Faafoi Kris: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11102. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Malo ni Mr Chair. Can I begin just by acknowledging the new member in the chair Mark Mitchell who will shepherd this bill the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill through the House. He has taken over from I believe the Hon Todd McClay. I do want to say genuinely that he has approached us even in the short time he has been in charge of this bill in a genuine way to try to talk through some of the particulars that he has spoken about in order to try to garner more support for the bill in the House. Unfortunately for Mr Mitchell we are unable to do that.I would like to take a couple of words he used. As he said this is a lovely country and National says there is no room for gangs. We would go a little bit further. I would like to use the words penned by the Hon Phil Goff that Labour has no truck with gangs—Labour has no truck with gangs at all—and especially with their culture which promotes and encourages criminal activity. So we are absolutely opposed to the criminal activity of gangs and as we say this side of the Chamber has no truck with gangs. That is certainly one thing that we do agree with Mr Mitchell on. However we do believe as Mr Mitchell said that this bill is not a panacea that it is not a silver bullet and that it will not actually be effective in achieving clause 3 of the bill which is the purpose clause. I am just going to flick to that clause very quickly. Clause 3 states: “The purpose of this Act is to prohibit the display of gang insignia on premises of departments of the Public Service the Police Crown entities local authorities and schools.” We do not believe that it will be able to achieve that for a number of reasons. But we also believe that the power already exists within current law to achieve what this bill sets out to do.If any member of this Parliament would like to take a trip to Porirua even if you want to do it tonight the front door of the Porirua Police Station has a sign on it that says that gang patches are not to be worn in that station.Hon Phil Goff: Is that the one they’ve closed?KRIS FAAFOI: No it has not been closed yet Mr Goff. I just want to reiterate that these powers already exist and in some way they are being expressed. They aredefinitely being expressed at my local police station in Porirua where I say again there are to be no gang patches worn.This bill as it was first drafted also had a number of anomalies. I will not blame Mr Mitchell for that because it was not authored by him—it was actually authored by Todd McClay—but it did contain a number of anomalies and they were that if there was a bus shelter on council land and you were wearing a gang patch then that would be prohibited. But if you just happened to be standing on council land on the sidewalk then that behaviour would not be covered. I do want to acknowledge the New Zealand First MP Richard Prosser who I understand has put in Supplementary Order Paper 253 which is an amendment to clause 4 relating to the definition of Government premises. In subclause (a) after “any structure” Mr Prosser wants to insert “(including any associated grounds)”. I think that would—and I am looking at Mr Prosser—alleviate any anomaly that I have spoken about here where we do not have a physical structure. The anomaly is that if you are in a bus shelter you would be breaking this law but if you just happened to be on the sidewalk or at a sportsground you would not be breaking the law. I would like to congratulate Mr Prosser and the New Zealand First Party on putting forward that Supplementary Order Paper which would certainly address the anomaly in the bill. I understand that New Zealand First is supporting the bill but I guess from our perspective the anomaly in the bill as it stands now was one of the points that we made in our strong opposition and I guess you must give credit to Mr Prosser for taking some action there and for making sure that that is covered.Speaking again to the purpose clause of this bill clause 3 we do not believe that this bill will make any significant difference to the real problems that the gangs create in our communities. We do believe that the bill exists for political purposes and I guess you could say that because Todd McClay is now a Minister he has benefited from this bill being put forward. I also want to point out that under Part 1 we have some definitions or at least a list of gangs that will be included in this bill. Because of that list of gangs that is contained in this bill there is going to be an onus on the police I guess to police those gangs. Given the pressure that our police are under at the moment you are going to have to ask the question about how effectively they can do that. Mr Mitchell was in a very I guess calm Law and Order Committee hearing earlier today but in the submission from the New Zealand Police in terms of the police budget we saw in effect from the police answers that over the next 4 years $113 million in real terms is going to be taken out of the police budget. So that is going to put our police and the resources that they have under huge pressure. I guess they are feeling the effects of that pressure already. To put this added responsibility on them to police this Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill will be another onus on them when they are already finding things very very tough.Can I just reiterate the words of the Hon Phil Goff that Labour has no truck with gangs.Hon Phil Goff: Truck with a “t”.KRIS FAAFOI: Truck with a “t”; that is right. It is also our view that it would be far better to enforce the laws that already exist under current legislation to be able to take some effective action.We did have a number of very good submissions at the select committee. I did want to point to one submission that was in support of the bill from Murupara Area School which I thought gave a very good submission. The school made two main points. It did not want its children and students to see gang insignia plastered about their school and it thought that those kids needed to be protected from that. The school also made the point that the introduction of gang insignia into the school would create tension and unnecessary negative behaviour and it wanted to discourage that type of behaviour inthe school. I completely and utterly understand that but what we on this side of the Chamber would say is that the law already exists for the school to prevent people with gang patches from going on to their premises. Just as it is with our police stations schools that have problems right now have the ability to ban people with gang patches from coming on to their premises. So I would say to Murupara Area School that although it gave a very good submission on this bill and although it has serious concerns the school actually already has the power to do what is contained within this bill. That was just one of the very good submissions that came to the select committee.I wanted to say that I am glad the anomalies in this bill have been addressed. I want to say also that this bill will not address the drivers of the gangs which are youth unemployment an issue that this Government has not addressed and also I guess when you look at the major gangs—they would be the likes of the Mongrel Mob and Black Power—you see young Māori and Pasifika. Unfortunately they are a group of people whom this Government has forgotten about. You will see that in the high youth unemployment in both of those areas. I think it was Black Power that said that this Government was doing good things for its recruitment because it is creating a lot of disenchanted youth. I think that is a very sad indictment on this Government.I am going to wrap it up there but as I say Labour has no truck with gangs. This is a well-intentioned bill Mr Mitchell. We do not think that it is going to be effective. We think that the current laws that exist can actually do the job of what this bill sets out to achieve.