Election 2023: Mongrel Mob and Black Power gang leadership calls on members to vote

Mongrel Mob's Harry Tam (left) and Black Power's Denis O'Reilly (right). Photo/RNZ/NZME

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Longtime Mongrel Mob leader Harry Tam wants his people to vote against National while Black Power kaumātua Denis O’Reilly just wants his gang members to exercise their democratic right as a citizen of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Tam said he appears to have upset Christopher Luxon by presenting a vision of gangs at odds with the National Party leader’s political narrative.

Luxon highlighted Tam’s get out and vote campaign among gang whānau, including posts from prison inmates saying they had voted for Labour candidates and party voted Green.

The veteran Mongrel Mob member told Radio Waatea he doesn’t fit Luxon’s profile of what a gang member is.

National said they will implement a raft of “tough on crime” policies, giving police wider powers and banning gang patches in public.

“He (Luxon) probably sees me as a threat because most of my mahi is around changing our people’s behaviour. Could you image that when our people are well and have got over their trauma and are behaving well and getting on with their life, that whole picture they draw of us would be so wrong and that wouldn’t fit his narrative so I guess he wants to keep our people there because that way he has a whipping boy. He’s got someone to demonise,” Tam said.

It’s the third election that Mongrel Mob members have shown an interest in voting.

While Tam has been pushing the left political, O’Reilly said having gone through the same types of issues to get Black Power whānau to participate with the census, he was hoping many of those who participated with Census 2023 would carry that through to election 2023.

“There’s not a lot of difference when you look at National and Labour and their crime and justice policies,” O’Reilly said.

“I am encouraging our people to use their obligation to vote. It’s not a right but like the census, there are rights and obligations of citizenship.”

O’Reilly was instrumental in signing up a number of gang members to the census but said the bureaucracy needs to get over the stigma of gangs.

“I was getting quite a bit of opposition from what I saw as structural racism within Statistics NZ, who couldn’t get past this gang member thing,” he said.

“My role was getting resources to the next generation so they don’t feel alienated or deprived.”

Joseph Los’e joined NZME in 2022 as Kaupapa Māori Editor. Los’e was a chief reporter, news director at the Sunday News newspaper covering crime, justice and sport. He was also editor of the NZ Truth and prior to joining NZME worked for 12 years for Te Whānau o Waipareira.