DOUG LAING
Politicians looking to Australian legislation to solve gang problems in New Zealand are being warned by a leading commentator to look at what is happening at home - here in Hawke's Bay.
Waiohiki-based Denis O'Reilly said much had been learnt from the opening-up of communication between community leaders and gang
structures in Hastings.
``I think the Mayor of Hastings, Lawrence Yule, has got it right,' Mr O'Reilly said. ``It is the behaviour that counts.'
He was commenting on Corrections Minister Phil Goff's decision to investigate South Australian gang control laws to see how they could be applied to New Zealand.
The legislation allows a gang to be outlawed on police advice, with various methods of effecting control.
Mr O'Reilly said it was important to remember people were ``innocent until proven guilty'. On his latest blog on the website nzedge.com, he compared the apparent attack on individual rights with a relative lack of action in relation to the failure of ``finance houses' in New Zealand.
``More robbery of good and generally old Kiwis has arisen from those finance houses than from all of my brothers and sisters currently in our jails combined,' he writes.
``Yet we do not vilify financial and investment industries as organised criminal groups and reverse the burden of proof for them.'
Mr O'Reilly saw the Goff message as yet another example of politicians using gangs and their Maori members as convenient whipping-boys in an election year. He pointed out Mr Goff's ``triumphant' announcements of a 71 per cent growth in prison numbers.
``Phil comes from the Treasury idea that the more you raise the stakes the more likely it will force people to buckle,' Mr O'Reilly said.
``I really do think we can come at this another way. We've already had the korero in Hastings and, after the meeting at Te Aranga Marae in Flaxmere, Lawrence said `I wish I'd done this five years ago'.'
