Jones Shane: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — First Reading 
Jones Shane: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1115] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. The issue of the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill elicits all sorts of responses from the Maori community. We have heard one response from the Maori Party although I must say that I am unsure whether the party will back this bill or stand aside from it. Hiding behind the Maori language and providing unwanted cultural remedies to a multigenerational problem of criminalities will not at the end of the day cut the mustard. It is disappointing that this bill has been brought forward in such an ad hoc and almost furtive manner and that it will sit in a select committee for 6 months. It is part of a cynical attempt to hoodwink both Pakeha and Maori—all segments of the community—into thinking that fantastic things are happening as the hot air balloon goes around the political globe in 100 days. Air is disappearing as they speak. 
Let us just go back to my colleague Te Ururoa Flavell with a very simple question. Does he stand in the Maori community as an unremitting unrelenting foe against gangs or is he an apologist? Any group that organises its young people and its women through menace and fear to continue criminality will never ever be saved through tikanga Maori singing “Kumbaya” or any other soft approach. These people see softness as an invitation to continue their menace. When these people hear that they are not welcome on the marae any more they giggle. They will go wherever they like and do whatever they like until they meet ringa kaha—the hard solid fist of law and order. That is why I am happy to see this bill go to a select committee. 
However it damages the reputation of this House that the bill arrives in a fashion that is surrounded by furtiveness. Gang culture thrives partly through the profit motive. If people cross the gangs they mark them. They mark them because they are a threat to their established order which is based No. 1 on scaring the wits out of the community; and No. 2 on recruiting through showing that down Easy Street lies easy money and easy fame but also hardship for the victims of those who perpetrate the crimes on Easy Street. That is why we should have no tolerance of them. We should not normalise them. We should not use kinship or culture as a basis for explaining their ills. If they want to behave like criminals they should be stripped of the Maori cloak and treated as the most dangerous menacing form of criminals which exist to kill maim rob and be villains. Somehow or another we are told that at the end of the day that will not solve the problem. Why? It is not because of 100 years of colonisation—which is the reason parroted by the various speakers from the Maori Party—but because in our communities people exist who are so disconnected from the institution of work and regular education that simply locking them up has proven to create a new recruitment ground à la Ngawha prison. The Department of Corrections has a great deal of explaining to do and I look forward to the Minister of Corrections coming back to the House to explain why a successful drug ring is operating from one of our main prisons. 
That is the dilemma for those of us from the Maori community: to take a hard line but also to realise that the problem will continue to exist. I say to the Maori Party and to our colleagues here that the problem has to be smashed on both the supply side and the demand side. This bill should go to a select committee. It should be the subject of great submissions. It should build on the fact that it is largely a plagiarism of what Labour was going to do anyway. It actually filches all sorts of very sensible ideas that have been subject to great community consultation and that will allow the Minister Simon Power to build on those foundation blocks. 
Of course the big test that the new Minister of Education has to face is what interventions there are for teenagers and the kids of gangs to ensure that a better pathway is made available to them so that they choose not to follow their parents and grandparents into that gang culture. They will follow them for as long as they are menaced and threatened and for as long as we allow them to live in this false detached world. As long as we the community fear them or are unwilling to have them face the full consequences of their fearmongering and their menace they will continue to take us for a ride. Let us consider a bit of the Old Testament. “Utua te kino ki te kino. Mehemea he pai to whakaaro maku koe e awhiawhi.” 
[ 
A villainous deed must be repaid in kind. If your intention is favourable I will embrace you 
.]  
If one does a villainous deed then one will meet the full force of the law. If however one wants to redeem oneself anei te ringa—here lies the hand to help one on the way. 
So I say yes to education but also to an iron fist reminding people that they cannot use the cloak of Maoridom to conceal criminality and to continue gang culture which is a blight as much on Maoridom as it is on the rest of the community. Kia ora tatou katoa.