Hipkins Chris: Crimes Amendment Bill Local Government Amendment Bill Sentencing Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
Hipkins Chris: Crimes Amendment Bill Local Government Amendment Bill Sentencing Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 The rhetoric is easy and I can do “hard on crime” just as well as any other member in the House. Gangs are insidious. They prey on people and they intimidate bully and break the law. That is the rhetoric and I agree with it—I do. I do not have any time for gangs or gang members. But when listening to members opposite one would think that once the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill is passed we will all march arm in arm to a happier future and gangs will disappear overnight. The fortifications will go the gang members will all be locked up and everything will be wonderful. If it was that easy it would have happened by now. 
Although Government members said that we had 9 years of a Labour Government where nothing happened I point out that we had 9 years of a National Government before that 4 years of a Labour Government before that and 9 years of a National Government before that. If we go back and read what Rob Muldoon said about gangs in the 1970s we probably would not find that much difference in the rhetoric that came out of the National Party then as comes out of it today. The rhetoric is the easy bit; the solutions are the hard bit. We on the Labour side of the House support this bill because it gives the police some more powers. But we are realistic. We know that it does not mean gangs will just disappear overnight or that somehow all gang-related crime will vanish because it will not. Sandra Goudie called it the “Gang-buster Bill”. It is not. It is another set of tools in the arsenal for the police but it is not a magic bullet or an instant solution. 
I will pick up a couple of the comments that Te Ururoa Flavell made. I agreed with quite a lot of what he said in the Committee stage and in his third reading speech. However there were a few things that I did not agree with him on. I did not agree with him when he said that the gangs were part of the solution to stopping violence. I absolutely disagree with that. The gangs are often the problem. They are not the solution. 
Mr Flavell talked about Farmer Crescent in Pomare and I am disappointed that Maori Party members have had little to say about the actions of their National Government colleagues there. The Government is not evicting the gang members from their State houses in Pomare; it is evicting the women and children. That will do nothing to stem the gang-related problems in that community. All that will do is punish the innocent victims. I am surprised that Te Ururoa Flavell raised that matter in this House given the Maori Party’s shameful silence on the actions of the National Government against that community which will do nothing to stem gang-related problems in that community. All it is doing is picking on the victims. I think that if Maori Party members want to raise that matter in this House they should at least have the courage of their convictions to stand up and say that they condemn the actions of the National Government. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: The member cannot imply that a member or a party in the House lacks courage. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. 
Coming back to the points I raised earlier in this debate the Labour Party said at the last election that we would have a commission of inquiry into gangs and sophisticated crime and I absolutely agree with that. As I have already said whatever we do the solutions are not easy. It is the rhetoric that is easy. In order to come up with solutions that work we need to look at the evidence of what works not only here but also around the world. We need to get people to talk about it. We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world and this bill increases the number of people who will be locked up and the amount of time they will be locked up for. That may make us all feel better but we are doing more of the same and that means we will be getting more of the same. We need to take a look at the evidence of what works if we are really serious about cracking down on gang-related crime. We need to go right back to the beginning. We need to go right back to day one because those gang members were not born wanting to be that way. They were not born gang members and they were not born wanting to be criminals. I ask members what happened along the way that has made them what they are now. 
I tell members that if they go to Rimutaka Prison they will see that 30-plus percent of people there have some sort of gang-related affiliation. I can tell members the common characteristics of people in the Rimutaka Prison. First of all most of them cannot read and write. 
Paul Quinn 
: That’s why we have a literacy programme going! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: They cannot read and write and I will tell the member what else: most of them come from low socioeconomic areas. The gap between the rich and the poor in New Zealand is continuing to grow—it grew under Labour and it continues to grow under National. If we want to choke off the supply of gang members and gang recruits then we have to do something about poverty in this country. The fact is that gangs prey on the poor and the desperate and that is where they get their new members from. 
If we want to be really tough about gangs we need to go back to day one to when those kids are first born. We need to ask what it is that compels them to get into gangs in the first place. Gang members who are already in the gangs are picking on the easy targets: the poor kids the kids who cannot read and write and—yes tragically—the kids who themselves have been victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. They are the ones who are more likely to end up in gangs so let us go after that situation as the root cause of the problem. This legislation adds some useful things for the police. It gives them some useful new powers but it will not solve gang-related crime. If we are really serious about gang-related crime we need to go back to the cause. 
For this legislation to be effective it needs to be adequately resourced. As my colleague Clayton Cosgrove said it is all very well to give police extra powers but when the Government is cutting 340 police cars out of the police force and cutting firearms training I ask how the police will have the resources or the skills in the case of firearms training to adequately deal with these types of issues. The sum of $21 million has been cut from the police budget under National’s “tough-on-crime Budget”. It can pass all the laws it likes but if it does not give the police the resources to implement them then those laws are pretty meaningless. 
It is a contrast to the National Party’s pre-election rhetoric which was tough on crime. National said it was going to put extra police on the beat and it was going to make sure they were properly resourced yet in its very first Budget it stripped $21 million out of the police budget. To highlight what that means in Christchurch where more than 30 cars have been cut out of the police’s vehicle fleet the National Government gave the police there four bicycles to replace those 30 cars. In Christchurch Mr Brownlee’s home town his Government has taken away 30 police cars and given the police four bicycles. So when the police go round to the gang fortifications to insist that gang members take them down they will go there on their bicycles. As the gang members get in their cars and speed away the police will pedal as fast as they possibly can to try to catch the gang members in Mr Brownlee’s home town of Christchurch. I think that is absolutely disgraceful. If the Government is serious about getting tough on crime it should make sure the police have the resources they need to enforce the laws that it is passing.