process that would have to be done after the court has heard an application by the Commissioner of Police. So that is a very, very high bar.

We also heard through the submission period about the gang list, and there was a lot of discussion on the gang list. That has been updated and it can continue to be updated, and clause 30 of the bill gives the Governor-General, by Order in Council, the ability to update that list as it is required to be.

New Zealand First had committed to this in our manifesto, and now we are delivering what was set out in our coalition agreement into legislation. We have also been pleased to hear throughout the select committee process of practical and sensible ways in which this bill can be enhanced. Several points that were raised in the select committee were both insightful and strengthened the effectiveness of this bill. We must improve public confidence in law and order through creating new offences and giving the police powers relating to gangs.

As I say, making gang membership an aggravating part of a sentence is very important to the New Zealand First Party, and something that was strived for, for a number of years, was to get that into legislation. We are proud to deliver what we campaigned on, and we are confident that ensuring that gang membership is considered an aggravating factor in sentencing will bring about positive change.

Gang members that ruin so many people’s lives are now facing consequences for their behaviour—and the Opposition members continuously shout out in this House in support of gangs, probably because they were the only ones that voted for them at election time. But members opposite must realise that the victims of gangs are at the heart of our justice system, and criminal behaviour will be punished. Intimidating behaviour from gang members and having people feel unsafe is not acceptable. I proudly commend this bill to the House.

E te Whare, tēnā tātou. As I rise to speak to the second reading of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill, I can’t help but reflect on the lessons that Moana Jackson, a great rangatira of te ao Māori, left us. Over a 30-year period, he led three investigations into New Zealand’s justice system and increasingly found structural racism, systemic racism, and racist attitudes that permeated the entire justice system and that consistently produced more negative outcomes for Māori than any other group in Aotearoa. Moana’s view was that the institutions of Government that were born out of the vicious violence of colonialism and colonisations were created to suffocate Māori, to extinguish Māori aspiration, and to incarcerate Māori. Moana described these characteristics of Government institutions as carceral entities inasmuch as their ultimate underlying objective is to assimilate the Māori people, to incarcerate the Māori people, to restrict Māori development, and to erase the Māori culture and Māori identity.

When I reflect on the fact that the justice system is under the leadership of someone who believes that, on balance, colonisation was a good thing for Māori, it is no wonder that the abhorrent statistics for Māori in the justice system continue. Indeed, since the genesis of these institutions, when this very House passed legislation to allow itself to imprison Māori for two years without trial, the attitudes that subsequently embedded themselves deeply in the justice system over successive decades and generations would ultimately ensure that there was a pipeline that would deliver Māori from initial point of contact with the justice system, through the justice pipeline, and, ultimately, to prison, and it has done this with alarming regularity and astounding consistency, as was described by Dr Rawiri Waretini-Karena in this House last week, as a survivor of State abuse. These are the lessons that Moana left us. They aren’t revolutionary findings; they’re well understood, they’re well researched, and they’re well-founded, and yet they’re ignored.

Just last week, this House received the report Whanaketia on historical abuse in State care, and I want to acknowledge the community of survivors and their whānau who have suffered and have had to endure the intergenerational damage of abuse meted out at the hands of Government institutions—the carceral entities that Moana so vividly described. In this House last week, the mood was sombre. The faces of MPs were anguished with the pain of having to address the rawness of the brutal truth as it gathered above us, and their messages were clear: stop attacking gangs. Gangs were born of State abuse. No military boot camps for youth; these are all continuations of the State violence these very survivors had to endure, and here we are, one week later, rolling out anti-gang legislation and cranking up boot camps. I tell you, it’s absurd. So what have we learnt? Well, apparently, nothing, because it’s clearly understood that when this law was last in place, it did nothing to reduce offending. It’s clearly understood that it had a disproportionately negative impact on Māori. It’s clearly understood that the bill is in breach of human rights and that it breaches Te Tiriti o Waitangi, yet it continues.

Let me conclude by offering some reflections of my own on the submissions that the Justice Committee received, because they’ve been referenced tonight and they got quite a shining review. I don’t think that the review should have been that shining. We pretty much received submissions from all of the national legal bodies—the Law Society, law associations, Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa, and many others—and they unequivocally, in unison, said that the bill was rubbish, that the bill should not have made it this far, that the bill should be thrown out, and that the Government should start again from a more restorative starting point. All of this was ignored and, as I’ve heard today, glossed over.

