Mackey Moana: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Gangs and Organised Crime Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:658;Page:7511] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am happy to stand and take a call in the Committee stage of the Gangs and Organised Crime Bill. I endorse the comments made by my colleagues earlier. Labour takes this issue very seriously. We believe that we need to listen— 
Sandra Goudie 
: How come they did nothing about it for 9 long years? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Sandra Goudie should get up and make another speech. 
Hon Members 
: No no. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I know that it may pain us but I think the public need to see the depth of talent on the Government benches. I think they need to see the extent of its thinking about this important legislation. 
Sandra Goudie 
: Marvellous marvellous! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: The member says: “Marvellous marvellous”. I think the public needs to see the future front-bencher and future Minister of Finance Sandra Goudie and get to know her before her promotion comes. 
This is a very important bill. It extends work that Labour did when in Government to try to give police the tools to be able to deal with organised crime effectively. This is not an easy area of legislation. Parliamentarians constantly walk a fine line between ensuring that the rights of innocent citizens are protected and ensuring that our police are able to use whatever powers we can give them to bring criminals to justice. We need to do whatever we can to break down the organised crime that exists in New Zealand. This issue is not peculiar to New Zealand. Many countries grapple with how to deal with organised crime; New Zealand is not alone in that regard. 
The bill increases the penalty for participating in an organised criminal group from 5 years’ imprisonment to a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment and it clarifies the evidential requirements under section 98A of the Crimes Act which will help to improve the rate of successful prosecutions. If the police are not able to get successful prosecutions then it will all come to nothing. The bill requires the sentencing judge to take into account any offending that is committed due to involvement with an organised criminal group as a specific aggravating factor. That is also another important aspect of this legislation. 
I endorse what my colleague Chris Hipkins said on two fronts. The first relates to resourcing which is an issue that I raised in the debate on the previous bill. If we do not resource this issue properly then all the legislation in the world will not mean a thing. I really endorse what Chris Hipkins said about evidence-based policy-making. It is crucially important especially in the area of law and order that we as parliamentarians are able to challenge our very strongly held views on law and order and stack them up against the evidence. When it comes down to a choice between doing what is popular and what works we should do what works every single time. We need to be prepared to challenge ourselves to say that something that we— 
Sandra Goudie 
: Ha ha! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Sandra Goudie thinks that is a joke. She does not think we should do what works. Sandra Goudie might want to look at the evidence about boot camps. I think that a reason why this Government does not want to go down an evidence-based approach which is very relevant to this bill before me is that if we look across the law and order spectrum we see that sometimes what we believe might not actually be what will work and help us to reduce organised crime in this country. 
One of the strongest pieces of evidence about what works in terms of reducing crime and organised crime is visible policing. It is having the police properly resourced to be out there—not to have cars taken away from them as we have heard is happening in Rimutaka and in Christchurch but to be out there. If we do not resource our police properly this bill will not do anything. 
Sandra Goudie 
: Try telling us about the bill. Have you even read it? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Yes I have read it I say to Mrs Goudie; I have read it. If the member had been listening to me she would know that I told her what it was for. The bill will increase the maximum sentence from 5 years to 10 years. It will require the sentencing judge to take into consideration involvement in a criminal organisation as an aggravating factor at sentencing. Does the member want me to go on? I know what the bill does. What I am saying is that it means nothing if our police are not resourced. All the nice words in the world do not put a police car on the road. Money puts a police car on the road. This Government has been cutting funding to the police. Labour’s point is that this legislation does not matter. We can keep passing law and order bills under urgency but they will not work if we are not adequately resourcing the police. That goes for the previous bill which was on DNA testing as well. 
