Alexander Marc: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Alexander Marc: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11890] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 We have been very weak in how we deal with gangs and criminal organisations in this country. They have grown from street gangs in the 1940s. The first started on Independence Day 1946 in a town called Hollister in the US. Eventually they spread their tentacles to New Zealand and we are doing very little about it. The gangs have become well-structured and well-entrenched. They have bonds that in many cases replace those of the traditional family which in many cases are dysfunctional. They are supported with the finances collected from illegal activities such as prostitution gambling theft and drugs. 
The point of course is that we are not talking about a romanticised group of lovable leather and tattoo - clad rogues on steel horses; we are talking about criminal organisations whose tentacles of criminality are digging into our communities taking our money our sense of lawfulness and our hope. These gangs have left a trail of despair and social destruction and this Government as others before it has done diddly. 
Our Minister of Justice was quoted in the  
Dominion Post  
in October last year as saying that changes were needed. What has happened? Absolutely nothing. We have a system where those who are making methamphetamines are reoffending while on bail because our justice system is so clogged up that there is at least a 2-year wait for trial. One of the reasons is that there is a huge unrestrained increase in the supply of and the market for P. 
We are not equipping our police to handle the problem. If we want the police to do the job then we have to give them the tools to be able to do it. That is not what we are doing. We are pussyfooting around. We have heard talk about trying to do something about taking the proceeds of criminal activity but it is not enough. We need I believe the Western Australian model of confiscation—confiscation on a civil basis without conviction. But all we get from the Minister is that he does not want to put such a system into place because of our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. While it is true that we would be going against that the nonsense is that the Internal Revenue Service already has these powers. All that United Future is suggesting is to give these powers to the police to execute what they need to do to get rid of our criminal organisations and gangs once and for all. They should be able to take away the profits from those people who prey on us and who feed off us destroying our communities our families and our children. 
Unfortunately the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act seems to be standing in the way of this politically correct Government. Whose rights does it protect? It protects the offenders at the expense of the rest of us. We are the ones who end up suffering. The police want these powers. They want to be able to do the job they have been entrusted to do but the Minister in the chair the Hon George Hawkins and the Minister of Justice are not giving them the ability to do that. That is part of the problem. We are pussyfooting around and we are not doing what we can to help the police do the job. We expect them to clean up our streets but how can we? 
Some people on the left whom we have heard from today suggested that it was cheaper to keep offenders in a Hilton rather than a jail. That is probably what the Greens really want. They want to close down the jails and put people in Hiltons to give them a reason not to offend. What message would that give to the rest of the community to those who are lawful? It would tell them that crime does pay. On that I kind of agree. Crime should pay and it should pay and pay and pay. The best way to do that is to give the police the powers to confiscate criminals’ assets and the proceeds of crime. We will do that only if we start being tough and taking the steps that the Minister in the chair and the Minister of Justice are not willing to take. It is like telling a gardener to go and hoe a garden but denying him or her the tools to dig the earth. It is pointless and wasteful. We will end up in a situation where the police are out-numbered out-gunned and out-resourced by the very gangs they are supposed to be trying to restrain. It is pathetic. This Government should take a good cold hard look at itself and at what it is allowing gangs to do to communities and to our families and kids. It should wake up to the fact that these gangs do not play by the rules. Neither should we.