It was astounding that there was unanimous condemnation of the bill by the national legal community and that a Government could have brought a piece of legislation this far without taking any consultation or any advice from any of those bodies, and when cornered with the facts, the Government just reverts to saying, “Well, we campaigned on being tough on gangs and crime, we won the election, and, on that basis, we’re doing it.” Well, if that’s the quality of the argument and the rationale, then that’s just pathetic, and you should go back to the start.

Quite frankly, you know, not to ignore the voices that were here—the hundreds of voices that were here—as survivors last week, but to show the same bravery and courage as those survivors, take immediate action to remove this bill before it creates even more damage. E te Pīka, kāre mātou mō te whakaae ki tēnei pire—we do not commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We are here talking about banning gang patches in public places and giving the police the ability to search the homes of people who are going to the supermarket or to pick up their kids from school, not because of what they have done, but because of what they might possibly, maybe, potentially do. If simply removing a piece of clothing could solve the real issues we are facing in New Zealand, we could all go on holiday and take off a few layers. Raincoat gone—cool, child poverty solved! Hoodies gone—homelessness solved! Gang patches gone is not going to make New Zealand a safer society.

Less than a week ago, we all sat here as the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in State care report was tabled. It outlined how the State targeted Māori kids, Pacific kids, and poor kids—a stolen generation of tamariki who were tortured, abused, and not believed or cared for. The report clearly outlines the pathway from abuse in State care to the creation of gangs.

We sat and listened to the Prime Minister say, “You have been heard, you have been believed.”, which resonated with New Zealanders because New Zealanders are compassionate people. They’re pretty on to it too, and we understand authoritative figures like the police and the State being so unsafe that people will find community with each other. That is how we—the State—are responsible for gangs being created.

We have a responsibility to implement real solutions—solutions which are spelt out for everyone to see in the 138 recommendations in the royal commission of inquiry report. The report also told us that most gang members are survivors of abuse in State care. We are the elected representatives of the State who abused these children and we must take responsibility for the problem that we’ve created.

The Minister for Children said that if you see something, to speak up—and this is me speaking up for all New Zealanders, because we cannot continue to class people as bottom-feeding criminals if we want a safe and thriving New Zealand. We can make sensible law when we work collaboratively and that is what the people of New Zealand want us to do to make meaningful change, and it’s a shame this bill is even before the House, because it makes the issue seem like an easy fix with the slogan “tough on crime”.

Guess what! The police were already tough on gangs before this Government came into power, but the conditions of poverty, housing insecurity, and making it harder for Kiwis to live is creating the perfect conditions for gangs to thrive. We know from experience that children in New Zealand who are in State care, stripped of their culture and rights, are on a pathway to prison and gangs, and we need to get serious about the causes, because if we don’t acknowledge the causes, we won’t fix anything.

Banning gang patches will not make New Zealand safer, and it’s an insult to every Kiwi’s intelligence to make it seem like they don’t know the real work that needs to be done. If we define people by whether they are affiliated with a gang or otherwise, we are ignoring the hard work that needs to be done.

The Government would rather talk about gang patches than fund Oranga Tamariki front-line staff. The Government would rather talk about gang patches than deal with poverty. The Government would rather talk about gang patches than deal with homelessness. The Government would rather talk about gang patches than protect tamariki Māori in care. I’d love to go on holiday and take my raincoat off if it solved the real issues New Zealand faces, but I am here to do the work New Zealanders want us to do: to make New Zealand a place where everyone can thrive and be safe.

I want you to ask yourself, would you rather be walking down a dark alley and see a patched member or a police officer? For many people in New Zealand, they would feel safer alone with a patched member than the police, and we need to ask ourselves why.

Let’s get real for a minute. Let’s actually understand what we’re talking about here. We are—unlike the views of many of the members opposite—not talking about wayward community groups who are doing their best but have a couple of bad eggs; we are talking about organisations that are systematically set up to cause misery, cause violence, and cause harm to our communities.

If we want to talk about systemic abuse in this country, why don’t we start talking about the organisations where rape and violence and thuggery and intimidation are not an unintended consequence of the organisation; they are a prerequisite for its membership. Why don’t we start talking about that? Why don’t we just get real about what we’re actually talking about here?

