McLellan TraceyDr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and thank you for the chance to conclude Labour's contribution on this bill about gang patches and to say a few words. I would like to start by also acknowledging the Justice Committee chaired by James Meager. It's generally a relatively collegial committee that does its best to take a piece of legislation of which there are many of them in the Justice Committee and make changes and listen to submitters and experts and take advice so that what comes out the other end can be perhaps a little bit better than what goes in. This certainly happened in this process as well.However it was a process I think compared to some of the other instances of bills that we've had before us that was somewhat frustrating because whilst the subject matter and the substantive nature of what we were talking about is important and fundamental and in some ways sad and equally frustrating and scary and all of those things it just didn't feel like the solution that we had before us was very weighty when literally during the process of talking about gang patches considering the core of people's existence in a world that's quite different to the ones that we're used to and it asks us and it forces us to think about unshared realities and paths that haven't been the same as they have been for us. In a lot of respects therefore it was frustrating to only be talking about gang patches.Certainly this side of the House—and I hope that we have made it clear; it certainly sounded clear to me when I listened to my colleagues—all acknowledge the fact that gangs are a problem. The Labour Party fully acknowledges that criminal gangs are a significant problem in New Zealand and that keeping communities safe from gangs and disrupting their criminal activity should absolutely be a priority and it should be a priority for this House which is why again it's a little bit frustrating that we're only talking about people taking their jackets off essentially as the means by which to get to the part where we solve this problem.Before I go into any more detail I do want to acknowledge the contributions of my colleagues. This debate started tonight where the Hon Ginny Andersen was able to illustrate her points by focusing on domestic violence. I think that that was a really worthwhile contribution because she talked about it in so far as police resources in so far as all of the things that we could be doing differently if we were looking at what police are going to be focusing on to actually prevent the funnel and the pipeline in the future.I'd also like to acknowledge the contribution of Arena Williams because she talked about the everyday life that she sees in her electorate in Manurewa in particular and the absolute cruelty of being privy to the fact that predatory gangs are recruiting at schools and are doing things and taking advantage of people who in disparate situations who may be looking for alternatives and offering them something that in the long run is certainly not going to do them any good.So again it's relatively frustrating and really annoying that at this time of night and having heard no really substantive contributions from the Government—I mean we've heard contributions that talk around the edges that talked about the technicalities that talked about fairly innocuous or fairly mundane aspects of the process but we haven't heard anybody really come out and sell this bill tonight.So therefore I think it is fair to say that it's largely cosmetic that it tinkers around the edges. We certainly know and we heard from the Hon Dr Duncan Webb that it is absolutely unworkable. Time and time again we heard from submitters—and we stepped through processes; we almost kind of acted out a few scenarios so I'm not entirely sure I agree with Duncan Webb I'm not entirely sure where Jamie Arbuckle was when we were trying to get to the crux of the matter about how unworkable this was when you actually took it step by step when you thought about those disbursement orders. It's almost comical to think of the process that needs to be in place for this to work.But the point that I think I'm trying to get to is that none of that actually matters because that is not the point of this piece of legislation. The point of this legislation is for the Government to look tough on crime. The point of this legislation is for them to be able to point to something to say that they are doing something when actually they're not doing something because I agree with my colleagues that this is merely merely window dressing.If the Government was serious about actually tackling this problem they would have made different choices. That's the common theme isn't it? We all have to make a choice about whether we put resource here whether we prioritise this here. It's a privilege to be in this House. It's a privilege to work in service for being lawmakers for this country. Terms are very short and you don't get an awful lot of time to make a difference and to do things meaningfully. If the Government was serious about tackling this this is certainly not the piece of legislation that we'd be talking about tonight. It's vacuous it's superficial and as I said it's about looking tough on crime with actually not doing the work to make anything worthwhile.Now the select committee process also revealed a number of ways in which we believe that this bill is unworkable. I think a couple of them have been touched on tonight and I won't go over them again but I do want to emphasise that the summation of that the outcome of all of that information was that we are very genuinely concerned that this piece of legislation is absolutely unworkable.It's not in so far as therefore it does nothing therefore that's OK because when it doesn't work it actually puts other people at harm like our police force and our police officers. We heard from the New Zealand Law Society and other submitters actually—it was a real theme of the submissions that they expressed real concern about whether not only would it not have the desired effect but could it have unintended consequences and could some of those actually be revolving around keeping our police officers safe?The New Zealand Law Society also noted—and I think it's worth saying and it has been touched on—that this bill essentially comes from the Australian law. We looked into that and for those of us who did a little bit of homework it doesn't take long to realise and we heard directly from people that that hasn't actually worked that well. We heard anecdotes from some submitters some of whom were speaking in support ironically and providing quite contrary information but most of whom weren't and they were talking about the fact that there really isn't any good evidence to show that it worked in Australia and the couple of examples where people did try to tell it along those lines was in Perth. As it turns out the gangs just packed up and left and went to the East Coast. So what are we going to do in New Zealand where there's nowhere else to go?We also heard the example from Whanganui. I think Michael Laws was one of the submitters who spoke very passionately about the experiment that happened there but also acknowledged in relation to a question—So what happened? Did people just stop being in gangs when you took their gang patches off them?" He said "No I think they just moved somewhere else." So that's not a solution that's before us in this piece of legislation. So it really is quite silly.The provisions as we said give police the power to disperse gang members and we believe them to be really unworkable. I think that the Hon Ginny Andersen said that best when she spoke tonight and she talked us through the steps that are in play in so far as eliciting emails asking someone who doesn't want to give an email whether they would kindly like to accompany you back to a police station so that something can be printed out because none of that is enforceable without those steps.I also want to just note that again if this Government really was serious about doing something about gangs then why didn't they just do more of what we were doing in so far as the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act that we passed? When you go after gangs you go after their money you go after their vehicles you impound their motorbikes their cars and you hit them where it hurts; you don't just take their jackets off them.So all in all I'd like to reiterate the fact that Labour certainly won't be supporting this bill. We think it's been a real disappointment that the Government hasn't been more ambitious and we hope that as the term goes on things improve a little bit and we can start seeing some bills from the Government that actually achieve something."