Faafoi Kris: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 15 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9958. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): I would like to thank the member for Rotorua for laying down that challenge to listen to the Whitireia Community Law Centre which is a very good law centre in Porirua and a law centre that I respect a lot. But I am not going to meet that challenge. I am going to throw another challenge back to the member here: if he really cares about what the Whitireia Community Law Centre thinks about intimidation in our community of Porirua he should go and put a decent piece of legislation in this House that would actually be effective in doing something about the intimidation by gangs in our communities.Do not bring this window-dressing piece of legislation the Prohibition of Gang Insignia in Government Premises Bill through to this House. Do not come into this House and challenge me about my constituents and a law centre that I have a duty to and say that this bill is going to do something about it because it is not. It is not going to make one bit of difference to gang intimidation in our communities. So Mr McClay if you want to come to Porirua let us go and see the Whitireia Community Law Centre. Withdraw this bill from the House and let us put something in front of this Parliament that is actually going to deal effectively with the issue of gang insignias and gang intimidation in our communities. If you are truthful about it let us go and do that and let us put a piece of decent legislation in front of this House.It is funny because the most passionate part of this bill that has come back from the Law and Order Committee actually comes from the Labour Party. We actually say: “Labour has no truck with gangs with a culture that promotes encourages facilitates or tolerates criminal activity collectively or individually among its members.” Well that is 100 percent right. The member who just took his seat Todd McClay was right. No party in this House has any tolerance for gangs the intimidation that they do play in our communities the criminal activity that they organise and carry out and the grief that they create in our families and communities. But as I said before this bill goes nowhere near effectively dealing with the problem of gangs in our communities. It fails to deal with the substantial problem. It fails on the test of being clear and consistent to deal with gang problems and the questions of why people are joining gangs and why they commit crime. This bill does little or nothing.It does succeed in a few things though. It succeeds in terms of the illusion of tackling crime which is one of the things that the National Party definitely wants to do. It succeeds in terms of maximum exposure for trying to look like it is doing something with minimum effort—with minimum effort. It certainly succeeds in the National Party looking like it is doing something or being tough on something where there is going to be no practical difference.This bill adds nothing to the powers that already exist and that certainly is the point in case in my electorate of Mana. The member said that the select committee added police stations on to the list of Government premises that are covered under this bill. Mr McClay I will take you out to Porirua right now and I will show you at the entrance to the police station where it says: “No gang patches allowed in this station.” The police are already taking action to make sure there are no gang patches on their premises so why do we need to bring this in? The legislation already exists—the legislation already exists—to make sure that any intimidatory behaviour is policed.Hon Anne Tolley: The police love it. They think it’s fantastic.KRIS FAAFOI: But the problem here is that it is not being enforced. It is interesting that the Minister of Police is piping up because the police who are under huge pressure because of the budget cuts that this Government has brought in cannot police things like this—they cannot police things like this. So the police Minister might want to thinkabout why they have to bring in this piece of legislation and about the ability of the police to enforce the current laws.I would have to say that the stretched police resources—we heard yesterday Radio New Zealand saying that there are 213 fewer front-line police staff on the front line right now than there were in June last year. The police Minister can say whatever she likes over here—but that is a Government that said it was going to get tough on law and order and beef up police numbers—but we know that there are 213 fewer police because of the budget pressure that this Government has put the police under. It is an absolute fact. The numbers coming from the police Minister’s own office own department are that there are fewer police officers on the front line. In black and white this is a Government that says it backs police but it does not because there are fewer police officers on our front line at the moment.What is more because of the budget pressure that the Government has put the police under there are fewer police trainees going through the Police College.Hon Anne Tolley: Rubbish.KRIS FAAFOI: There are.Hon Member: Table them now.KRIS FAAFOI: I will table the written parliamentary questions I get from—roughly I think in 2011 there were 450 trainees going through the Royal New Zealand Police College then last year it was roughly 265. So half the number of police trainees went through the Police College in the previous year.Let us look at theTen One magazines at the moment. If you look at theTen One magazines at the moment at the back of the magazine it starts listing who has left the police force. I am sure the police officers who are in this House will see—Mark Mitchell will be watching that closely and Chester Borrows—that a lot of their mates whom they know through long-time policing are starting to resign. The numbers are starting to creep up. So what is going on with the police at the moment when experienced officers like Grant Coward out of New Plymouth are saying: “OK I have had enough of this place; I’m out of here.”? He had 20 years of policing experience and this Government is letting experienced police officers go all because that Minister is starting to cut the budgets.The truth hurts; the truth hurts that Government. That is exactly what the truth is. Our police are stretched and this is one of the plethora of things that they can no longer manage to keep an eye on. So why is the Government making these cuts and why is it bringing in this window-dressing piece of legislation? Nothing good is going to come out of this piece of legislation.Hon Annette King: The Minister’s agitated. You’ve got her good.KRIS FAAFOI: She is—the truth hurts unfortunately. Let me go back to the bill. Let me go back to the bill because I did want to acknowledge some of the submitters and the one that Mr McClay did mention because I think they did make a very good submission. That was the Murupara Area School. It did make two points why it supported the bill. The first one was that children and students did not want to see gang insignias plastered around their school and that they needed to be protected from them and also that the introduction of gang insignia into the school’s premises: “would create tensions and unnecessary negative behaviour and we want to discourage that type of behaviour from our school.”Jami-Lee Ross: It was a good submission.KRIS FAAFOI: It was a good submission. I will say that. It was a good submission. But the message that we sent to that school at the time in terms of the Opposition members was that there are laws already in place—Todd McClay: You weren’t there when they came in.KRIS FAAFOI: I beg your pardon?Todd McClay: Were you there when they came in?KRIS FAAFOI: I was there—were you there?Todd McClay: Yes I was there.KRIS FAAFOI: OK good. We were both there. Thanks for establishing that—thanks for establishing that. I was there. I listened to it. I actually knew one of the submitters. So—Todd McClay: You weren’t there when I submitted.KRIS FAAFOI: Just pipe down for a second. It was a very good submission in the fact that we said to the submitters that there are already laws that exist to make sure that their concerns are already catered for. This bill certainly does not do anything new and will not be effective in making sure that the threat of gang intimidation will be stamped out in our communities.There are also a number of anomalies in this bill about who can do what and where. One of them is that you can wear a gang patch on Government premises but that does not apply to things that could also be considered offensive like a swastika. I think that is a strange anomaly in this bill. I think most people would wonder why you can not get away with a gang patch but something highly offensive like a swastika is not captured in the bill.Todd McClay: Put a Supplementary Order Paper Kris.KRIS FAAFOI: Maybe we will put in a Supplementary Order Paper. We will probably put a few Supplementary Order Papers in to get rid of most of the things in this bill.There was also another anomaly—that you could be wearing a gang patch on a covered footpath that is operated by a council or owned by the Government and that was a no-go area for anyone who was wearing a gang patch but you could certainly be on an uncovered footpath and you would be fine being there. Another anomaly is that you could be at a bus station or a train station and that could be a covered building or premises but then if you were in an uncovered bus station or train station well that would be a go area. So there are holes in this piece of legislation right through it that mean that we on this side of the House cannot support it.What the Government should do is take a good look at a decent piece of legislation look at what some of the factors are and at the reason why some of these youngsters are joining gangs—factors like youth unemployment which is at a high level. Maybe just for the benefit of the Minister of Police the Government should look at some of the harm that her budget cuts have done to the police and are causing some of the issues so that the laws that are currently in place are not being enforced. If this Government talks tough on law and order it should back it up with a budget and some legislation to do that but it has not.