Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): 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 first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 8 July 2024.

The bill gives effect to one part of the Government’s hundred-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 crime increasing 33 percent. This Government wants to prevent the current level of violence from becoming a permanent feature of New Zealand society, so we’re giving police additional tools to go after the criminal gangs that inflict fear and misery on our communities.

The Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill does four things. First, it creates a new criminal offence prohibiting the display of gang insignia in public places. This builds on our 2013 law that prohibits the display of gang insignia in Government buildings like schools and hospitals. This Government is extending these rules to all public places. Prohibition includes gang patches and also covers items such as clothing or vehicles that have gang signs or symbols attached to them. These insignia intimidate law-abiding Kiwis and are status symbols used to encourage others, particularly young people, to become part of the gang. They also make members of a gang identifiable, which may exacerbate inter-gang rivalries that could eventuate into gang violence. It will therefore be illegal to display gang insignia in public places, punishable by fine or imprisonment. Following conviction, the gang insignia used in offending is forfeited to the Crown and can be destroyed or disposed of as the court directs.

The bill also creates a new dispersal power which police can use to stop gang members from gathering in public. A dispersal notice will require the group to leave an area and not associate in public for seven days. This tool will enable police to disrupt gatherings that can escalate into criminal behaviour. Gangs gather in public places in order to create fear in our communities and to intimidate law-abiding Kiwis. Time and again, we’re seeing criminal gangs block roads, harass the public, and disrupt the lives of ordinary citizens just trying to go about their business peacefully. We should not regard this as acceptable.

To ensure the safety of officers, Police can issue the dispersal notice at the time of the gathering, or Police can decide it would be more appropriate to issue the notice at a later time. The notice will apply for the next seven days, preventing the group from reconvening again in public. We recognise that there needs to be exemptions, and the dispersal notice will not apply to public meetings of immediate family members or where the people need to associate for a lawful purpose such as work, education, or healthcare. There’s also the ability to apply to the Commissioner of Police for an exemption for other lawful purposes.

Thirdly, the bill creates a non-consorting order. This order is issued by a court and will require specified people not to associate or communicate for three years. Crimes, like the importation and sale of illegal drugs, don’t just happen; they require coordination and planning. Police often know exactly who these criminals are but are powerless to prevent them from planning and committing these crimes before it’s too late. We believe the police should be able to act on the intelligence they have and apply to the court to stop known gang offenders from associating or communicating with one another, to keep our communities safe.

As with the dispersal notices, our bill recognises that some association or communication may be required for lawful purposes. Exemptions are provided for immediate family and lawful purposes such as work, education, or healthcare. The court can also consider applications for exemptions for other lawful purposes.

Finally, the law gives greater weight to gang membership as an aggravating factor in sentencing. This will ensure that courts are not unduly limited in using gang membership as an aggravating factor. I expect this will lead to tougher sentences for gang members and send a strong message that gangs’ unlawful activities will not be tolerated.

Although these changes will impact on the rights of gang members, we believe the changes are justified. In addition, our human rights laws recognise that individuals’ rights can be justifiably limited where this is required to achieve a sufficiently important social benefit such as the prevention of crime. New Zealanders deserve to feel safe in their homes and communities. That means we need to take action to reverse the growth of gangs and reduce their ability to engage in criminal behaviour that endangers the lives and livelihoods of law-abiding Kiwis. Gangs will no longer be able to behave as if they are above the law. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Labour Party accepts that there is a gang problem in New Zealand, and our work as the prior Government demonstrates that. We have had the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill to look at for an hour, and we don’t want to be hasty with it. I’ve read the bill once. I’ve looked at the Attorney-General’s report. The Attorney-General’s report points out that there are inconsistencies with the rights and freedoms preserved in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We want to make sure that any actions to suppress the contagion of gangs in New Zealand is proportionate and is reasonable, and that it doesn’t impact certain communities in an inappropriate and negative way. We also want to make sure that legislation is workable, and my initial review of this raises some alarm bells.

The linchpin of this piece of legislation is what it means to be a gang member. We know that it’s already a criminal offence to be a member of a criminal organisation, which is pretty much the same thing, and the definition here in the interpretation clause includes “an individual who is involved in the affairs of a gang for the likely purpose of participating in a criminal activity”. Now, that is looking into someone’s intention. It’s looking into someone’s home. It’s pretty much impossible to prove why people are hanging out together. So we think those kinds of things need to be very carefully examined.

