Hipkins Chris: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7510] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am happy to take a call on the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill. Much like Mr Jones the previous speaker I have come across a number of gang members in my electorate and I am very familiar with the impact that some of their activities have on communities on the people who live in those communities and on many innocent victims including the families of the gang members concerned. Gangs are repugnant. Their activities are repugnant. The negative impact that they have on families young people and innocent members of the community absolutely must be dealt with. 
The Labour Party will support this bill to go through the Committee stage. We want to provide the police in particular who have to deal with gangs and organised crime with all of the resources that we possibly can so that they can do that effectively. If this bill contributes and adds a little bit more to their arsenal then that has to be a good thing. 
These are weighty issues and there are no easy solutions to them. They need to be dealt with properly. That is one of the reasons why at the last election the Labour Party pledged to establish a commission of inquiry into organised criminal gangs. It was part of our manifesto at the last election. We need to draw on evidence and research not only from within New Zealand but also internationally. Although I would like to stand here and say that I think this bill will be the silver bullet to magically cure all of the problems relating to gangs I am realistic enough to know that it will not be. In fact a whole heap of issues this bill does not address need to be dealt with. They need to be aired and we have to draw on evidence to be able to do that. I know that that is something that the National Government— 
Sandra Goudie 
: Ha ha! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Sandra Goudie in particular gets very bored when evidence is involved because it involves a bit of reading a bit of listening and a bit of thinking. I do not think that she is really engaged in that level of detail. I understand that she finds evidence-based policy and decision making quite frustrating— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: She can’t spell it. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: —because she cannot spell it but it does work and it is worth thinking about. 
I will talk about a couple of things related to the things that drive gangs. I will go back to one of the pieces of legislation related to this one which we discussed earlier in the term of this Parliament and which was about choking off the supply of money to gangs—the criminal proceeds—and giving the police much greater powers in that respect. If we really want to go after gangs I think we have to go after two things. We have to go after the money and we have to go after the supply of recruits to the gangs. 
The supply of recruits for gangs is something we need to think quite carefully about. If we go to the prisons for example where 30 percent of prisoners currently identify as gang members and affiliates we will find a couple of common characteristics amongst the prison population—illiteracy and innumeracy being two of the key ones. Coming from a lower socio-economic area is another characteristic of prisoners as is being victims themselves of child abuse or family violence at some point quite often in their childhood and being totally disconnected from society. The reason those prisoners relate to gangs is that they are the people gangs prey on in order to gain gang membership. Gangs prey on the same people who end up in prisons and that is how they draw their members. If we really want to go after gangs we will go after the gang recruits. We would choke off the supply of recruits by dealing with those issues—by dealing with illiteracy and innumeracy and by dealing with the massive socio-economic gap that exists in our society which gets bigger every year. 
We would also deal with domestic abuse child abuse and domestic violence. People who have been victims are much more likely to end up being offenders themselves. It is absolutely true. Those are the sorts of things that could be canvassed if we had a commission of inquiry into organised criminal gangs. But unfortunately this Government has not picked up a proposal put forward by the previous Labour Government and I think that is a bit of a shame. 
Finally I want to pick up a theme from my colleague Clayton Cosgrove which is that all of the things in this bill may be worthy but if the police are not adequately resourced to use the powers they are being granted in this bill then it all amounts to very little. In my own area the police have had to give back the police cars they previously had access to; they have had to give them back. There are significantly fewer police cars on the streets in the Hutt Valley today than there were before the election.