Prosser Richard: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 07 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12480. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):It is with a great deal of satisfaction that I rise to stand in support of this Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill. New Zealand First is proud to support this bill. We are proud to stand in support of this fine bill which is about to become a splendid law. We have been here from the outset from the beginning when Mr McClay introduced his member’s bill; through its first andsecond readings; through the Committee stage when we were able to contribute constructively to the bill and when the Government most generously chose to embrace the spirit of cooperation that New Zealand First brought to it by supporting Supplementary Order Paper 253 which was in my name; through the handover when the newly promoted Minister McClay passed the baton to Mr Mitchell who in turn has ably shepherded the bill through to its conclusion—and so we arrive. We arrive at the culmination of this process of lawmaking by which an inspired thought has given life when one man’s righteous indignation at a perceived injustice grows from the spark of contemplation to become something tangible and when it grows to become the law of the land.This law will be a tool a weapon in the hands of our police and a device by which they may remove the scourge of gangs and of gang members from the eye and the presence of decent people and decent society. That splinter of one man’s mind’s eye has grown to be a shaft of light breaking through the darkness that is the gangs and the gang culture in this country growing to become a sabre of justice in the hands of our law enforcement officers and a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the gangs and their filthy and abhorrent lives and behaviour.The passing of this bill marks the ending of one process and the beginning of another. We are witness we here in this House are witness to the dawn of a new time. This bill and its passing into law mark the beginning of the end for the gangs and the gang culture in New Zealand. Through this bill and through the others that will follow—the laws that are yet to come but which will follow in the wake of the trail that this bill has blazed—we will see the gangs expunged from the fabric of New Zealand life and society. We stand in the dawning of the light of a new day. The darkness is ending. The gangs should be afraid. They should be very afraid. We the decent people of New Zealand are claiming back the night. We are claiming back the streets. We are claiming back the rule of law. The gangs will be consigned to history and they will be driven back. They will be forced to crawl or scuttle or slither back under the rocks and the rotting logs where they belong back to the shadows from whence they came. That shadow will be lifted. That veil of darkness that the gangs have held over New Zealand for these past 40 years will be torn away by this bill and by the others that will follow in its wake.I think it is fitting for us to remember to pay tribute to those who have lived and who continue to live under that shadow. The dark criminality of the gangs has been a curse on too many people’s lives. Too many good people have been defiled and despoiled by the evil filth of gangs gang members gang culture and gang crime. In the mean streets of too many of our cities and towns there are people—good ordinary citizens and families—living in fear of the gangs and their intimidation their threats both real and implied their presence and the very real power over people denoted by the displaying of the patch. Well no longer. This bill will put an end to that intimidation. In time it will put an end to that threat an end to the threat against the safety of good ordinary people and an end to the threat against the safety of our police officers who serve and protect us all.Mr Mitchell himself a former police officer and others from the Government side of the House have reminded us more than once of what the gang patch stands for. They have not let us forget that the patch is the mark of a criminal that its awarding denotes the commission of the vilest of crimes against innocent people—robbery rape and murder—committed for their own sake as much as for personal gain committed to demonstrate to their fellow lowlifes and reprobates that they are worthy of the patch which until now they have worn as a badge of honour but which will now become a badge of shame.We owe a great deal to the brave and honourable men and women who wear the blue uniform. This bill and the law that it is about to become will give them a new and powerful tool with which to remove the ugly menace of the gangs from our cities towns and streets; to remove their presence and their intimidation; and to bring an end to the drugs the crime and the violence that are visited upon good people by the evil that is the gangs. The police in New Zealand welcome this bill. They welcome this new tool and we in New Zealand First are delighted to have been able to play a hand in helping to craft it and in helping to ensure its passage through this House and into law.So we come to an end and to a beginning. I look forward to the grim satisfaction that I am sure we will all feel—all of us who stand in support of this bill and I suspect more than a few of those who profess not to—when the first gang patch to be confiscated under this new law is consigned to its doom in a police incinerator. May that flame may the fire of a burning gang patch serve as a beacon—the flame of justice casting aside the forces of darkness with the light of civilisation. May that light lift the shadow of the gangs from the lives of all the good and innocent people who have lived and who continue to live under their menace. I look forward to that day.In closing then I say to the members of this House that we in New Zealand First are proud to support this bill. We are proud to stand with all those who hold the rights of good and innocent people up above those of criminals and lowlifes. This is a fine bill and it will be a fine law. We welcome it we support it and we commend it to the House. Thank you.