Of course, the kind of front piece for this is the ban on gang insignia. We know that some are going to be easy. A Mongrel Mob patch which says “Mongrel Mob” is going to be pretty easy. But that’s not what the definition says. It says, “a sign, symbol, or representation commonly displayed”—so not a one-off but common—“to denote membership of, or affiliation with … a gang”, so that also is very vague. Any pattern—symbols are often adopted. There’s the watermelon symbol for a current movement, and that is a symbol of affiliation with a movement. Now, those kinds of thing are very vague.

That kind of vagueness is not really helpful, and there’s one other thing tucked away in there. You’ve got to remember that once you are identified as a gang member, you are subject to not being able to wear your insignia that affiliates you with it and subject to being dispersed and having non-consorting orders placed upon you. It’s a very negative outcome, and what’s the threshold when these orders come to be made or these dispersal orders are re-examined? Well, that’s set out a bit later on in the bill, and it’s balance of probabilities. So these very significant infringements of human rights are to be determined not on the basis of beyond reasonable doubt—“We’re sure you’re a gang member.”—but on the balance of probabilities, and I raise concerns there because these are quasi-criminal impediments to someone’s freedom.

The other point is, in terms of dispersal notices, in clause 9 of the bill, the trigger is not that the person is a gang member, which would be one thing, but simply that a constable suspects that the person is a gang member—again, a very low threshold. Now, as I said when I started this speech, we’ve had this bill for a little over an hour now. We agree there’s a problem. We don’t want to dismiss solutions out of hand. We are a constructive party, so we are going to support this bill going to select committee, but I do want to make it clear that that is not to say we’re going to support this through the House. But we want to work as constructively as we can to see if a good balance can be struck between protecting the public and making sure we address the issue of gangs in an effective and appropriate manner. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I grew up in a town called Tokoroa, where there are many gangs, blue and red, all different colours. I have whānau and friends who are in gangs and I know I’m not the only one in this House. Maybe you are ashamed of your whānau, but I know that you cannot choose the family or the place that you are born into. I know that this isn’t a black and white issue. People aren’t good or bad. People are products of the society that we in this House have created and maintained.

This week, I did something that I’m pretty sure nobody on the other side of the House has done, and that’s actually talk to people who are former and current gang members about what is happening in the House this week. Because talking to the people directly affected by the bills that go through this House is a basic principle that we all agree to, except when it’s about gang members. I heard stories about the violent abuse that these men experienced when they were meant to be safe in State care because their home environments were too dangerous. But instead of being safe within the State, they were abused—physically, mentally, sexually abused by people that were meant to keep them safe.

If you look at the royal commission inquiry into abuse in State care, you find testimony after testimony about the horrendous abuse experienced by people who would go on to join gangs. And guess what! It was that abuse in State care that taught those children to be aggressive, antagonistic, and violent. So it’s no surprise that they would go on to join gangs. These victims of abuse in State care joined gangs in the first place because it was the only group in society who they could talk to and relate to about the cruel and callous treatment that they experienced as children, and safety in numbers after being abused by people who are meant to care for them. But this bill further marginalises, further excludes, and further radicalises a group in society for whom nobody claims responsibility.

We are all culpable. We can’t and won’t arrest ourselves out of the gang problem. Throwing people into prison does nothing but further marginalise people. It doesn’t make people reflect on their actions or the harm that they’ve caused. People in prison are the most marginalised, most disenfranchised, one of the only groups in society who are not allowed to vote for the people that are meant to represent them, and the most exploited people in this country who contribute enormous amounts of free labour. And the majority of those people are Māori. A majority of those people have been abused at the hands of the State. A majority have got physical disabilities and mental health and addiction issues, and a majority come from the most impoverished, deprived, and neglected communities in New Zealand, like the place that I grew up in: Tokoroa, Whakatāne, Kawerau, Whanganui, Hawera. These are the communities where gangs are born and it’s no surprise when you look at the neglect that they experience.

From the cradle to the grave, this Government continues the cycles of colonisation by imprisoning, institutionalising, and objectifying our people. It was colonisation that caused our people to be displaced without a kāinga, without a home to live in, without whenua to thrive on, and without our tikanga to guide us. We as a people have a natural longing for whānau; it is intrinsic to who we are. When everything we have known has been stripped away from us, it is only natural to seek comfort by creating a whānau that can understand our unique trauma and our unique struggle. I’m not trying to undermine or minimise the real harm that is created by gangs. But what I am trying to say is that we do have an obligation to take an evidence-based approach and address the issue at the root cause.

Bills like this create more gang members, they fill our prisons, they increase tensions with police, and ultimately they make our communities less safe. That’s just not my opinion; that is backed up by what the Minister’s own officials told him recently. It’s also a slippery slope. Banning what people wear and banning them from meeting together. What’s next? You can’t do this, can’t do this, can’t do this? Because that is exactly the slippery slope that you’re going down.

