Alexander Marc: General Debates 
Alexander Marc: General Debates 
[Volume:614;Page:10590] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 It is high time that those who live off the earnings of criminal activities are made accountable not only for the crimes they are charged with but for the onus of proof that their property has been lawfully obtained. If they cannot do that then properties should be confiscated and the proceeds distributed back to the communities the criminals preyed on. It seems to me that we are getting nothing more than platitudes about getting tough on crime and getting tough on P. What the Government is doing is simply not enough. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I cannot hear the member. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: Those members are not listening to the wise words here Madam Speaker. 
The drug P is a scourge upon this country and this Government is doing precious little about it. The Government talks about education and about platitudes but it does not get to the heart of the problem. It is a namby-pamby Government that is still trying to understand the problem let alone find decent solutions to protect the people of this country. Meanwhile legislation introduced in Western Australia in 2001 has enabled authorities to confiscate all the assets of gangs which are the primary producers and distributors of the drug P. The result has been to shift the burden of proof to members and associates of those gangs and in effect to hit them in their wallets. 
In this country gangs manufacture 95 percent of the drug P yet we are sitting around on the edges not being able to do very much about it. We need to take account of how the Western Australians have approached this problem which is to introduce something along the lines of a criminal organisation and gang property confiscation bill. Such legislation shifts the onus completely on to the gangs to prove that all their property has been lawfully obtained. It means that for once the good citizens of this country—our law-abiding citizens—do not now have to try to prove the illegality of the assets those gangs have. The onus will be reversed and it will be the gangs that will have to prove legality in return. It makes sense. People talk about that as contravening the right of presumption of innocence. Why is it that the innocent are supposed to be the ones who play by the one-sided rules—rules that bend over backwards to protect the offenders and the purveyors of misery through the drug culture particularly with something like P? 
Recently the drug P has been blamed for an upsurge in domestic violence that has led to a shortage of space in women’s refuges. It is a drug associated with a huge amount of violence and today I am reminded of the Coral Burrows case in which the drug P was directly involved. According to the national alcohol and drug helpline from 2002 to 2003 methamphetamine calls went up by 3000 percent compared with cannabis calls which just doubled. This is a scourge we must grasp before it takes hold of New Zealand and of New Zealand youth. Assets would be frozen until the State could confirm that in the absence of proof of lawful acquisition and on the balance of probabilities the resources of a gang or member of a gang were the result of criminal activity. At that point— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Who wrote this rubbish? I think the member wrote it himself. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: Certainly it was nobody who came through an educational establishment under that Minister. Under his ministership educational standards have gone absolutely out the window. It is time he went back to school. He should go back to private education and start learning himself. 
I come back to my point. Assets would be confiscated to do some good and be returned to the community from which they have been stolen. If we want to reclaim our streets our future and our kids we need to give the police the tools to do the job. This Government has absconded from that responsibility. It will not give the police the tools they need. It will not resource them in terms of police numbers. It will not resource them in terms of the kind of legislation they need so they can go after gangs. It seems that it is always the innocent and law-abiding who have to suffer. It should not happen any more. It is time to take the gloves off and treat criminal organisations with the only weapon that will do the job—that is take away their ill-gotten gains. It is a kind of warfare we must wage.