Turei Metiria: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1105] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 First of all I will address the matter of urgency and I know that other members have done that this evening. The Gangs and Organised Crime Bill has not been made available to members of Parliament in such time that there can be any serious consideration of its provisions. In addition it has not been made available to the public. The Green Party believes that this is an abuse of the parliamentary process and cannot be justified under any circumstances especially given that we have heard that the Government members have had access to the legislation. It has been available to others in this House but not to Opposition members. That shows the lack of transparency that this Government is prepared to engage in. 
It also shows a high level of mistrust of the public. The public are entitled to inspect the legislation that its legislators are to debate and they expect us to make some serious consideration of its provisions. But for as long as the National Government refuses to make the legislation available even to the public the public themselves are shut out from being able to understand the issues in the legislation and to make a contribution through their local representatives. It is a disgrace for a Government to have such a lack of transparency to the public let alone to the parliamentary process. 
Gang violence is extremely serious in this country as it is everywhere. The community deserves to be protected. The community deserves to be safe in their homes and in their communities. There have been some terrible recent cases—for example the man stabbed by a prospect while trying to protect a woman from violence and the young man stabbed because of the colour of his kura T-shirt. There are other cases that are very well known and there are many other cases that Parliament and perhaps even the police do not know about—terrible acts of violence and crime that affect communities. 
One of the concerns the Green Party has about this is that it is the working class communities that suffer the most from gang violence. It is not the wealthy who suffer but the working class—those who are already vulnerable and who are already on low incomes and have few resources to deal with the impact of this crime on them. These are the communities that have the least protection from the State especially when it comes to economic and structural violence committed by the State. They also have to suffer from this violence committed by members of their own community sometimes even their own families. 
The Green Party will welcome any provisions that address the underlying causes of gang attraction for young people: poverty under-education and disempowerment. We welcome any provision that reduces violence committed by gangs. We welcome any provision that will enable the rehabilitation of gang members who are currently in prison in order to reduce the recidivism rate. We support any provisions that will support the families of gang members—the children and partners of gang members—to break out of the violence and poverty cycles into which they have been trapped by structural social and personal circumstances. 
So what does this legislation do? Well let us have a look at a couple of the provisions. Of the two most significant provisions in the legislation—as far as we can tell given the very short time we have had to look at it—one is about making interception warrants more readily available to the police. They are reducing the sentence provisions so that with crimes for which there could be a sentence of 7 or more years the police would be able to get an interception warrant if there is a suspicion that those crimes are being committed by an organised criminal group. 
It is very difficult without any evidence and without any time to assess the extent to which this will make an appreciable difference to the powers of the police to access interception warrants. We simply do not know. It depends on the crimes that are involved. We simply have not had time to investigate that properly. There is very little useful information in the Government’s own papers. Those papers are very much policy papers. They are not really legislative papers. So we simply do not know. We will maintain an open mind about that when the bill goes to the select committee which is a good thing and will look at the usefulness or effectiveness of those provisions. 
The other issue of serious concern and which could be effective but about which we will have a discussion is increasing the term of imprisonment from 5 years to 10 years for those participating in an organised criminal group. First of all that raises a question around groups or political organisations that are considered by the police to be criminal because they are subversive or legitimate critics of political thought. We have had that problem before with the Tuhoe raids. A whole community was raided identified as a terrible criminal community but with absolutely no justification. Photos of children and families were splattered across the newspapers and people were seriously damaged by the impact of that disgusting and disgraceful behaviour by the police. 
Now we are giving the courts even more powers in terms of sentencing for members of those communities. Do we want the police to have that power? There is a big question about that. They have abused it in the past; why would they not abuse it again if they find a community they do not like? 
In addition this provision will increase the prison muster. There will be increased costs on the taxpayer and there simply has not been any proper cost-effectiveness analysis of the impact of increasing the prison muster versus other kinds of sentencing opportunities or rehabilitation that will reduce recidivism and be more cost-effective. That would be a very useful piece of work to be done—particularly by say the Auditor-General who is very good at doing that kind of work as we all know. But there is no evidence that it is cost-effective to increase the prison muster. Worst of all simply increasing the length of a sentence will only increase recidivism. All of the research and evidence in New Zealand show that the longer that people are in prison the more likely they will commit crime when they come out and that the crime escalates. If people go in for a long time on a fairly minor charge they are more likely to come out and commit a much higher-level crime particularly crimes around violence. 
If that is the case if we have proof of that why would the Government want to increase sentences and simply increase the chance of recidivism and increase the likelihood that those persons will reoffend and that their reoffending will be more serious? It makes no sense. It is detrimental to community safety simply to impose longer sentences without other interventions at the same time. None of those matters is set out in this legislation. 
If the causes of crime are not addressed we will continue to have major crime issues in this country and particularly around gangs because of the community connection and the power and respect that often those people engender in their communities. Poverty is the single-biggest driver that leads young people to gangs and in gangs young people can see the working class older men with power and with respect. In gangs the young are provided with a comparatively safe environment in which to develop some levels of skills. They might be very antisocial skills but none the less they are respected and there is comparative safety. 
In gangs young people can advance. They can obtain some wealth. They can obtain some respect but they do not get it from anywhere else in our community. There have been numerous examples of young people having had no other alternative but to find that respect and security in the gangs. There was a very good example when last year Alan Johnson from Manurewa described a league club in Manurewa that could not get enough money to keep its buildings in good enough repair to be able to support the young people who were involved in that club. They had 1000 members they had annual fees of $20 and they still had families who could not participate because it was too expensive. Those families had to choose between one child or the other being able to play league. Because those children got no support from elsewhere they had no other accessible participation that they could be involved with that would give them the kind of respect and dignity they were looking for. Where are they going to go? 
Politicians will make political meals out of the tragedies of gang violence but will do nothing to demonstrate the real leadership that our communities need in order to avoid those kinds of gang problems in the future. We need real leadership. We need to protect our communities. We need cost-effective rehabilitation programmes to be supported. A number currently exist in our jails—for example Kia Marama Sycamore Tree and faith-based units. We need to eliminate the poverty that blights those communities and drives them into gangs as being the only option for them. We need warm dry houses at least for them to be able to live in. We need high-quality truly free education for their children to participate in. We need affordable public transport so they can get to work get to school get to their community engagements. We need secure employment but that was demolished by National in December of last year. We need secure employment that provides a living wage for families so they can care for themselves and each other without having to resort to crime to find sufficient income.