Locke Keith: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — Second Reading 
Locke Keith: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6289] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be opposing the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill but not because we disagree with its aim. Its aim is to deal with criminality particularly organised criminality such as robbery and all the rest of it and dealing in drugs such as P in particular which is very damaging. We are very strong on opposing that form of criminality and we are very strong on supporting the victims of it. 
My former colleague Nandor Tanczos was very instrumental in bringing victims’ rights provisions into our legislation. I think this measure is going in the wrong direction. As a Parliament we have already made one move in the wrong direction by introducing the law criminalising gang patches. It will not be workable. It will throw up a whole lot of injustices and we are starting to see that already. 
The approach of this bill is to lengthen the sentence for participating in an organised criminal group from 5 years to 10 years but that will only fill up our jails more and more. As we know jails are often schools for crime more than places for rehabilitation. So to keep increasing sentences is not necessarily the right course of action for Parliament to take but unfortunately it has been the pattern under both Labour and National Governments in the years that I have been in Parliament. 
Clause 4 is headed “Participation in organised criminal group” and when we look through the definitions in that clause we see that they are vague and it is difficult to apply legislation with such vague definitions to organised criminal groups. It is no accident that the previous legislation—the Crimes Act—on organised criminal groups has very rarely been applied in the courts. There have been very few convictions under that legislation because of its vagaries and because of judges and juries not wishing to do injustices to people. 
I make the point that the legislation does not apply just to gangs. Most gangs as we know them have patches and so on. But the charge of being a member of an organised criminal group has also been applied to five people who were arrested a couple of years ago as part of police Operation Eight during which there were raids in Tuhoe country. I think that about 17 people were arrested and five of those people are now being charged as together forming an organised criminal group. Those people have political motives one way or another as everyone knows—and of course I will not talk about the details or judge the guilt or innocence of the people involved. But it gives us an idea that this legislation can carry over to people who are engaged in political activities. 
In that particular case the police and the prosecution initially attempted to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act. That failed. The police fell back on the Arms Act and then they moved on to the provisions in the Crimes Act relating to organised criminal groups. The Green Party is concerned at the fact that the provision goes beyond what we would normally consider to be patched gangs. 
The whole problem with this legislation—both the Crimes Act and this amendment bill—is that we can stray quite easily into guilt by association. It is very hard to know where to draw lines. Let us look at the amendments to the Crimes Act that are contained in clause 4. Subsection (1) of section 98A inserted by clause 4 states: “Every person commits an offence … who participates in an organised criminal group—(a) knowing that 3 or more people share any 1 or more of the objectives …” and it then mentions where those objectives are described. It goes on to state: “(whether or not the person himself or herself shares the particular objective or particular objectives);”. That is a bit vague for a start. People can somehow get into the orbit of a group even though they do not share its objectives and they may then get caught up as being subject perhaps to a 10-year sentence. People do not need to be actively involved in committing the crime to be caught under this bill; they just need to be reckless as to whether their conduct contributes or may contribute to the occurrence of any criminal activity. That is very vague as well. 
Subsection (1)(c) in clause 4 states: “reckless as to whether the criminal activity may contribute to achieving the particular objective or particular objectives of the organised criminal group.” That is separate from the previous bit I read out which is to do with the crime; this is to do with the objectives of the group and as is indicated in the other part of clause 4 which I read out earlier the person caught up in the group does not even need to share the group’s objectives. But the person’s activity might because of its recklessness contribute to those objectives. So a whole lot of things have to be proved—it is a case of “and” not “or” in terms of the requirements in the paragraphs of section 98A(1) in clause 4. 
All those things have to be proved in a court setting. In the Green Party’s view that leaves the door wide open to all sorts of problems. Family or friends could be caught up as being in legal terms members of an organised criminal group when they are not. When we look at how an organised criminal group is defined in the original legislation we see that even that is very vague. In terms of the group the Act states that only some of the people need be involved in the planning of a crime not all of them. Section 98A(3)(c) of the original Act states: “its membership changes from time to time.” 
Well that is true; any group’s membership changes from time to time. People may be members today and not tomorrow. The whole thing gets very vague when we put it into law and that is why I think it is a rather difficult path to go down. When judges and juries are looking at criminal activity—whether it be armed robbery circulating P or whatever—they can judge the circumstances of the criminality of the particular offender. To link it up with this highly confusing organised criminal group legislation is not helping us at all. 
The other side of the issue is that the law and order bandwagon—adding bits to the Crime Act extending sentences increasing surveillance and everything else—is not from the Greens’ point of view getting to the root of the problem. We have to be clear about the root of the problem particularly as we have moved into a recession and unemployment is growing. We know that a recession often produces more people who are at a loose end. They are hard up without income their families are suffering their kids are joining gangs and all the rest of it. We have to look at the root of the problem and try to address it and we have debates in this House about how to address the general financial and economic crisis—which the Greens see as parallel to the environmental crisis. 
We need to look at benefiting the people at the low socio-economic end of our society. That is a much better way of reducing the prevalence of crime. We need to give kids alternatives to joining gangs. Most young kids join gangs not because they want to rob a bank or anything like that but because they want some social support or some group to belong to and unfortunately gangs are the handiest groups around in some communities. We have to provide more sports clubs and social clubs. We have to provide more education and more ways to stop kids from leaving school. All those sorts of things keep them out of gangs. If people go properly through the education system and have aspirations to make a life for themselves in what we would call a proper way they will not go out and join gangs. I think that is much better than the sort of legislation we have before us. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Before I call David Garrett I want to say to the member that I was unduly terse in my response to his point of order before. I withdraw that response and I apologise to the member.