Collins Judith: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: General Debate[Sitting date: 02 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9300. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections): Do you know I actually quite like Ron Mark. I am very sorry to see him and my other good friend Annette King having a bit of an argument because frankly I do not know why people do not understand that Ron Mark is actually one of the nicer people in New Zealand First. He is such a good guy. He does not even want to talk about the Search and Surveillance Act that this Government got through when I was the Minister of Justice. He forgot to mention that one. Unfortunately New Zealand First and Ron Mark did not vote for it so they cannot take any credit at all for the excellent work that is now going on to help keep New Zealanders safer.But I am so pleased he has raised an issue that I want to talk about today and that is the issue of gangs in this country. My colleague Anne Tolley and I announced some measures yesterday. There is a lot of work going on with our agencies around gangs. I am going to say something that has not often been said in this Parliament and that is that gangs are bad. Gangs and their behaviours are bad and the people who suffer the most from them are not you and me Mr Speaker but actually their own families.Gang members are in fact the big perpetrators of family violence. To all these people who want to bang on about us having too many people in prison I say: “OK so stop killing kids. Stop beating up your spouse and you will not go to prison.” So it is really pretty clear and I think Ron is with me on this one: “Stop killing people and you will be fine. We will leave you alone.” So that is my message to the gangs. My message is: “We know what you are doing.” Police are working with other agencies. We have got far better powers now because of the privacy changes that have been made but also because of the Search and Surveillance Act—did I remind you that New Zealand First did not vote for that law—which is helping police in their work.Is it not great to be part of a sensible Government doing what we said we would do which is focus on social investment? Today after 7 years of a John Key - led Government New Zealand is a stronger and more prosperous country. Never before in the last 40 years have we seen more people coming from Australia to live here than leaving New Zealand to go there. And it is not just Kiwis returning back home; it is Australians coming here too.All around the world we are looking at Governments that are not stable. This is a stable Government—not like say the poor old Labour Party although it is stable in its instability if that could ever be possible. So what is it really that Labour stands for? Is Labour for free trade? Well that depends. It is for free trade with China but it does not like people with Chinese names. It is for free trade with Korea but it is not sure about them because they have got Asian names too. What else is Labour against? Oh I know what. It wants to sign up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); no it does not want to sign up to the TPP. Good on Dr David Clark because today Dr Clark actually asked a supplementary question on the TPP—the first one that we have had from the Labour Party that anyone can remember.Hon Members: No. Wrong.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Jacinda Ardern says no they have done that. Oh no they do not like that. The questions were all in the Labour caucus. “What are we going to do—what are we going to do? Phil Goff’s voting with the Government.” Well actually that is a party that is all over the place.Let us look at the flag referendum. Everyone knows my views on the flag. I am pretty wedded to the current one but do you know what? I would go with the public. I would go with whatever the result of the referendum is. The Labour Party’s own policy is to change the flag and have a flag referendum. That is its policy. What is it doing? I do not know; not supporting the Government on it. So that tells me that it is flip-flopping all over the place. Labour members are not sure. They are looking for a poll and trying to have a view. That is what we have got for our major Opposition party. No wonder New Zealand First is looking so good compared with Labour and no wonder the Greens look so good compared with it.Let us just talk about some more national security issues. Are Labour members for or against terrorism? Are they for or against the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)? Are they for or against the SIS? Are they for or against what is going on in the world at the moment?Tim Macindoe: How would you know?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: How would you know? How would we know? Would those members be the people you would want to trust with your national security? The answer is no you could not. For a start we have Andrew Little against New Zealand trainers going to Iraq—absolutely against it. He did not want to have that. He would not have a bar of it. The next thing a few minutes later “No no we want those trainers in Iraq.” Thank goodness we did not hold the plane waiting for Mr Little to agree because we would be here all day waiting for it. He also says we should now send more troops in. Well I do not know. Where is he? Has he got approval from anyone else? Has he got support from his party? Probably not.Then we have the age of entitlement for superannuation. He was musing the other day about how we would like to raise the age of entitlement to superannuation and then he saw the poll and he backtracked down. He backed away from that. So what we have in the Labour Opposition is as I said very very diverse views. No one is agreeing with anyone.