Jones Shane: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
Jones Shane: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7516] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Anything that causes local government to act expeditiously and aid the cause of the local community wanting to rid its neighbourhoods and suburbs of this walking criminalised cancer known as gangs ought to be supported. I am no fan of much of what local government has done in relation to the Building Act—an area that I have some experience in. I found local government to be sluggish. The place was riddled with building inspectors who found things to justify their jobs but little to justify delivering the service. This is why when I had the brief opportunity to promote a bill as a part of former Prime Minister Helen Clark’s team it was rapidly embraced by members on the opposite side of the Chamber. I filled a void. Those members came with great promise but precious little results. But that matter is for another time. It is for the historians to write up the great things that the Helen Clark Government did which will grow in stature as time moves on. The gangs unfortunately grow while we are distracted. 
When New Zealanders move into a suburb or a neighbourhood they create a home for their kiddies. They start to invest time and energy in schools and they look to beautify the localities where they live. Then all of a sudden a plague of locusts—or as the Maori say a tatarakihi—descends upon the area and just as in biblical times the locusts sucked out the livelihood of the people by destroying the crops these people begin to crop. They move into an area and choose dwellings or neighbourhoods where the trees fences or other accoutrements give them the privacy to carry on their criminality. Ordinary Kiwis do not know much about gangs but they know when they are working in “Strugglers’ Gully”. When their TV car kid’s bike or other taongas that they have amassed over a bit of time from dough that has been saved to actually afford those things start to get ripped off they want those people out of their faces. That sort of behaviour not only lessens the value and the safety of their property but most important it lessens the security of where they live. So if the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill is to empower local government by allowing the court to remove gang fortifications then we should all support it. 
Of course this is an obligation on the courts. We can imagine that District Court judges not unlike their senior colleagues in the High Court will be preyed upon by a different form of locust known as the legal profession. Legal professionals go out of their way—unwisely in my view—to represent many of these gang characters. They try to allow them to escape the full reach of the law when they have been peddling drugs and ruining the lives of young people. To illustrate my point in Kaitaia the gangs that I am predominantly concerned about hurt their own the most. I read the local newspaper and gagged through an article to do with my senior National Party colleague John Carter but that is another story. Then I found that the Tribesmen gang—if ever there was destruction of a proud word and the notion of a tribe there it is—are now using dope marijuana cannabis to reward juvenile criminality. Boys aged 10 11 12 and 13—around that tender age—are running away from the whanau etc. and being rewarded with marijuana if they go out and steal things. The people providing it belong to the gang. So when the parents go and find out who the hell is giving their young fella dope they are confronted by a fortification. They are confronted by the intimidating presence of that gang culture. It could be someone who is ripe for a heart attack. In fact I hope that everyone who is involved in Tribesmen criminality has heart attacks by the end of this week. They will get not one sliver of sympathy from me. They are taking young dislocated boys and giving them dope so they will go around Kaitaia and other parts of the north and tahae—rip things off. That is the role model that they are growing into. It will give my neighbour Wayne Brown something more useful to do: after he has stopped irking most of the local ratepayers he can start assaulting with the full force of the law the gangs. He is likely to grow in our Maori estimation. Kia ora tatou.