Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker.[Authorised te reo text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.][Authorised translation to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]A short call Madam Speaker. As the MP for Manurewa this is a big issue for me. It's something I find hard to talk about because the cost of gangs on my community—the human cost in the way that gangs recruit young people in Manurewa—is a scourge that we must fight. All parliamentarians must stand against the way that young people are recruited into a life of crime—they've already gone through the school system the health system which has for many generations underserved their families and then the fact that they feel that they need to turn to gangs is a problem we all have to address.But this bill absolutely does not do that. This bill lets down the people in Manurewa who thought that what they were getting would be a Government that was focused on crime a Government that would put more police on the streets in South Auckland and would resource the local cops—who have good relationships with the people in Manurewa—to actually be able to do their jobs. We had these police coming into the Justice Committee and telling committee members that these were not the solutions that they would be able to action and that it would lead to an undermining of local cops who build up over many years these hard-won relationships in hard to reach communities like South Auckland and they will be out there making fools of themselves because of political point scoring that went on in the election campaign.We are letting down people in Manurewa. We are letting down those mums who see their young boys being recruited by gangs in places where they should not have access to young people: in schools in places where young people should be assured forward that the State is going to look out for them and that they have a Government who backs them.What are we seeing in Manurewa? We're seeing gangs booming under this Government. The ability for ordinary people to walk down the street has not been improved by rhetoric like this. In fact this is glamourising gang members who have become suddenly overnight a popular glamourised culture that is counter to everything this Government is saying. We're seeing more of the activity.I stopped at the intersection of Browns Road and Great South Road last week where the window washer who's there—I often stop and chat to him when I'm going past him and he's there. Peeni Henare will have seen him there. He's always there. I pulled over and usually I'll tell him that he's not meant to be doing that but I'll talk to him about what he's seeing. He said to me You know I'm lucky at the moment. I'm someone who's got stuff sorted. There are more and more people out on their butts because they don't have jobs at the moment. I'm seeing more and more people out on the streets and I'm worried about how South Auckland is going to look in a couple of years when this has really taken hold." And it made me think about those ordinary people who are being punished by legislation like this. Punished by a Government that is using people like this who have nowhere else to turn as an opportunity to peddle the rhetoric which says that it is the responsibility of those people to keep themselves away from organised crime.Well it's the responsibility of Government to step in and give them an alternative path to give young people an alternative path so they're not washing windows at the lights and that's what they're known for in their community but they can find a good job they can find training opportunities they can fit into a school that knows what their needs are and is resourced to be able to teach them in a way that they can learn. Because these are the problems that have led to gang growth in New Zealand. These are the problems that we need to find the solutions to instead of cosmetic solutions like this which only serve to make politicians in this House feel like they are doing something about it.There is a growth of new gangs in South Auckland—gangs like the Comancheros gangs like the King Cobras—that did not exist before. The solutions that we need are about stopping young people joining those gangs which are active in recruiting on things like TikTok and social media. The things that actually work that we need police to be able to be resourced to do are those solutions like Kotahi te Whakaaro which was getting kids who were caught up in this off the streets overnight. It was getting each one of those cases in front of experts who sat around the table in the morning and knew what to do with them—whether it was Oranga Tamariki here whether it was taking them to a local community group to get back in the right place whether it was just taking them down to James Cook High School or Manurewa High School to have a meeting with the principal and their whānau. It was practical solutions like that which were actually making a difference. That is what Manurewa deserves from this Government and that is not what we are getting."