Yes, we can talk about some of the causes of our gang culture and, yes, we can talk about some of the horrific actions of the State in decades past, and we can talk about the social investment approach which this Government believes in, which will help to go some way towards solving the challenge of gang membership in 20 years’ time. But we will not stand by while these organisations are out there in our communities, causing absolute chaos and absolute misery, and that is what this is about. If members want to consider their position on whether or not they would like to support the continued existence of gangs and gang culture in this country, I would invite them to do so.

As chair of the Justice Committee, I do want to commend the work of the committee on this bill. There have been a number of changes made to the bill, and despite some of the back and forth that will go across the House tonight—and, I suspect, on Thursday as well—we actually did a lot of hard work looking into some of the unintended consequences of parts of the bill.

One of the parts I wanted to talk about was the changes we are making to the extent to which this bill applies on the grounds of Parliament, because, as someone who is interested in constitutional law and the place of Parliament in our constitution, we entered into a very interesting discussion with the Clerk of the House about the bill. The Clerk made a submission, which is there in the public domain for everyone to read, and we ended up recommending to the House that we exempt the grounds of Parliament from the prohibition on gang insignia but allow the Speaker to continue to make those decisions for the public on the grounds at Parliament.

That was a very, very important decision, I think, for us to make, because in terms of upholding the sanctity of Parliament as a place for everyone to come and freely express themselves, it is important that we allow that to happen as freely and safely as possible to the extent which Parliament itself allows it through the Speaker. But make no mistake, we do support the Speaker’s right to make those decisions. I suspect, as a caucus and as a Government, that we would support the Speaker in making decisions to continue the prohibition in Parliament’s grounds and on Parliament’s precincts as well as in public, but, ultimately, we recognise the fact that Parliament is not a ground for complete sanctity. It is not a place for immunity from the law, but, ultimately, it is the place of the Speaker to make those decisions, and so that is why we agreed on that change.

The committee did, at the end of the day, receive about 164 submissions and we heard from 32 oral submitters, and, as members have spoken about, they did represent a wide range of perspectives, actually, from law enforcement, legal experts, community organisations, and concerned citizens, to—yes—gang members themselves. While the gang members who showed up at select committee put on what I would call the positive, happy face—the “We are no more than a community group doing our best in the community” side of what they do—very few of them actually spoke at length about what it took for them to enter into the gang lifestyle. What did they have to do to become a member of the gang? What harm and what misery did they have to cause? That is what we are trying to stop—that’s what we’re trying to cut off at the pass here.

We did have a number of very considered submissions, and you’ll see throughout the changes to the bill that a lot of those submissions were taken into account and changes have been made. I’d like to acknowledge the work of Dr Webb and Ginny Andersen and Tracey McLellan and the other members of the committee—Tamatha Paul, Tākuta Ferris—and, of course, the members on the Government side for their work in trying to solve some pretty tricky issues around dispersal notices and around the extent to which the bans will apply, and how it will be implemented in practice. They were very, very difficult issues to work through, and, ultimately, we came to a point where I think the committee agreed by unanimity to the changes that we are going to suggest today.

I want to acknowledge that it is a contentious bill. However, we believe that the measures are justified and proportionate as a way to deal with the threat posed by criminal gangs. The measures in this bill send a clear message that our society will not tolerate the intimidation and the criminal activities of gangs. By disrupting their operations and reducing their visible presence in our society, we aim to create safer communities for all New Zealanders. I commend the report back to the House and I look forward to further robust debate as the bill progresses. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, yes, we’ve got a gang problem; no, gangs aren’t lovely community organisations, but let’s stop the bidding war. If you were to have a bidding war on who’s going to take away the most human rights, you win. If it’s who’s going to impose the harshest sentences, you win. If it’s who’s going to give the police the greatest and most extensive powers, you win. But let’s ask this question: what works—right? Let’s stop arguing about one of the most important issues facing us.

Gangs, at their core, are organisations premised on living outside of the law and are violent and authoritarian. Around those gangs are communities of people—whānau, children, parents, grandparents—all of whom are part of the network that gangs affect. When I heard the Minister of Justice talk about the usual narrative of the crackdown, the consequences, and telling gangs to take notice, well, I don’t think the gangs follow him on Instagram. I don’t think him saying that “We’re coming after your patches.” is actually going to address the real ills. But do you know what? What I think isn’t as important as the evidence is.

