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: 12 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11117. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):Australia are 9 for 1.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Relevancy.IAN McKELVIE: My apologies; I will get back on the topic. I wanted to briefly acknowledge the Hon Todd McClay for bringing this piece of legislation the Prohibition on Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill to the House and Mark Mitchell for picking up the reins and continuing to steer it through the House. I also wanted to acknowledge my new colleagues Claudette Hauiti and Paul Foster-Bell who both spoke very strongly on the law and order issue today.We have heard tonight that Labour has no truck with gangs. We have heard that a number of times today—in fact Kris Faafoi has picked up the phrase and used it quite effectively—but I do not accept that. I think that this bill is not a panacea—and David Clendon made the point that it is not perfect. Well of course it is not perfect. If we relied on perfection in everything we did in this country we would never do anything. I think that this bill goes a long way to giving the police some tools as my colleagues have said to take action when it is required. They will not take action on every occasion; they will take action when it is necessary. I think that is the really important thing about legislation: it gives people options and it gives the law the opportunity to act when it needs to.I also want to take to task a number of the statistics that Mr Goff has used tonight. He has talked about the change in numbers of police officers. I want to point out that to deal with gangs we clearly need much better equipment than we have had in the past. This Government through some technology gains and some additional opportunities it has given the police has picked up some 520000 hours per year in police time. That is 30 minutes per officer per shift. That is pretty significant. It puts any figures that Mr Goff might try to use into perspective. Clearly the police are well equipped to deal with these types of issues. There is an inconvenient truth about the sense that this law will not alter the ability of police to make a difference; it certainly will. I think that if we do not give them tools to take action when they need to to make a difference then we certainly are not serving our police officers well.I want to talk about the reason I think that this is a really important opportunity for us to change the way gangs behave in our communities and I will refer to the intimidation factor which I think is really important for people. I think gangs certainly intimidate. They certainly intimidate Government and council staff and they intimidate people in public areas. I think that when they get in close proximity to buildings and staff people who serve their communities and their country we need to consider that as we move onwith this bill. I do not want to spend a lot more time on this bill. I think that it has done a great job and I think that the people who promoted this bill thoroughly deserve for it to go through Parliament and pass with flying colours.