These things aren’t innocuous. It is us that proscribe meaning to those things. And the worst thing that I learnt this week is that gangs were already having that conversation. They are aware that patches are intimidating to people. They were already having conversations about moving on and stopping wearing patches. But this just increases hostility and it’s actually going to have perverse outcomes in making the issue a lot worse.

The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in support of this bill. I just want to make a few brief comments. Gangs are an unwelcome part of our criminal landscape, and I actually do agree with the Hon Dr Duncan Webb when he says there has been a contagion of gangs. I think we already heard from the Minister, a 33 percent increase in violent crime—you know, more than 3,000 new members, a 51 percent increase in gang members. I think this is the time to do something about this very difficult and really worrying problem in New Zealand.

ACT has long campaigned on some of these things. I think that the great thing about this bill is it is actually bringing together and showing the real strength of this Government. We’ve actually brought together some of the policies that have come from all parties that make up this Government. We’ve long campaigned on gang control orders, and also wanting to amend the Sentencing Act to make gang membership an aggravating factor.

Yesterday, my colleague Minister McKee, obviously, also introduced the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill. So this needs to be seen in the context of a wider justice policy and law and order policy that this Government is putting in place.

As has already been kind of covered, there are four main parts to this bill: you know, the gang insignia ban; the dispersal powers; the non-consorting orders; and, of course, the very important changes to the Sentencing Act to make it an aggravating factor.

I want to thank the Labour Party for actually supporting this to the select committee. I think we’ve got a very good select committee that can constructively work through some of the issues they have raised. But it is very important for ACT and for this Government that we get on top of this gang problem and actually make Kiwis feel safer. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill. Today is a great day because we’re here to reduce the harm caused by gangs. That harm that is caused by gangs makes communities feel unsafe, so, today, we’re here to try to make our communities safer.

During the election campaign, you heard a slogan, and in that slogan you heard “Let’s take back our country.” That slogan from New Zealand First is very much about what this legislation is about; we want to take back New Zealand and we don’t want gangs.

Gangs are intimidating. This bill sends a clear message to the gangs: your behaviour that has shut down streets and made people feel unsafe is no longer going to be tolerated. We often hear from the members of the public that they feel unsafe due to gang presence which has involved standover tactics and harassment, and that they want something done. Our communities do want something done. This bill empowers police to order gang members to be dispersed.

This bill also sends another clear message to the gangs: your membership in the gangs will be taken into account when you’re sentenced for a crime. And a major thing New Zealand First has always campaigned on—and we start to deliver that promise today—is we amend the Sentencing Act 2002 to make gang membership an aggravating factor at sentencing.

We also heard from the Rt Hon Winston Peters today about leadership. And on this side of the House, we are showing leadership, and we are going to show leadership around gang management. We will give the tools to the police—what they require—to control the gangs. We will not be like that last Government that gave gangs millions of taxpayers’ dollars; what was totally unrequired and unneeded and something that the majority of New Zealanders totally disagreed with.

New Zealand First will support this bill. We support it going to the Justice Committee and we support seeing the gangs disperse and gangs out of our communities. Today is about safe communities giving and taking back New Zealand from gang behaviour. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I’ve never heard so much rubbish in my life. I just want to just make mention of your catch phrase, “Let’s take our country back”. I’ll tell you what, if that was a Māori Party catch phrase for a campaign heading into any election—I’ll tell you what—there’d be hell to pay, eh. “Let’s take our country back”; let’s take Aotearoa back. Yeah.

Anyway, this bill, here, is another form of a fishing expedition on our people. Let’s understand—let’s just understand where this has come from. In this last election, I have never seen so much social theory being used by the other side of the House than I have ever in any political election in Aotearoa—never. Now, social theory was used by Hitler. Social theory has been used by Trump to create moral panic and fear in people. Yes, elderly Pākehā deserve to retire with dignity and in peace, but to allow this type of rhetoric to run rampant across the country and to scare people—people who have never ever met with gangs, people who have never ever seen a gang, people who have never ever probably seen a patch. But to see it on TV, built up by the media, in places like Ōpōtiki, places like Tokoroa, places like Whakatāne—none of them have ever been there to talk to those particular gang members or those communities. I’ll tell you that right now. If this Government has taught us anything, it is that not every criminal is a gang member, but not every gang member is a criminal.

But I want to make mention—during COVID-19, they played their part. I visited gang pads, I was there for the vaccination—they did their bit. So when you say that it’s all bad, I don’t think so. I was reminded by my colleague here, who talked about how the gangs were actually the first ones to bring lunches into schools, in Huntly—the Huksters.