I mean, the Chief Science Advisor to the Government has written a quite comprehensive report on gangs, which I won’t quote from at length, but, certainly, one of the things that the Chief Science Advisor said in 2023 was that “a ‘zero-tolerance’ style of policing builds distrust in the communities that police are tasked to serve. It creates alienation and dislocation from communities and risks fuelling gang membership and increasing gang dislocation and isolation.” That is an apolitical statement from someone tasked with the very important job of giving us the best approach to a difficult social problem. Let’s stop the bidding war. Let’s start talking about what we can really do, and, look, this window-dressing bill does nothing. Thank you for your kind words, Mr Meager, and we did try and make this bill less offensive than it would otherwise be, but the fact of the matter is that the bill is still entirely ineffective.

Look, the thoughtful opinions go on. There are Professors Deckert and Tauri, and I met Mr Tauri in Hamilton recently. They were very clear. These are very senior criminologists with an interest in the area, who said that “the current anti-gang policies will not reduce crime, but are likely to further alienate hard-to-reach communities.” Now, I get it—right? I get that there’s media time in talking about Harry Tam and how no one should talk to him, but what is the real answer to saying to these people that “There’s an opportunity, there’s space—get out of the gangs.”? It’s not just the hardened members who, if they commit serious crimes, we agree, should be penalised severely, but what about those young people? What about those people who are looking for opportunity and for whom this kind of narrative around banning gang patches is actually glamourising the very gangs that we want to suppress?

I must say I found it deeply troubling when the Minister, in his speech, referred to the abuse in State care in passing, and then, essentially, said, “But”—but nothing—“we don’t really care.” I mean, look, everyone should go and look at the evidence on the website and watch the videos, because they talk in their own words about their experiences, and the fact that the Government, in March, saying “Those experiences of trauma when you get caught up in offending are not relevant and we don’t want to know, and we won’t fund someone to tell us about them in section 27 reports.” was deeply offensive. I won’t name the people whom I looked at, but one of them said, “You know, when my parents died, I had no criminal record. I hadn’t done anything wrong. But when I came out of the boys’ home, I was a gang member doing everything wrong—drinking and drugs.” Now, if that person gets into trouble and commits serious crimes, of course the law must respond—and not just the law; our communities want a response. They want some retribution and some acknowledgment. That’s got to happen, but at the same time that doesn’t solve the problem, and this Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill doesn’t solve the problem, either.

If you look at, for example, the dispersal orders, it’s only window dressing, because it’s entirely unworkable. The poster child of this dispersal order is the Ōpōtiki tangi. Now, there is no way that these powers could meaningfully be used by police officers in that situation. If you look at what it actually is, though, it’s much more likely to be a group of gang members down at the park playing loud music, because if there’s three or more gang members who are “unreasonably disrupting the activities of other members of the public.”—so there’s your first question. What does that mean? What is “unreasonably” interfering with the activities of other members of the public? I don’t know. Is it playing reggae music or heavy metal, you know, because the fact of the matter is that this is just an open door for the police to say, “I don’t like what you’re doing.” It is so vague as to be pretty much meaningless.

You get that situation where the police come along, and then there’s this ridiculous service issue. They’ve got to give a notice, but the police made it very clear—and I don’t know what committee Jamie Arbuckle was in—that they don’t do paper; they only like electronic. Just like with the traffic ticket, if you’ve had one on the side of the road, they take your details—boom—it’ll be sent to you by email. Paper is the last thing that they want to do. They’re going to ask these burly members for their email address, and what is the likelihood? They might’ve had a few beers too, you know, and they might not be entirely cooperative, so that doesn’t work. They’re then going to take them down to the station and write them out a ticket—that is absolutely a ridiculous proposition, simply operationally. The power itself is deeply problematic, the trigger is largely meaningless, and the operation of it is entirely unworkable, and so that’s why this is simply window dressing.

Look, we do need to address the problem of gang membership. We do need to reduce the offending. We know that some things work: we know that depriving gang members of the funds that come from their criminal offending works; we know that intervention into their families in an intensive manner works. There are things that work, and my colleagues from the Green Party make a fair point that there are long-term things we can do about poverty, as well. But we also know that immediate interventions that actually occur prior to offending, and not the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, or—worse—Waikeria Prison, which is tantamount to being a graveyard after the ambulances didn’t turn up. We can do things, so let’s have a big, grown-up conversation about stopping the political football of being tough on crime and recognise that there’s community harm here that we need to address. We need a lasting solution based on evidence, not TikTok memes. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Oh, jeez! Oh, my giddy aunt! What are we actually looking at here? We just heard from a previous Green Party speaker that most New Zealanders would prefer to walk into a dark alleyway and come across a patched gang member than a police officer—you know, this is the parallel universe we’re dealing with here. Some of us come out of the community and then into Wellington and hear these debates. Well, if the Green Party are convinced of that, they should test that by way of public opinion. They should put that out as a postcard or an email as to who New Zealanders would prefer to walk into down a dark alley.

