McKelvie Ian: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11879. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):I cannot believe what I have just been listening to. Clearly the member Rino Tirikatene could not support the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill because he has not read it. I find it extraordinary and the members ofRangitāne in my electorate will find it extraordinary to think that they could be called up as gang members. I just do not believe what I have been hearing.Anyway aside from that I want to make a couple of other points because there has been some interesting stuff talked about in the last few minutes. During the course of the select committee process both Labour and the Greens talked a lot about what was not in this bill. They did not bring one single thing that could have been added to it or add one piece of value to it in the course of that discussion. Really they suffer from what I would term the “do little syndrome”. They get up here and criticise the bill because it does not deal with what they perceive to be a gang problem but it certainly deals with a portion of the gang problem. It deals with the intimidation part where in public buildings and public places these gang members can intimidate people who are ordinarily serving them along with other members of the public. I think it does a great job in that area. So that is the first thing I want to question.The second thing is that Louisa Wall talked about the eradication of gangs. This bill was never designed to eradicate gangs; this bill was designed to deal with gang patches. This Government of course is dealing with a number of other issues that will help in the eradication of gangs. The record this Government has around crime is a significant deterrent to people who want to join gangs. In other words the less crime we have in this country the less likely we are to have people encouraged to join gangs. Certainly our retraining and reintegration of reoffending prisoners will make gangs less attractive places for them. The Government along with its economic policies where it is driving job growth and the opportunity for people to work will certainly also discourage people from wanting to join gangs. So we can certainly answer the Opposition queries in respect of that. I think the Government is certainly working towards helping with gangs.I want to make just one final point on that. If you think about—and I think I might have used this point before—the banning of cigarette advertising is very similar to the banning of gang patches in public places. Really that is the gangs’ mode of advertising I guess for want of a better word.The promoter of this bill Mark Mitchell who received it through attrition from the Hon Todd McClay made reference to the Law and Order Committee’s visit to the Christchurch prisons a few weeks ago. For most prisons throughout New Zealand we have an average of around 30 percent of their total tally of prisoners being gang members. So anything we can do as a Government or as a Parliament to lessen the number of gang members is certainly going to make quite a contribution to lessening the number of people in our prisons. I think there are some very good initiatives in this bill. I think it will help to achieve the purpose it set out to achieve which is to lessen the intimidation of people serving in our public areas.I want to make one final observation from my own electorate where I have a large number of schools a number of which have had problems over time with gang insignia on the grounds of those schools. In many instances—in fact I think in all instances—the principals of those schools have asked the gangs to remove themselves from the schools and they have done it. But that does not mean that we do not need legislation like this because although my schools might have the cooperation of the gang members concerned there are many schools in New Zealand that do not. So I think this is a very good piece of legislation and that is my lot on this part of it.