Chadwick Steve: Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill — In Committee 
Chadwick Steve: Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2100] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I too will take a short call on the Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill because I am deeply worried about it. I congratulate Chester Borrows the member for Whanganui on bringing it to the House. As the member for Rotorua no more I understand that the member is trying to fight the good fight for Wanganui and is convinced that the people of Wanganui want a solution to the problem. Well this is not the solution. This is flawed legislation and the lawyers on the other side know that. If the Minister of Police Judith Collins—I am pleased she is in the Chamber tonight—looked at the community safety order bill for Rotorua and at this bill she would start to see that people want a solution. I admire Mr Borrows for bringing this bill to the House but I am sure he knows—as I knew in Rotorua—that this bill will not solve the problem. 
The purpose of this bill is flawed to begin with. The purpose clause states: “The purpose … is to prohibit the display of gang insignia in specified places in the district.” Well how crazy. We in Rotorua also sat down to try to specify which bits of the district we were concerned about as I am sure that Mr Borrows has done with the Mayor of Wanganui. How do we solve the problem by saying that an insignia can be worn in one area but not in another? It is a bit like the Mayor of New York’s broken windows campaign which pushed everybody out of New York. Judges outside New York said that they hated the legislation because all the criminals of New York had moved out into their patches and they did not want that. They thought that the criminals could be better managed more centrally in New York. It is a very principled issue that we are trying to grapple with here tonight and this bill is absolutely flawed. 
As we all know there is a stigma attached to gang insignia. Our mentioning and naming of the gangs will make them so proud. The gangs will be emblazoned in the law. They will just change their names. We have the Killer Bees down in Wanganui now. I bet they are there and they will change their name to something else that we cannot predict as soon as they see their name mentioned in this legislation and we will be back within 5 years looking at this flawed and faulty legislation. I heard Simon Bridges say that 65 percent of Wanganui’s people want this bill. Of course they want solutions to community and social problems in their city. 
Simon Bridges 
: They believe that this is the solution. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: I say to Mr Bridges that I do not believe that they have even read the bill because it is so flawed. I do not believe that the member who has a good solid knowledge of the law could honestly put his hand across his heart and say that this is a fantastic bill. In fact if the member thought that then he would go to the Minister of Police and ask her to fix the situations in Rotorua Rodney Wellington Central and across the country. Chester Borrows could hold his head high and say that he had the oyster in the shell that got a bit of sand in it that he got the argument going nationally and that he actually fixed the problem of dysfunction in communities and in society for the rest of New Zealand. Good sincere attempts to fix things locally do not fix things nationally. 
What about the good people of Patea? Gangs will move to Patea because the going is not so tough there. Is that really what the region wants? The purpose of this bill is fundamentally flawed. It is a very sincere attempt but there is no way I can support this bill simply because it is faulty law. I am sure that the good Minister will be looking for solutions in towns throughout New Zealand. This is certainly not the right tool to use.