The legislation is set to go to the House for a second reading
The Select Committee has accepted six of the recommendations made by the New Zealand Law Society | Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa in relation to the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill.
The legislation aims to strengthen public confidence in law and order by introducing new offences and expanding police powers targeting gang activities, the Law Society said. For instance, under the law the public display of gang insignia (patches) will be classified as an offence.
The Law Society, with contributions from its Criminal Law Committee and Human Rights and Privacy Committee, submitted feedback on the bill in April. The recently released report by the Select Committee accepted the following recommendations:
- excluding the “support for a gang” component from the definition of “gang insignia”
- changing clause 7(1) to indicate that “a person commits an offence if the person, without reasonable excuse, knowingly displays gang insignia at any time in a public place”
- modifying clause 9 to refine the term “disrupting other activities” in the context of dispersal notices
- expanding clause 18’s grounds for review to cover the revocation of a dispersal notice if the police commissioner confirms the individual is not a gang member
- changing clause 16 to limit the timeframe specified for decisions on applications to vary dispersal notices, allowing for decisions to be reached in time for attendance at time-sensitive events like tangis and funerals
- modifying clause 19 to necessitate personal service of the application for a non-consorting order
The legislation is set to go to the House for a second reading; the House will review the Select Committee's report and the recommended modifications.
Other recommendations that were made by the Law Society include implementing a mandatory review process to evaluate the applicability of the bill and its effectiveness in achieving its objectives. The organisation also voiced its concerns regarding the lack of evidence backing the proposed measures.
The Law Society also highlighted the bill's potential impacts on civil and human rights obligations. The organisation sided with the Attorney-General’s report under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, which indicated that the bill “unjustifiably breaches the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of association and freedom of expression”. Nonetheless, the Law Society suggested that the report understated the extent of rights infringement and overstated the benefits justifying such measures. The organisation also voiced concerns about the potential discriminatory impact on communities such as Māori.