Then we heard from the previous Labour member “Let’s start the talk as to what really works.”, and something about “Let’s have a conversation.” Well, this is coming from a senior former Minister in the Labour Party, which had six years in power with an absolute majority of 65 MPs, and now they are telling us, nine months into Opposition, that we should start the conversation as to what really works. Well, I’ll tell you what worked under them. Over the past five years, gangs recruited more than 3,000 members—a 51 percent increase. While they were having that conversation, which they still want to continue, that was their track record. At the same time—

Ingrid Leary: Where’s your evidence? Give us your evidence of what’s going to work.

CAMERON BREWER: —we have seen a significant escalation in gang-related violence, in public intimidation, and in shootings, with violent crime up 33 percent, and retail crime and youth crime, and they say, “Show us your evidence.” Well, I’m quite happy to come out with all the empirical evidence that has been well tabled and well released by the New Zealand Police, but, again: “Oh, no, let’s not elevate the police; let’s elevate the status of gang members.”

That is the whole modus operandi of members over the way—elevating the status of gang members. They haven’t told us—and perhaps we need to ask them—how they got those patches that these people across the way in Labour, Greens, and Te Pāti Māori are happy to defend. Those members elevate the status of people who have only peddled misery in our communities. They had their chance over six years, with, frankly, at the time, one of the most popular Prime Ministers, who could have got anyone to eat anything out of her hand. They had that. They had 65 MPs—an absolute majority—and they squandered it. All we saw was crime go up, crime go up, crime go up—and that’s all we saw.

It now comes to this Government to not only inherit an economic mess but inherit law and order in quite a state, and they say, “Oh, you’re just doing this for political reasons.” No, our agenda, whether it’s economic, law and order, health and education—guess what! When you do the polling—Labour does the polling, too—what’s the number one issue? Economy, cost of living, and inflation; number two, law and order, and health and education.

Ingrid Leary: What’s in the bill? What’s in the legislation that you want to put forward to the House?

CAMERON BREWER: OK, well, let’s talk about the bill then. Let’s go back to the bill because the previous speaker, Mr Webb, got into the weeds, and I’ll just remind the viewing public what the bill actually offers up as far as its provisions go. It prohibits the display of gang insignia in public places, it empowers police to issue dispersal notices that require specified gang members to leave a public place and not associate in public for seven days, it creates a new non-consorting order that prohibits association and communication between specific gang members for three years, and it amends the Sentencing Act 2002 to make gang membership an aggravating factor at sentencing. This is something that New Zealanders want us to crack down on up and down the country.

The Green Party in Opposition think that New Zealanders would rather walk into a dark alley and come across a patched gang member than a sworn constable. That’s how far they have lost reality, and, frankly, that’s how long they are going to stay in the Opposition and defending gang members, at this rate. So I support the second reading of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill, and I look forward to further discussion. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

This is a split call.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, ngā mihi o te wā whiriwhiri ki a koe. [Thank you, Madam Speaker, greetings of this sitting block to you.] This is a short call.

As the MP for Manurewa, this is a big issue for me. It’s something I find hard to talk about because the cost of gangs on my community—the human cost—and the way that gangs recruit young people in Manurewa is a scourge that we must fight. All parliamentarians must stand against the way that young people are recruited into a life of crime. They’ve already gone through the school system, the health system—which has for many generations underserved their families—and then the fact that they feel that they need to turn to gangs is a problem we all have to address, but this bill absolutely does not do that.

This bill lets down the people in Manurewa who thought that what they were getting would be a Government that was focused on crime, a Government that would put more police on the streets in South Auckland and would resource the local cops—who have good relationships with the people in Manurewa—to actually be able to do their jobs. We had these police coming into the Justice Committee and telling committee members that these were not the solutions that they would be able to action and that it would lead to an undermining of local cops, who build up over many years these hard-won relationships in hard-to-reach communities like South Auckland, and who will be out there making fools of themselves because of the political point-scoring that went on in the election campaign.