Mark Cameron: And screwdrivers.

RAWIRI WAITITI: So all of those things—oh, don’t worry, I went to a Pākehā school and it wasn’t gang members bringing screwdrivers into that school.

Let’s get reality here—let’s get reality here. This is going to disproportionately affect Māori. We are already the highest incarcerated peoples in this country: 50 percent of the male prison population are Māori, 64 percent of the female prison population are Māori. Actually, you’re wasting so much resource on this. There are 5.1 million people in this country, yet there are, according to your statistics, 8,000 gang members. What a waste of resource. That’s 0.1 percent of the population. Let’s work it out: 0.1 percent of the population that you’re focusing on here. Of the whānau in gangs, 80 percent to 90 percent have come out of State care. You created them—sorry, Mr. Speaker, not you. The Government created them with their military schools, with their board schools, and with their State theft of our tamariki. This is the truth; and this is where gangs have come from.

The only time Māori received any special treatment in the justice system is when we’ve been profiled. We are being profiled—because the majority of people in gangs are Māori. Associates—am I an associate? I have whānau in gangs. Am I an associate? Am I going to be affected by this bill? Is it because I don’t wear a patch? Do whānau who have members in gangs—you’re going to just charge into their houses? They have tamariki; they have pakeke. This is how absurd this particular legislation is. And you’ve already committed them to a crime before they’ve even committed a crime—for wearing a patch. It’s absurd. It’s a waste of resource. And what—you’re going to rely on an under-resourced police department? Already under resourced, and now you want them to go around and chase people for wearing different clothes.

This didn’t work in America—this didn’t work in America—or in Aussie. They just moved from one region to another—they’ve banned gang patches. And then I heard the Minister today say, “I wish I could do that here. I wish they could relocate to another country and leave us alone.” E kī rā, if the majority are Māori, you’ve got the manuhiri kicking tangata whenua out.

This Government needs to wake up. This Government needs to wake up. This is not about gang patches. Let’s look at the ultimate cause. The greatest violence you can inflict on anybody is poverty—that’s the ultimate cause; stop looking at proximate causes. We will not be supporting this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.

Can I acknowledge the previous speaker, Rawiri Waititi. He is wrong on many counts, but I do acknowledge his passion and his views on this. Can I thank the Minister of Justice, who is putting people first with this package of reforms, which will restore law and order in New Zealand and give the people of Rangitata a sense of security they have lost over the past few years.

This is not about putting people in jail. It is absolutely about rejecting gangs and replacing what they stand for in our communities. We must reject their presence—that is what this bill does, that is what my community did when it bulldozed their pads, but it is only one part of the solution. We must also replace what gangs stand for. We must replace whatever it is that they offer and whatever it is that they use to entrap vulnerable young men and women in the evil and destructive gang lifestyle. It is a social investment approach that will eliminate those factors. It’s an approach that this Government will take, eliminating poverty, abuse, substance abuse, welfare dependency, lack of access to good education, good healthcare, and good jobs.

I commend this bill. I look forward to it going to the Justice Committee, where we will work collegially and make sure it is the best bill that we can. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Let’s be honest—this is politics. This is politics right here and right now, and that’s what we’re doing. We all agree right now in this House that gangs cause huge harm to our communities. We all agree on that. I grew up in Linwood in Christchurch. I went to school with children who were from families from the Mongrel Mob and from Black Power. When I was at high school, one of my former classmates was a victim of a retribution-style shooting in Woolston between the Mongrel Mob and Black Power. I grew up in a neighbourhood that had gangs in it. I’ve seen firsthand the harm, the destruction, the violence, the drugs, and what that does to a community.

We all agree that gangs do harm to New Zealand. The big question is: what do we do about that? And the answer we have today is to hide that under a rock—it’s ugly and we don’t want to look at it. It scares us. It’s not nice—“Let’s push it over the border. Let’s cast it into the sea. Let’s forget about it. Let’s eradicate them.” These are the words we hear, and the interesting thing is that history repeats itself. If you go back to the debate 10, 20, 30, even 40 years ago and look at the debates on this issue, the same speeches we have just heard from members opposite have been made time and time again. Gangs scare us, we don’t like them, we want to get rid of them. Is there any reason that they keep asking for them to go away?

So I think that now is the time to have a grown-up conversation about what we do about the harm that is caused by criminal organisations in our community, and it is for that reason and only that reason that we support this bill to select committee so we can continue this discussion. I lay down a challenge—that any member speaking on the second reading read 13 pages, the abridged version, just 13 pages, of Towards an understanding of Aotearoa New Zealand’s adult gang environment. Let’s have an informed debate at the second reading. Let’s take this bill to the select committee and hear the submissions, but when we come back to this House for the second reading, if everybody could do their homework I’d be really appreciative to have an informed, mature debate about the actual issues that we are discussing.

