Clendon David: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:515. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):I am pleased to take a short call on this Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. Just to reiterate what my colleague has said earlier the Greens will be supporting this bill through to the select committee because we see that it does achieve some important and necessary things. A number of speakers have made the point that we do have a very very good international reputation as being a country that if not entirely free of corruption at least rates very highly in international comparisons around corruption. But one must never sit resting on laurels assuming that we are immune to these sorts of intrusions into our society and into our legal practice in either the public or the private sector. There are provisions around trafficking of people. On the face of it we think that trafficking of people is something that happens in other countries. But in quite recent times we have seen examples at the lower end of the scale where people have been exploited. People have come into New Zealand found themselves in very unhelpful employment situations and some of the teeth that this bill will carry will have an influence on managing—or discouraging should I say—people from going down that road to deliberately exploit people and their labour in ways that New Zealanders simply will not find acceptable in any way.I am pleased that the provisions particularly around organised crime do reflect a somewhat more sophisticated debate than we have had in recent years about organised crime because for far too long reference to organised crime has immediately brought out references to gang problems in New Zealand. I am under no illusion that yes some of the organised criminality in New Zealand is carried out by gangs and gang members—members of some gangs I should say. But I think that for too long we have simply dismissed the whole business of organised crime and gangs as being conflated. We had this entirely unhelpful notion of suppressing gangs and a misapprehension that by doing so we would suppress organised crime. In fact more recently we have seen a much more enlightened attitude and I just quote the former Minister of Police Ms Tolley who said earlier this year that we need to accept that you are never going to arrest your way out of the gang culture. She noted in passing after an overseas trip that dealing with gangs as a community problem as a multifaceted complex set of issues—not simply as a matter to try to suppress—was much more likely to generate more positive outcomes and more useful solutions. So in that sense we do welcome the legislation and it will introduce a much more helpful sophisticated debate around the nature the appearance and the reality of organised crime in New Zealand.There are one or two minor and not so minor concerns we have about the bill. Clearly there are privacy issues incorporated into some of the provisions which are always matters that we take seriously as I am sure other parties do. New Zealanders rate their right to privacy very highly as indeed we have seen in this very House in relatively recent times. Again we must never be complacent or assume that privacy measures are adequate to the moment particularly with the speed and accessibility of electronic communication of all sorts. So although I think in general we can offer significant support for this bill we do look forward to the select committee process and to encouraging and hearing from people with a level of expertise across quite a whole range of matters and issues that are contained in it given this is an omnibus bill and we will actively participate in that and we look forward to further debates.