We are letting down people in Manurewa. We are letting down those mums who see their young boys being recruited by gangs in places where they should not have access to young people—in schools; in places where young people should be assured forward that the State is going to look out for them and that they have a Government who backs them. What are we seeing in Manurewa? We’re seeing gangs booming under this Government. The ability for ordinary people to walk down the street has not been improved by rhetoric like this. In fact, this is glamourising gang members, who have become, suddenly, overnight, a popular, glamourised culture that is counter to everything this Government is saying, and we’re seeing more of this activity.

I stopped at the intersection of Browns Road and Great South Road last week, where the window washer who’s there—I often stop and chat to him when I’m going past and he’s there. Peeni Henare will have seen him there. He is always there, and I pulled over, and usually I will tell him that he’s not meant to be doing that, but I’ll talk to him about what he’s seeing. He said to me, “You know, I’m lucky at the moment. I’m someone who’s got stuff sorted. There are more and more people out on their butts because they don’t have jobs at the moment. I’m seeing more and more people out on the streets, and I’m worried about how South Auckland is going to look in a couple of years when this has really taken hold.”, and it made me think about those ordinary people who are being punished by legislation like this. They are being punished by a Government that is using people like this—who have nowhere else to turn—as an opportunity to peddle the rhetoric which says that it is the responsibility of those people to keep themselves away from organised crime.

Well, it’s the responsibility of the Government to step in and give young people an alternative path so that they’re not washing windows at the lights—and that’s what they’re known for in their community—but they can find a good job, they can find training opportunities, or they can fit into a school that knows what their needs are and is resourced to be able to teach them in a way that they can learn—because these are the problems that have led to gang growth in New Zealand. These are the problems that we need to find the solutions to, instead of cosmetic solutions like this, which only serve to make politicians in this House feel like they are doing something about it.

There is a growth of new gangs in South Auckland—gangs like the Comancheros, gangs like the King Cobras—that did not exist before, and the solutions that we need are about stopping young people joining those gangs, which are active in recruiting on things like TikTok and social media. The things that actually work and that we need police to be able to be resourced to do are those solutions like Kotahi te Whakaaro, which was getting kids who were caught up in this off the streets overnight. It was getting each one of those cases in front of experts, who sat around the table in the morning and knew what to do with them, whether it was Oranga Tamariki here, whether it was taking them to a local community group to get back in the right place, or whether it was just taking them down to James Cook High School or Manurewa High School to have a meeting with the principal and their whānau. It was practical solutions like that which were actually making a difference. That is what Manurewa deserves from this Government, and that is not what we are getting.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Arena Williams, the member opposite, has just described a situation that she is observing now, which is a situation that is clearly the result of the past many years where the gangs have gained ground and have boomed. It’s been said many times over this debate that numbers have grown—a 51 percent increase. This didn’t happen in the last nine months alone; this is the result of a few years of momentum that the gangs have gained. At the same time, there has been significant violence. In New Lynn, where I am the MP, youth violence and assaults are rife. It’s happening and steps are being taken to deal with that, but what this bill seeks to address is specifically the behaviour that gangs are putting into the public space.

The bill specifically deals with the situation where gangs need to see consequences arise from the behaviour that they’ve been escalating over time. We are nine months in. We are going through legislation that will address that very specific circumstance of the behaviour of gangs in public. The bill seeks to reduce the behaviour engaged in by gangs and to disincentivise gang membership, because as it seeks to deal with the elements that make gang membership exciting, probably, and alluring to many, they will be dampened down.

It is a new offence—so new it has never been an offence—to wear gang patches and to display specific gang insignia in public places. The object of that is to reduce the incidence of menacing behaviour in public that makes people feel threatened. There is also the opportunity for police to intervene in situations where three or more are gathered, which, again, is there to seek to put some confidence in the public that the police are looking into and preventing threatening behaviour. It’s the behaviour and the consequences of that behaviour that this bill seeks to address.

We can all argue about the causes of why people are susceptible to and attracted by gang membership. We can talk about how people have in their life circumstances been disadvantaged so that gang membership seems to be the only opportunity for them to gain involvement in a familial space, but that is not what this bill is about, and we are here to debate the bill that seeks to address the misbehaviour.

In addition to the new offence of wearing gang patches and displaying insignia, with also the gathering together, there will be the opportunity for the police to ask the courts to issue non-consorting orders to prevent the long-term association of people who are clearly of a menacing and dangerous association. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the chance to conclude Labour’s contribution on this bill about gang patches, and to say a few words. I would like to start by also acknowledging the Justice Committee, chaired by James Meager. It’s generally a relatively collegial committee that does its best to take a piece of legislation, of which there are many in the Justice Committee, and make changes and listen to submitters and experts and take advice so that what comes out the other end can be perhaps a little bit better than what goes in.

