Clendon David: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11109. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):Kia ora. I am clearly going to express a somewhat different view from the gentleman who has just sat down Richard Prosser. The Greens do not support this Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill. We see it having some good intentions behind it. We will not support it because it will not work. It will not be effective in achieving the intended outcomes. It is another in a long series of one-off legislative attempts to deal with a problem that is not easily amenable to legislative solutions. The National Party actually knew that once upon a time and I will return to that point a little later.To work through the clauses of the bill—which is what the Committee is about after all—clause 3 the purpose clause starts off telling us: “The purpose of this Act is to prohibit the display of gang insignia on premises…” as has already been referred to. One thing I will give this bill is that it generated a lot of interesting and at times quite entertaining conversations at the Law and Order Committee. When we started endeavouring to define “Government premises” there was an interesting diversion about what the situation of an MP’s electoral office was for example. Would that come under the banner?But more seriously or shall I say less seriously you get these slightly ridiculous situations as have been referred to where one can stand on a footpath outside a Work and Income building or a public office of some sort and that is OK. But if there is an awning above your head then that is not OK because that is part of the structure you are therefore within it and you are breaking the law. Labour members mentioned the example of a bus shelter. A gang member wearing a patch and sitting in a bus shelter is breaking the law. It is an invidious situation to put the police in in fact. Somebody wearing a patch but otherwise minding their own business for the moment not up to mischief sitting in a bus shelter—any police officer witnessing that is obliged to arrest that person. That is just a ridiculous situation. So the whole debate about defining premises actually highlighted that this is not an appropriate or a practical solution.Sadly we will not be supporting the New Zealand First Supplementary Order Paper 253 on the same basis. By adding a car park to the definition of a premise for example it means a person wearing a patch while driving and parking their car before they even get out of the vehicle has broken the law. I do not believe that is actually the intention or the nature of the problem that this sets out to solve.Similarly—and I think it is interesting—I do not believe that any other piece of legislation has ever before tried to define what a gang is. In this case that is what this bill sets out to do. It lists 30-odd named gangs whose patches insignia etc. are banned from public premises. But it also sets up an opportunity for other organisations and other gangs to be nominated added to that list and added to the schedule. Again we suddenly start tying ourselves in knots in terms of trying to determine what a gang is. We have had gangs in New Zealand for something close to 50 years. I do think it is interesting that nobody has ever tried to define a gang in legislation before. I think the difficulties the select committee has had in that sense just highlight perhaps why it has not been attempted before.In order to add another group or another gang to this list the Minister of Police must essentially be satisfied that the organisation or group proposed to be identified has twokey characteristics. One is a common name or common identifying signs symbols or representations. The second is that its members associates or supporters individually or collectively promote encourage or engage in criminal activity. I have used the example before of NORML the marijuana campaign organisation. It has very distinct symbolism around its organisation. It also actively encourages individually its supporters or even members—it does. It has one particular concern with the law and that is the members do publicly smoke dope—J Day—once a year. On that basis NORML could be deemed to be a gang and added to this list which would be quite ridiculous I am sure you would agree—with exceptions.Let us stretch another only slightly longer bow. Greenpeace has very clear and obvious branding. We know if we see a Greenpeace symbol what organisation that is representing. If members or supporters individually of that organisation commit a crime—[Bell rung ] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I am going to let David Clendon have another go.DAVID CLENDON: Thank you Mr Chair—good decision. If an individual supporter of Greenpeace somebody who had occasionally flicked it $5 was found to be engaging in criminal activity that would again enable that organisation to be defined as a gang which again would be quite ridiculous. But we do have to recall that this is a Government that recently made it illegal to protest at sea in defence of its beloved mining drilling and so on agenda. So already you see that this bill does carry with it a considerable burden of anomalies and that is a good word for the night I think.It actually is not as straightforward as one might think to define gangs. It certainly is not a simple thing to define the boundaries of premises. Equally the various regalia and the insignia would be a serious challenge for people working in public offices to identify. A person walks in wearing a T-shirt or a jacket with a particular symbol on it—is it a gang or is it not? We looked at a number of photographs. You can go to many stores or look online and you will see clothing that looks very much as though it belongs to a gang when in fact it does not. Inevitably—and Mr Kim Workman in his submission on the bill made this point—people who are falsely accused of belonging to gangs because they happen to have a certain item of clothing could have reason to get a little bit hostile about that. This could stimulate incidents of upset or incidents that otherwise would not occur and we do not think that is particularly helpful.At a more general level I made the point that once upon a time the National Government actually understood that one-off legislative solutions are seldom actually lasting solutions. You go back to 1997 and what was then the Harassment and Criminal Associations Bill. The Ministry of Justice made a very interesting commentary around that bill which was a one-off legislative attempt to quell gang activity. The Ministry of Justice at the time said: “It became clear during the development of the [Harrassment and Criminal Associations] Bill that no single legislative initiative would achieve the desired result of reducing gang activity. A longer-term broader strategy to deal with gangs and their offending needs to be developed.” This is likely to involve action on a number of fronts and to include measures that do not require legislation.Gangs are a problem in this country. Public violence is a problem in this country as is family and domestic violence. The solutions are not one-off little bits of legislation like this that seek to identify one particular circumstance. In the 1970s and the 1980s the National Party under Muldoon—and Todd McClay knows this—recognised gangs as a social problem. It came up with work schemes politically exposed person schemes and labour contracts for gangs because the key to it as the point has already been made is that a great deal of the reason that people end up in gangs is that they are alienated. We saw emergent gangs in the 1950s and 1960s that did not mature because the membersof those gangs basically grew out of it. They played up for a few years perhaps behaved violently but then they got a job they settled down got a life and the gang suddenly did not look quite so attractive any more. That cycle broke in the 1980s. Now we have long-term embedded multigenerational unemployment and that is the single most powerful driver of gang membership. Solve the unemployment problem and the gang problem will drastically diminish—much better than any one-off piece of legislation. Thank you.