Webb DuncanHon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): 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 you want 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. You know and I heard the Minister of Justice talk about the usual narrative: 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 We're coming after your patches." is actually going to address the real ills.You know what? What I think isn't as important as the evidence. 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 is "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.So let's stop the bidding war. Let's start talking about what we can really do. 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: Professors Deckert and Tauri who—I met Mr Tauri in Hamilton recently. They were very clear. These are very senior criminologists with an interest in the area who said "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—not just the hardened members who you know if they commit serious crimes we agree they 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. "But we don't really care." 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. The fact that the Government in March said "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 mean I won't name the people who 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 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 to the police to say "I don't like what you're doing." It is so vague as to be pretty much meaningless.So you get that situation: the police come along and then there's this ridiculous service issue. They've got to give a notice. But the police were very clear—and I don't know what committee Jamie Arbuckle was in but the police made it very clear: they don't do paper; they only like electronic. Just like the traffic ticket if you've had one on the side of the road: take your details boom; it'll be sent to you by email. Paper is the last thing they want to do. So they're going to ask these burly members for their email address and what is the—they might've had a few beers too you know; 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. So the power itself is deeply problematic the trigger is largely meaningless and the operation of it is entirely unworkable. 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. So there are things that work and they're not all—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 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 "tough on crime" and recognising that there's community harm here that we need to address and we need a lasting solution based on evidence not TikTok memes. Kia ora Madam Speaker."