Ferris TākutaTĀKUTA FERRIS (Te Pāti Māori —Te Tai Tonga): E te Whare tēnā tātou. As I rise to speak to the second reading of the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill I can't help but reflect on the lessons that a great rangatira of te ao Māori left us Moana Jackson. Over a 30-year period he led three investigations into New Zealand's justice system and increasingly found structural racism systemic racism and racist attitudes that permeated the entire justice system and that consistently produced more negative outcomes for Māori than any other group in Aotearoa.Moana's view was that the institutions of Government that were born out of the vicious violence of colonialism and colonisations—the institutions were created to suffocate Māori to extinguish Māori aspiration to incarcerate Māori. Moana describes these characteristics of Government institutions as carceral entities inasmuch as their ultimate underlying objective is to assimilate the Māori people to incarcerate the Māori people to restrict Māori development to erase the Māori culture and Māori identity.When I reflect on the fact that the justice system is under the leadership of someone who believes that on balance colonisation was a good thing for Māori it is no wonder that the abhorrent statistics for Māori in the justice system continue. Indeed since the genesis of these institutions when this very House passed legislation to allow itself to imprison Māori for two years without trial the attitudes that subsequently embedded themselves deeply in the justice system over successive decades and generations would ultimately ensure that there was a pipeline that would deliver Māori from initial point of contact with the justice system through the justice pipeline and ultimately to prison. And it has done this with alarming regularity and astounding consistency as was described by Dr Rawiri Waretini-Karena in this House last week as a survivor of State abuse.These are the lessons that Moana left us. They aren't revolutionary findings; they're well understood they're well researched they're well founded yet they're ignored. Just last week this House received the report Whanaketia on historical abuse in State care and to acknowledge the community of survivors and their whānau who suffered and have had to endure the intergenerational damage of abuse meted out by the hands of Government institutions—the carceral entities that Moana so vividly describes.In this House last week the mood was sombre. The faces of MPs were anguished with the pain of having to address the rawness of the brutal truth as it gathered above us. And their messages were clear: stop attacking gangs; gangs were born of State abuse. No military boot camps for youth; these are all continuations of the State violence these very survivors had to endure and here we are one week later rolling out anti-gang legislation and cranking up boot camps. I tell you it's absurd. So what have we learnt? Well apparently nothing because it's clearly understood that when this law was last in place it did nothing to reduce offending. It's clearly understood that it had a disproportionate negative impact on Māori. It's clearly understood that the bill is in breach of human rights and that it breaches Te Tiriti o Waitangi yet it continues.Let me conclude by offering some reflections of my own on the submissions that the Justice Committee received because they've been referenced tonight and they got quite a shining review. I don't think that the review should have been that shining. We pretty much received submissions from all of the national legal bodies—the New Zealand Law Society law associations Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa and many others—and they unequivocally in unison said that the bill was rubbish that the bill should not have made it this far that the bill should be thrown out and that the Government should start again from a more restorative starting point. All of this was ignored and as I've heard today glossed over.It was astounding that there was unanimous condemnation of the bill by the national legal community and that a Government could have brought a piece of legislation this far without any consultation or any advice taken from any of those bodies. When cornered with the facts well the Government just reverts to saying Well we campaigned on tough on gangs and crime we won the election and on that basis we're doing it." Well if that's the quality of the argument and the rationale then that's just pathetic and you should go back to the start.Quite frankly you know not to ignore the voices that were here—the hundreds of voices that were here as survivors last week—but to show the same bravery and courage as those survivors: take immediate action to remove this bill before it creates even more damage. [Authorised te reo text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.][Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]We do not commend the bill to the House."