Little Andrew: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 07 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12483. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):I rise to take a call on this third reading of the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill. I want to say of the member responsible for this bill Mark Mitchell that he has very quickly in his time in this House—the same time as I have spent in this House—become one of the respected and sensible members of the National Party. The National Party does not have many so it has got to hang on to the ones it has got. But the truth is that he has been given a hospital pass on this bill because deep in his heart of hearts I know I am confident he knows that this is a half measure it is a non-measure and it will not achieve half the things that some of the speakers on the other side of the House have claimed of it. The last speaker Jacqui Dean claimed all sorts of things that this bill was going to do and that we just had to tweak a bit here and tweak a bit there. Well we are past the tweaking stage. This is it. This is the bill. The time of this House is being called upon to pass this bill in its current form—the current meaningless ineffective hopeless form that it is in. It simply will not do those things.I could not go further without acknowledging the words of Richard Prosser whose torch is obviously burning very brightly tonight. His dream clearly is of dancing with Anne Tolley around the beacons of hope for peace and good order and dancing on the crushed vehicles the stomping softened only by the leather obtained from the seized patches of gang members. Well we can all have that dream. We have those sorts of dreams every now and again—or at least some people do. I want to put out to Mr Prosser however that aburka is not a gang patch. So the bill is not going to fulfil some of his personal ambitions in that regard.The truth about this bill is that those in control of Government premises can already take action meaningful action and there is ample evidence before the House and that went before the Law and Order Committee to suggest that. The last time I spoke on this bill in the Committee stage I adduced as evidence a copy of that day’sNew Zealand Herald  that august publication. It had the wit at that time to publish a photograph of the Napier District Court and in that photograph of the Napier District Court entrance was a little sign that said “No gang patches in this building”. Here it was a Government building a little sign saying “No gang patches in this building” and the report saidamongst other things that there were no problems with gangs in that building. It was all done without the benefit of this legislation.Then we had the evidence of the Murupara Area School which people have spoken so fondly of in the debate today. It came and spoke in support of the bill but the truth is that when you look at the facts of its situation it supports the opposite. The school has demonstrated that it can banish gangs and gang patches and leather jackets from its premises without this bill. It did it without the bill. Through good leadership and a good strong community the school demonstrated that it could take control of its Government premises without meaningless legislation like this. It can create the culture it can set the rules it can make the standards it can do it—and it did it. The school community the teachers in it the principal and most important the children in it have now taken control of their place of learning. It is a good healthy place to be and they did it all without this legislation. So the truth is that this legislation will do nothing. This legislation will do nothing.Let us be clear too about what it does not cover because that is just as important. It will not cover organisations like the National Front.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.ANDREW LITTLE: Well what an interesting interposition that was. The fascinating thing was that tonight we saw as we see most weeknight evenings the TV3 news broadcast and it had two interesting stories on it. One was about this bill and the other was about a cartoon character called theBurka Avenger. One of the stories was full of facts and was fascinating and interesting; the other was a complete work of fiction. It will stun this House to know that the story on3 News tonight that was a complete work of fiction was the story about this bill. What it did was it gave the impression to any member of the viewing public that this bill is going to somehow clean the streets of New Zealand of gang members and those wearing gang patches. We know and anyone who has taken a moment to read the bill will know that it will do nothing of the sort.I might say—bearing in mind that I began my contribution tonight mentioning theburka—that I was very impressed with theBurka Avenger. If we could have theBurka Avenger the avenging Islamic woman coming down and cleaning up evil wrongdoers and all the rest of it she would have a very important role to play in this country unlike this bill—unlike this bill.The point I was making at the time of the dinner break was that there are plenty of things that this bill will not do. For one thing there are nasty insidious gangs that this bill will not go near. One of them is the National Front. Its members wear a uniform all right. They wear attachments and wear their hair in certain styles—the skinhead. They wear tattoos. They wear dark clothing. They intimidate they stand over and they do evil things but this bill will not do anything about them and these people will continue to turn up in public places and they will do their intimidation. They will do theirstandover stuff. And all the bleating from the members opposite will not make a tinker’s cuss of difference to organisations like that.The reality about the National Party members is that they come to this House they puff out their chests they sound tough they talk tough but they do not know what they are doing and they do not care. They do not care about the vast majority of New Zealanders who want to go about their workaday lives in a safe peaceful community. They want window dressing. They do window dressing. Whether it is the streets of Feilding or whether it is the streets of the far north they will do the window dressing. That will get them a few points in the next poll but it will not fix the real problems of New Zealand.So what about particular areas that this bill covers? Well it says that it covers Government premises. What about kids’ parks? What about the beach? What about those places where you go and have a barbecue on a sunny Sunday evening? It will not touch any of those areas. What about city council - controlled areas like parks that are full of trees and without a single man-made structure? Gangs turn up there when families are trying to have their family picnics. The bill will not make a blind bit of difference to that situation or to those people so the gangs wearing their thuggish patches can carry on and do their thing.We all know the problem about gangs and we do not shy away from that problem. We know that they are criminal enterprises. Some of them are pretty dopey and some of them are very cunning but at the end of the day what underpins the gangs is a criminal enterprise. So what that needs is genuine serious measures to address those problems not flimflamfluffery like this and not puffery that looks like it does something but does nothing. We need real measures. It starts with the people. It starts with the social problems and the economic problems deals with the bad conduct and provides real measures to deal with bad conduct—thestandover tactics the intimidation the theft the violence the burglaries and all the rest of it. It actually takes real measures the sort of stuff that the Hon Phil Goff introduced when he was a Minister of Justice. The one thing that Phil Goff did not do was he did not leave it up to members’ bills to look like and give the appearance of doing something serious about a serious social problem. He took the responsibility himself because he was a good Minister. We have not had a good Minister of Justice for at least the last 5 years and that is part of the problem. We have members—backbenchers—having to parade through this House looking as if they are doing something serious. Well that is not happening. If we want to get real about organised crime and get real about gangs we need real legislation that is going to address the real problems.David Clendon from the Green Party was right—and I was at the Justice Coalition launch this afternoon—it is time to get smart about crime. It is time to get smart about crime and when it comes to the gangs it is about understanding the gangs understanding what drives them dealing with those issues understanding the antisocial conduct they engage in addressing the antisocial conduct and working with communities to make them safer as the Murupara Area School has shown it can do the principal of which tonight said that he was very concerned about this legislation because he did not think it would work. We need to actually take real steps not the half measures that are represented by this bill.