Boot camps are the same. I know that’s not in this bill but it’s the same issue. It’s hiding something and pushing it away. It gives you an immediate feeling of gratification but it doesn’t actually address the underlying problems that continue to plague our communities.

When I worked in Police—Police under a National Government—police were instructed to not even talk to gangs. Police officers, or anyone, were not allowed to engage. Over a period of time, that changed. It changed so much there were even gang liaison officers who would go in and speak to gangs, understand what was happening when a tangi was happening, and understand greater information when a gang homicide had happened. When I met with those liaison officers, the area commanders and the district commanders all talked about how quickly crime was resolved when we had open communication and we understood things more. They minimised harm within the community when they had better-quality intelligence about what was happening.

I saw that police officers who previously would have said, “Yes, let’s smash them. Let’s eradicate the gangs, get rid of them.” saw the benefits of engagement. They saw the benefits of understanding what was driving offending, and they felt that it gave better outcomes, not only for the community but also for those young people growing up within gang families. It gave those young people hope.

What this bill does, I’m afraid, in its current form is it takes hope away from young people who want to live without a life of crime, and I fear that what bills like this do is just incarcerate the next generation of rangatahi in New Zealand in another cycle of crime and offending. It’s within all our interests to break that cycle of reoffending. It’s within all our interests to do our homework to understand what the actual issues are, to stop just scoring political points, and have a reasonable debate about how we make our country safer and about how we work together to achieve this.

I commend the long-signalled, long-awaited Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill to the House.

I’d love to take a call on this, but I’d also, first of all, like to say that I will be reading what Ginny Andersen has just suggested I do, because it’s a subject that I think we all do need to handle in a way that is as cross-party as possible. I was listening to the speeches from various people who’ve given substantive contributions, and there are speeches on each side of the House that I respect. This is a really difficult area.

I started life in Kawerau. A lot of the people that I started life with had kind of two pathways they could take, and one was into the gangs. I was grateful to not actually grow up in an environment where that was going on, because it was a very severe reality that they faced.

I recently went past a big gang funeral and I felt the degree of intimidation, even just in the urban environment, of one of those big meetings. But it also made me think that you had to be careful about the reaction that you had to these things, because what we really need to do is change something very serious that’s been going down in New Zealand society, not just make the right noises and make people feel better for 2½ minutes and change nothing, and, in fact, make the problem worse. The gravity of the problem is the challenge to us that we must not dog-whistle; we must actually do what makes a difference here.

So I will be taking a very interested role in schooling up between now and the next reading of this, because I want to make sure that whatever happens next really is effective, and the Labour Party will be voting with its conscience in terms of whether what is put up is likely to have a good effect. We can’t obviously guarantee that, but it’s a really important thing.

I also take note of the comments that have been made by the Attorney-General on this. They’re serious comments. One of the things I noticed was that there was a serious misgiving about some of the provisions, because other alternatives that might not have breached as many rights had not been examined fully. I hope that the inquiry that happens next at select committee will be an opportunity to look at those. There was a real issue around time frames, I appreciate, and this now going through a process means that we can look at those things and take that seriously, because we always have to be careful what we wish for in a situation where we start to look at these kinds of slippery slopes.

That’s a real thing; it’s not something that liberals say. It’s not woke. There are slippery slopes, and we really do have to be careful. So I think we should never apologise for being careful about that.

I was concerned, and I have questions about the issue of whānau and the number of people in a group that we’re looking at people consorting with, because there is a difference between what I described—a large gathering. Now, ironically, the funeral was one of the exemptions here, but it’s a very big difference between the kind of reaction that human beings have when they’re in a large group and the need they have for that close-knit support, and I was thinking about the definition that I read of “whānau” here. I was thinking about the people I know who are perhaps a little bit on the edge in my extended family, and those are the very people who wouldn’t fit within the group, because the definition isn’t large enough to encounter them. They have people who might not be acting as parent but might be acting as family and they are close to them, and they’re the ones on the edge. Pushing them out, excluding them, making it difficult to communicate with them, isn’t actually going to help a situation; it’s going to hinder it in terms of bringing those people back within the fold of a functional family and support system.

So these things I take seriously, these things the Labour Party takes seriously, and we do accept we have a problem, so we want to be part of a proper solution, but I respect the need for this to go to a select committee and to be truly ironed out. Thank you.

I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Instruction to Justice Committee