Paul Tamatha; Goldsmith PaulTAMATHA PAUL (Green—Wellington Central): Thank you Mr Chair for allowing me to take a call on this part of the proposed legislation. So my question—I'm going to try and focus on patches themselves given that Part 2 is all about the display of gang insignia in public places.My first question is what evidence has he seen that banning gang insignia helps people to actually exit gangs? I know there was some talk by I believe the Minister of Police the Hon Mark Mitchell around some of the work that they've been doing in Australia in banning gang patches and I'm interested to know whether that has had any positive public safety improvements in those areas and what the consequences of those provisions have been particularly reflecting on the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor's report that is all about minimising gang harm and addresses the drivers of gang membership where it says A stronger focus on prevention and early intervention will slow the flow of young people into gangs and alleviate pressure on multiple systems (justice health corrections) in the long‐term." and whether he has considered the Chief Science Advisor's strong advice that we can't arrest our way out of the gang problem.So I would like to hear your reflections on that. So what evidence is there that banning the visual presence of gangs and gang patches within our communities actually decreases the number of people exiting gangs? Particularly because we currently do have legislation in place that prohibits gang places in public places—that Act has been around since 2013 and yet as the Minister of Justice continues to quote the membership of gangs continues to rise. So if that legislation in itself has not been effective at driving down membership why does he believe that this iteration of banning insignia would be any more successful?Then I have some questions around freedom of expression. So obviously the Attorney-General wrote to us with a number of different considerations around human rights and how they are embedded or contravened within this piece of legislation. Within the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report it talked about how restricting what people can wear can be a contravention of freedom of expression. And I'm surprised to see that my colleagues in the "Freedom of Speech" Party have not made any strong statements about freedom of expression and what people are allowed to wear—but anyway.So what are the checks and balances in terms of that violation of a human right? And what does that mean for other alternatives that people might turn to to indicate their gang membership? So for example you might see people wearing particular colours more prominently. So I grew up in a Tokoroa which is sometimes known as a Black Power town—we don't have any or many Mongrel Mob there. Because of that we don't really wear red in Tokoroa and that's just the way that things are. Some towns you can go to them and you can only wear blue; some towns you go to you're not allowed to wear red—that's just the way that things are. So I wonder: does this create a precedent for colours and sports logos and brands to also be banned? You know where do you draw the line in terms of that freedom of expression?And as I talked about in the first reading of this bill could it even extend so far as hand signs? Because obviously that's a big part of that culture—[Makes hand gesture] you know we might think this is hang loose but this also could be another symbol; or fists as well. And that leads me to think about symbols because obviously there are different symbols that are part of insignia. So for the Mongrel Mob it's a bulldog and for Black Power it's a fist. But those are symbols of all sorts of different things. You have schools and universities that use bulldogs as their insignia. You have various different social movements that use the fist as a symbol of power of workers' rights. The Black Lives Matter movement uses the fist but also Black Power uses the fist. And we know this because when Eugene Ryder came and spoke to us at the Justice Committee he wore a number of different T-shirts and asked which one was the Black Power T-shirt. But it turned out that all three of them were completely irrelevant to gang insignia but it shows that some of the symbolism that gangs use are prominent in other ways. What happens if a police officer sees a fist T-shirt or a bull dog on a T-shirt and assumes that that's gang insignia?So how are you going to differentiate between colours and symbolism and how are police going to know whether to enforce these rules or not and what is exempt and what is not?Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice): Well I think that the member Tamatha Paul's speech made the point very well for us around fear and intimidation when she referred to some towns—I think Tokoroa was the one she referred to where people just don't wear red. Well I suppose the question is: why don't they wear red? And ultimately it is because of fear of doing so that there is a chance that if one does one gets confused and gets beaten up or is the subject to some threat of violence. And that indeed is partly why we're doing this legislation—to deal with the fear and intimidation that gangs have imposed in many parts of this country as exemplified by the very thing that that member has said that people live in towns and it's an unwritten rule in that town that you don't wear a particular colour because if you do there will be consequences. That is precisely why we want to deal with the broader issue of fear and intimidation of gangs in our society and is why this legislation is bringing forth four new tools for police to deal with an increase in gang membership.The member also referred to a ban currently being in place. Yes there is a ban on gang insignia in public buildings—and that is hospitals and schools and courts. So that has been in place and has been largely successful. This legislation builds on that—to all public places. It doesn't extend to private places; it's just all public places.In terms of the impact on the freedom of expression yes we accept that it does impinge on freedom of expression. So ultimately Parliament and New Zealanders have to decide—there are balancing and competing rights. And of course the rights of people to be able to go about their normal life without fear of being intimidated or preyed upon by organised crime is also a freedom that we stand up for. So in many instances we have to weigh up those freedoms. On this occasion we believe that the impact on freedom of expression by banning gangs and gang patches in public places is justified in order to deal with what is a real issue confronting our many communities."