This certainly happened in this process as well. However, compared to some of the other instances of bills that we’ve had before us, it was a process that I think was somewhat frustrating, because whilst the subject matter and the substantive nature of what we were talking about is important, fundamental, and, in some ways, sad and equally frustrating and scary—and all of those things—it just didn’t feel like the solution that we had before us was very weighty when literally, during the process of talking about gang patches and considering the core of people’s existence in a world that’s quite different to the ones that we’re used to, it asked us and forced us to think about unshared realities and paths that haven’t been the same as they have been for us. In a lot of respects, therefore, it was frustrating to only be talking about gang patches.

Certainly, on this side of the House—and I hope that we have made it clear; it certainly sounded clear to me when I listened to my colleagues—we all acknowledge the fact that gangs are a problem. The Labour Party fully acknowledges that criminal gangs are a significant problem in New Zealand and that keeping communities safe from gangs and disrupting their criminal activity should absolutely be a priority, and it should be a priority for this House. That is why, I say again, it’s a little bit frustrating that we’re only talking about people taking their jackets off, essentially, as the means by which to get to the part where we solve this problem.

Before I go into any more detail—and as has been said on several occasions tonight—I do want to acknowledge the contributions of my colleagues. This debate started tonight where the Hon Ginny Andersen was able to illustrate her points by focusing on domestic violence, and I think that that was a really worthwhile contribution because she talked about it in so far as police resources go and all of the things that we could be doing differently if we were looking at what police are going to be focusing on to actually prevent the funnel and the pipeline in the future. I’d also like to acknowledge the contribution of Arena Williams because she talked about the everyday life that she sees in her electorate of Manurewa, in particular, and the absolute cruelty of being privy to the fact that predatory gangs are recruiting at schools and are doing things and taking advantage of people who are in disparate situations and may be looking for alternatives, and they are offering them something that in the long run is certainly not going to do them any good.

Again, it’s relatively frustrating and really annoying that at this time of night, having heard no really substantive contributions from the Government—I mean, we’ve heard contributions that talk around the edges, that talked about the technicalities, and that talked about fairly innocuous or fairly mundane aspects of the process, but we haven’t heard anybody really come out and sell this bill tonight. Therefore, I think it is fair to say that it’s largely cosmetic and that it tinkers around the edges. We certainly know—and we heard from the Hon Dr Duncan Webb—that it is absolutely unworkable.

Time and time again, we heard from submitters, and we stepped through processes. We almost kind of acted out a few scenarios, so I’m not entirely sure I agree with Duncan Webb, and I’m not entirely sure where Jamie Arbuckle was when we were trying to get to the sort of the crux of the matter about how unworkable this was when you actually took it step by step, when you thought about those disbursement orders. It’s almost comical to think of the process that needs to be in place for this to work. But I think the point that I’m trying to get to is that none of that actually matters, because that is not the point of this piece of legislation. The point of this legislation is for the Government to look tough on crime, and the point of this legislation is for them to be able to point to something to say that they are doing something when, actually, they’re not doing something, because—I agree with my colleagues—this is merely, merely window dressing.

If the Government was serious about actually tackling this problem, they would have made different choices, and that’s the common theme, isn’t it? We all have to make a choice about whether we put resource here or whether we prioritise this here. It’s a privilege to be in this House. It’s a privilege to work in service as being lawmakers for this country. Terms are very short and you don’t get an awful lot of time to make a difference and do things meaningfully, and if the Government was serious about tackling this, this is certainly not the piece of legislation that we’d be talking about tonight. It’s vacuous, it’s superficial, and, as I said, it’s about looking tough on crime without actually doing the work to make anything worthwhile.

Now, the select committee process also revealed a number of ways in which we believe that this bill is unworkable, and I think a couple of them have been touched on tonight and I won’t go over them again. But I do want to emphasise that the summation of that and the outcome of all of that information was that we are very genuinely concerned that this piece of legislation is absolutely unworkable. It’s not in so far as “Therefore, it does nothing; therefore that’s OK.”, because when it doesn’t work, it actually puts other people at harm, like our police force and our police officers.