The other point my colleague Chris Hipkins made—and it concerns the evidence-based approach to crime as well—is that we need a commission of inquiry into organised crime. I do not think that any one member of this House truly understands the range of organised crime that exists in New Zealand and how to deal with it. Do we know why people enter gangs? Do we know what stops them leaving gangs which is a very important point? Do we know the range of activities they are involved in? If we do not know the enemy how will we combat it? I say that we do not fully understand the extent of organised crime in New Zealand. I urge the Government as well as passing legislation like this to pick up that suggestion and say that we will go out there and find those things out. It might be scary for us to do that it might be intimidating and I guarantee that we will not like what we find but if we do not know what we are dealing with how can we as parliamentarians comes up with the adequate legislative tools to combat it? How can we give the police the tools they need if we do not know what we are dealing with? If we are serious about an evidence-based approach to policy in this area—and I know that Sandra Goudie is not; she has made that quite clear—then we need to be prepared to go out and find the evidence. We have very very good professionals and experts in New Zealand who can do this and who would be very happy to be funded to do this properly alongside the Government and I know that Labour would— 
Sandra Goudie 
: The evidence is that she’s being specious with the facts and specious with what’s been said in the House. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I have been what? I have been “specious with the facts”? I do not even know what that means but that is all right. The other thing that this legislation does is expand the ability of the police to undertake surveillance— 
Sandra Goudie 
: There’s a dictionary in the foyer. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Thank you very much. I do not need the dictionary; that is fine. 
This bill expands the ability of the police to undertake surveillance of gangs by allowing the offence of participation in a criminal organisation to be used as a basis for an interception warrant. I know there are people who are concerned about the extension of powers in this area in particular. I come back to the point I made earlier which is that as parliamentarians we walk a fine line all the time. We want to be able to give the police tools and we know that this is an area in which they can reap great results when it comes to dealing with organised crime. I say again that we need to make sure that our police are resourced properly so that they are trained properly to know when it is appropriate to use this power and when it is not. We have a lot of trust in our police and they do a great job but there is potential for great abuse if this legislation does not have the proper safeguards put around it and it is not funded properly. 
Sandra Goudie 
: If she can’t understand the word “specious” how would she understand evidence? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I tell Sandra Goudie that I know what evidence is. Seriously oh my God— 
Chris Hipkins 
: There’s plenty of evidence on you Sandra! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I know. Sandra Goudie might actually want to listen because although she seems to think that this is some kind of big joke the fact is that we are greatly extending the powers of surveillance that the police are allowed to use when they are dealing with people who are involved in a criminal organisation. There are people in this country who want to know that parliamentarians take this seriously that this is not just something they do so that they can go out and say: “Rah rah! We’re really tough on law and order.” whilst at the same time putting into place a lot of policies that will undermine law and order in this country and that do not do anything about helping people into jobs and lifting children out of poverty. They want to know we are dealing with the causes of crime which is just as important as dealing with people once they are criminals—in fact it is more important. I think that people would prefer that we did not have criminals in this country rather than just having tougher laws to deal with the ones we already have. I urge the Government to take that part of the equation seriously as well. 
I reiterate because I do not think that the Government is listening—I know that the chairperson of the Law and Order Committee has made it clear that she thinks this is funny and a bit of a joke—that the public of New Zealand wants to know that these decisions and policies are being based on evidence internationally and domestically and that they will work. We believe that we are giving the police some useful tools here but we say to the Government— 
Sandra Goudie 
: Oh she does! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I said that earlier if Mrs Goudie was listening. I know that she cannot listen and talk at the same time so why does she not try listening for a bit instead of talking? 
Sandra Goudie 
: You’re so contradictory in your comments. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: So contradictory? We are not allowed to talk about the safeguards that need to be put around these extensions of power. We are not allowed to say that the Government needs to fund our police properly and that we support giving extra powers to the police but when our police are undermined by their police cars being taken away by their funding being cut— 
Sandra Goudie 
: The only people undermining the police are her and her colleagues. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I am undermining the police by saying that they need to be resourced properly? 
Sandra Goudie 
: Absolutely when she’s being specious with the facts. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I am being “specious with the facts” and undermining the police by saying that I think they should be resourced properly! I think that sums up that member.