Paul Tamatha; Goldsmith PaulTAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): I wanted to ask some questions that sort of go back to clause 3 of the bill around the purpose of this piece of legislation to ask the Minister of Justice what difference it is making to existing pieces of legislation that already in some ways prohibit some of the activities set out within clause 3. An example of that is we have had the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Act since 2013 which prohibits the display of gang insignia and we also have the Summary Offences Act 1981 where gang activities that cause issues in public are already an offence including disorderly or offensive behaviour and associating with those convicted of theft violence or drug-related offending. So if some of the aspects of this bill are already covered within legislation my question is: what is this adding to the tools that are already in place?I would ask the Minister to reflect on the usefulness of the existing legislation as well given that I believe 17 fines have been issued under existing insignia prohibition law and there hasn't been a reduction in patches nor has there been a reduction in gang membership either while that piece of legislation has been in existence. I also wanted to see if the Minister might reflect on the ability to actually implement this bill particularly in jurisdictions where the number of gang members far outweighs the number of police officers in those jurisdictions. Maybe the Minister might want to talk a little bit more about the national gang unit that he hopes to put in place to implement these polices. My read of things is that gang-busting policies have been completely ineffective have not reduced the visual presence of patches within any communities that the fines have not been handed out and that the police already have tools to use where there are gang patches present.I also wondered whether the Minister might reflect on the perverse outcomes that come about through banning gang insignia such as people tattooing their patches on their skin and what the answer is there because obviously they can't cover it up with make-up as the Government has suggested. So I would ask the Minister to reflect on the actual ability to implement this policy and what this brings in addition to existing legislation which has already been designed to address the purposes of this bill as set out in clause 3 which clearly isn't having an impact because patches are still in our communities and we still see them. Those are my questions.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Thank you for the member Tamatha Paul's questions and I suppose I'd make the obvious point that it is building on earlier legislation in terms of gang patches where a previous member's bill banned those patches from schools and hospitals and public buildings. The widespread response we've had on that is that it has been very successful. We don't have a huge number of people going into schools with gang patches. So the purpose of this legislation is to build on that and to extend that to all public places recognising that the public has had a gutsful of the intimidation that comes with gangs in our community.In terms of the risk of that leading to more tattooing of gang insignia while the Government did not include in this bill reference to tattoos being displayed in public that has certainly been adopted in some Australian states particularly Western Australia where that has indeed led to the application of make-up over the patches if they haven't been able to be covered with clothing. But that is not a step that's taken in this legislation.