We heard from the New Zealand Law Society and other submitters, and it was a real theme of the submissions that they were expressing real concern not only about whether it would not have the desired effect but whether it could have unintended consequences and whether some of those could be revolving around keeping our police officers safe. The New Zealand Law Society also noted—and I think it’s worth saying, and it has been touched on—that this bill, essentially, comes from the Australian law. We looked into that and we heard directly from people, and for those of us who did a little bit of homework, it didn’t take long to realise that it hasn’t actually worked that well.

We heard anecdotes from some submitters, some of whom were speaking in support, ironically, and providing quite contrary information—but most of whom weren’t, and they were talking about the fact that there really isn’t any good evidence to show that it worked in Australia. The couple of examples where people did try to sell it along those lines were from Perth, where, as it turns out, the gangs just packed up and left and went to the East Coast. So what are we going to do in New Zealand, where there’s nowhere else to go?

We also heard the example from Whanganui, and I think Michael Laws was one of the submitters who spoke very passionately about the experiment that happened there. He also acknowledged in relation to the question: “So what happened? Did people just stop being in gangs when you took their gang patches off them?”—he said, “No, I think they just moved somewhere else.” That’s not a solution that’s before us in this piece of legislation, so it really is quite silly.

The provisions, as we’ve said, give police the power to disperse gang members, and we believe them to be really unworkable. I think that the Hon Ginny Andersen said that best when she spoke tonight and talked us through the steps that are in play in so far as eliciting emails and asking someone who doesn’t want to give an email address whether they would kindly like to accompany you back to a police station so that something can be printed out, because none of that is enforceable without those steps.

I also want to just note again that if this Government really was serious about doing something about gangs, then why didn’t they just do more of what we were doing in the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act, which we passed? When you go after gangs, you go after their money, you go after their vehicles, and you impound their motorbikes and their cars, and you hit them where it hurts. You don’t just take their jackets off them.

So, all in all, I’d like to reiterate the fact that Labour certainly won’t be supporting this bill. We think it’s been a real disappointment that the Government hasn’t been more ambitious, and we hope that as the term goes on, things improve a little bit and we can start seeing some bills from the Government that actually achieve something.

It’s both a pleasure and a shame that I have to stand and speak about this bill, in the second reading of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill. It’s a pleasure in the sense that I’m thinking about how, for many of the people in my patch and also in South Auckland and East Auckland, the implementation of this bill will help them to feel a lot safer. They will feel a lot safer, whether or not it achieves all the goals that the Opposition is trying to say that it should achieve. It will make them feel safer, absolutely—100 percent.

It’s a shame that we have to talk about laws like this and work on laws like this because of the fact that—friendly reminder—as was mentioned by a number of my colleagues, over the past five years, gangs have recruited more than 3,000 members. That’s an increase of 51 percent. We’re not talking about members of a knitting club or members of a poetry club or members of a pot-luck club—no pun intended—we’re talking about, as Dr Duncan Webb said, gangs at their core being organisations that are living outside the law. Absolutely, they’re normal people. Absolutely, my heart goes out to them for what many of them have experienced—absolutely—but they’re normal people that have chosen to live outside the law.

Now, what are we trying to do here? We’re trying to implement changes that are going to ban gang insignia in public, forfeit insignia to the Crown, create dispersal notices that are enforceable for seven days, and create non-consorting orders, and the bill amends the Sentencing Act to make it an aggravating factor to be part of a gang. Why—why—are we doing this? Well, there are a number of reasons why, but it’s not just about crime. Actually, when we talk about them taking off that jacket, it’s about the fact that them wearing that jacket is brandishing their gang insignia to show that they are above the law—not above the law for merely jaywalking; we’re talking about family violence, blatant assaults, and drug dealing. This is part of what we’re trying to do here: we’re trying to say the fact that they are brandishing these patches is glamourising gangs.

The National Party and the Government are not glamourising gangs by passing this Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill; the patches are glamourising gangs. The Harley-Davidsons bought by the proceeds of crime are glamourising gangs. This is what our kaupapa is about, and this is what we’re trying to achieve. We’re trying to say that brandishing and glamourising gangs through the patches is not OK and it’s causing extreme intimidation, and we’re trying to say that absolutely, yes, we are getting tough on crime, but 100 percent we need to address the core problems, as well. The core problems are not going to be addressed with this law alone; it’s with other measures that our Government is taking. But at this stage, yes, I commend this bill to the House. We’re not going to glamourise patches.