Jones Shane: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
Jones Shane: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7518] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 I thought I would make another very moderate contribution on the scourge known as gang criminal culture in my part of Aotearoa known as Tai Tokerau. Of course I can see unfortunately the burden upon the judge when this new provision in the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill finally washes up and laps at his or her magisterial feet. Lawyers unfortunately are no doubt going to test these notions of both association and connection. It is unavoidable unfortunately that when we do change law it takes a while for jurisprudence to emerge. But if we strip away all the verbiage we see that at the guts of the issue is the question of whether this is a way of testing people’s motives and getting them to justify how they have acquired their lucre or why they are doing what they are doing in association with obvious gang offenders etc. 
If the provision actually simplifies the task of the police and of those of us who are other civic leaders in being able to amplify the dangers of being indifferent to or indulgent about gang culture then it will be a very useful provision. Admittedly a test will be required for judging at what point a person is fatally involved in a criminal organisation. I see no other way unfortunately for the various lawyers to say that no doubt at great cost although Dame Margaret Bazley has a great deal to say about that. She fortunately is going to focus on the lawyers some but not all of whom are ill-equipped to stand before the bench unlike the majority of we parliamentarians as we stand before Mr Chairperson but that is another matter. So I think that this is a small provision that is very useful. 
But as I said let us not get away from the underlying problem. We must seize every device and seize every opportunity to prevent the normalisation of gang culture and of gang membership so that more New Zealanders shun those families and those people who want to maintain that culture. If God forbid there was an element that came to Aotearoa with that Middle Eastern style of deep animus that shows itself in wanton violence etc. we would shun that as a part of our tolerant society. But it is sad that growing year by year there is a hardened element. I fear over a longer period of time the attitudes of Kiwis towards this gang thing—given that we have been through indulgence we have been through indifference we have been through aspiration we have been through anger and we are going now in some cases into fury. What will happen in areas such as where I come from is that people slowly but surely will continue to take the law into their own hands because they are genuinely frightened and scared of those people. I already said earlier that that fright is a massive weapon in the hands of gang criminals; having people frightened is at least 80 percent of the way. It might be said as it often is by Dr Sharples and his colleagues that this is hyperbole and rhetoric that does not actually advance the cause of understanding the underlying reasons for gang criminality and helping people move on. The only place I want them to move on to is a new wing at Ngawha prison. 
I am not interested one iota in normalising or enabling people to think—under the cloak of Maori culture and by using a few Maori words—that somehow we are going to weaken our resolve to marginalise those people and to have them face the full cost of their criminality. It is a very divisive issue. For those of us who are in the Maori world it takes up a large part of our time. In Parliament we do not stay just in any world. We do not necessarily stay in a Pakeha world or a Maori world; we are there for all New Zealanders. But the place I come from in the North is a hugely strong Maori area and it has a different culture. It has a different political culture. But as lonely as it is and although this approach of supporting legislation like this bill and supporting the ability of the police to be more penetrative and perhaps even more unforgiving does cause us to be assailed in the Maori world as being anti-Maori I think this provision is very important.