Mackey Moana: Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2566] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to stand and take a call on clause 7 of the Wanganui District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Bill—a short call hopefully as we do not want to hold this up any more than it needs to be but I want to follow on from my colleague Grant Robertson. This clause deals with “Powers of arrest and seizure in relation to persons displaying gang insignia”. This is an issue that the ACT Party should be very concerned about. This is really where the rubber hits the road when it comes to the freedoms that my colleague was talking about. All that I can deduce as my colleague Chris Hipkins said when he referred to the ACT Party fitting the description of a criminal gang under this legislation is that just like a criminal gang its members have all been pulled into line they have all been beaten around the chops and not one of them is allowed to say what he or she really thinks. The irony of that perhaps should not be lost on members. 
This is a very important clause— 
Chris Hipkins 
: Why doesn’t Roger Douglas tell us what he thinks? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well he has only one speech and he gave it during the general debate so we should not expect that he is going to stand up and take a call on this. 
In relation to powers of arrest and seizure clause 7(1) states: “A constable may without warrant—(a) arrest a person whom the constable has good cause to suspect” may be breaching the Act. This is a very extensive power to give to the police. Let us look at south-east Los Angeles. A lot of people have talked about different gangs but what people perhaps do not know when they talk about the Crips and the Bloods is that in fact there are East Side Crips and West Side Crips. When we talk about displaying gang insignia and we go back to the definition of gang insignia in clause 4(1) we see that paragraph (a) states that gang insignia “means a sign symbol or representation commonly displayed to denote membership of an affiliation with” a gang. I tell members that Labour members have had a photo emailed through to us where the Minister for Social Development and Employment is doing the West Side Crips sign. This is a hand gesture that represents a criminal gang the West Side Crips and I want to know whether— 
Hon Member 
: A gang insignia! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —that gang insignia would be captured under the legislation. Obviously a hand gesture that represented a criminal gang falls under the ambit of this legislation. It would be interesting to see that gang insignia being “destroyed or otherwise disposed of”—and it is gang insignia. It is the Minister for Social Development and Employment in the photo. I notice that the person who has emailed it to us has blurred out other faces to protect the innocent but the Minister is clearly doing the West Side Crips insignia. This is very interesting and it comes to the heart of why Labour opposes this legislation. We are really getting into bad law when we have to have discussions of this nature but they are very real discussions. The member in the chair Chester Borrows has said— 
Paul Quinn 
: What about the law of common sense? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: What was that sorry? 
Paul Quinn 
: What about the law of common sense? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: The law of common sense! Mr Paul Quinn wants to lecture us all on the law of common sense. I look forward to his taking the next call so that he can in his usual erudite way lecture members on what he believes to be the law of common sense. I think we would all benefit greatly I say to Mr Quinn from his expertise displayed every day in this Chamber on that particular issue. We look forward to that greatly I say to Mr Quinn. 
One of the issues that we have raised—and we have raised it consistently—in terms of powers of arrest and seizure is what happens when a person is in an area and has no reasonable way of knowing that he or she is not allowed to wear gang insignia. The signs will go missing. They will be put in gang headquarters and probably student flats as well. They will be stolen. So someone walking into an area where a constable has powers of arrest and seizure for wearing gang insignia might not even know that he or she is breaking the law. Under this Act those people have no defence. In fact under section 5A(2) already agreed to by National and ACT if a sign is not up and someone does not know he or she is breaking the law it is not a defence for him or her to say “I didn’t realise this was a part of Wanganui I wasn’t allowed to be breaking this by-law in.” 
How can the ACT Party support that provision? How can the ACT Party say that when there are no signs telling people they are breaking the law because they have been taken down and hung up in gang headquarters? Those signs are the only way under this bill that people can know they are breaking the law unless they go down to the council and check every single by-law on arrival in Wanganui to make sure they are not breaching any of them during their visit. Of course everyone does that when they go for a holiday in lovely Wanganui! How can the ACT Party support a provision of arrest and seizure for someone who has not even been told he or she is breaking the law? 
All I can say—and I will come back to what my colleague Chris Hipkins said—is that the ACT Party is truly behaving like a gang on this bill. ACT members are not allowed to speak freely and they are not allowed to separate themselves out from the rest of their gang. If they do they are given a bollocking.