Flavell Te Ururoa: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7520] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairperson. Kia ora tatou i tenei ra. I am aware that time is moving on and I will take only a brief call. I find myself stuck with the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill. I tend to agree with many of the statements made by my colleague Shane Jones because of the loss of two lives in Murupara in my electorate. A young boy Jordan Herewini from Te Kura Kaupapa Motuhake o Tawhiuau was killed earlier this year. Another young man Kaine Lewis was killed about 5 or 6 weeks ago. Again he was involved in a gang confrontation in Murupara. These deaths resulted in a hikoi through the town. 
If members do not know Murupara it is a rural community way out in the middle of the bush. Once upon a time it was a thriving community. The vast majority of the people who live there are Maori. At this point in time many of them are unemployed. Basically two gangs are involved in that town right now. The first is the Tribesmen which has become established there. For all intents and purposes that gang is made up of many people from the iwi of Ngati Manawa and Ngati Whare. The Mongrel Mob has also moved into town. The two altercations that resulted in the deaths of those two boys came out of gang confrontations and the use of colours which is being discussed today. Having been associated with the young boy Jordan—we had travelled together on various trips—his death really hit home to me and it certainly made me feel really angry in respect of the way that gang culture has developed in Aotearoa. 
In reflecting on this bill I wonder whether we will ever get rid of the whole notion of gangs in Aotearoa but I tend to believe that we will not because overseas experience overseas tells us so. No matter what strategies have been employed thus far throughout the world it seems that there still remains a culture of “ganghood” if you like and that is the difficulty. No matter what we try to do with gang members—lock them up and throw away the key or work with them—there still remains the whole notion of gang culture. Yet there have been some examples where working with them has produced positive results. Not that I am the expert on gangs but I think back to the work that Sir Robert Muldoon sort of started and that others have picked up in terms of moving towards employment schemes and so on. 
The strange thing about this experience is that in Murupara the people decided to take the bull by the horns and come back to our own tikanga. I am talking only about this particular situation not other gangs. I am talking only about these two gangs which we might call Maori gangs. They have basically called a rahui which is a prohibition on violence in their town. It seems to be taking off and working. It means that there is a lot of dialogue and a lot of talk between the people involved. 
The Maori Party has been talking a lot about this issue. In particular we have been saying that we have to do something but we ask what the something is that would produce the best results against the context of the fact that gangs will stay with us. Sure some measures might happen to be on the side but one of the things we are absolutely confident about is the need for us to empower communities to allow them to get on and deal with the issues within their own environment. 
Since the time that the rahui has been imposed it has even got to the point that Ngati Manawa have basically banned patches from their marae. I am not exactly sure of all the circumstances but the following example could be a real situation. Imagine that a gang member has died in Wellington and his family say that they want his body to go back to Murupara for burial but the people back in Murupara say no. They say that he cannot come back. They say that if he chose that life then he should stay down in Wellington. He cannot go back and be buried amongst his people in Murupara. The Murupara community will not even allow him to go to their marae. If his body was to go back to Murupara first the family needs to find a place for him to lie and second the family need to have the people there agree that he can lie in the same urupa the same cemetery as all the ancestors. That is happening right now today. If it is not today then it was yesterday; I have spoken to the people about it. That situation is the sort of thing that can happen. 
I am caught with the whole notion of having to do something but at the end having discussed the issue in our caucus we struggle with the notion of simply keeping on locking those people up. It might satisfy our minds right now but we are looking for some other solutions on top of that. There is no doubt that those who commit those crimes should serve the time; I have no problem with that. But we have to do something about rehabilitation to try to get these people back into society. If it comes at a hard cost like not being allowed to go back to be buried amongst one’s people then that is a big call. 
Mr Jones will know that not being allowed to be buried amongst one’s own people is a very very big call. In fact not even being allowed to go on to one’s marae to grieve over one’s relations is a big call. Just 2 weeks ago there was a tangi in Murupara for a kuia who was about 90 years old. Her children are teachers. As soon as the rahui came in and Ngati Manawa banned the patches the Tribesmen could not go on to their marae. It got a little bit dicey there I am told but in the end the gang members respected it. Further they tried to go down to the urupa to bury her and women stood on the road. Kuia and koroua stood on the road and said that they were to get the patches off or else they would not be going in there. They could choose one or the other and take their leave. 
Serious efforts are being made on the part of our communities to take back our communities and I use Murupara as just one example. The hope would be that the notion of using our own tikanga spreads. I do not know whether it would work in Kaitaia Kaikohe or elsewhere but I am confident based on what has happened in Murupara that we can change the mindset. 
While this bill is before us I want the House to understand that our vote is about looking at other solutions. Although we do not support this particular bill as such we understand the reasons for it but we also want to look at the bigger picture. The solution might come not just from the law and order field or the justice field; it might come from the bigger picture. I wanted to raise those points just in case other speakers from the Maori Party have not yet put that view. It will be a part of the picture painted with our vote later on in the other stages.