If you are a gang member in New Zealand, your life is about to become a lot less pleasant.
That is because our Government has just passed a law that will crack down on these criminal groups, and significantly minimise the misery they inflict on other New Zealanders.
For too long now, gang life has been far too comfortable in New Zealand. That’s part of why the number of gang members increased by 51 per cent since 2018 under the previous Labour government.
I think that is unacceptable. Particularly because gang members make up less than one-quarter of one per cent of the New Zealand adult population yet are linked to 18 per cent of all serious violent crimes, 19 per cent of all homicides, 23 per cent of all firearms offences, 25 per cent of all kidnapping and abductions, and 25 per cent of all the crime harm caused by illicit drug offences.
Our new law will come into effect in the second half of November and will ban the display of gang insignia in all public places, meaning that gang members won’t be able to flaunt their patches and intimidate Kiwis.
It will also stop gang members from gathering in public. Police will be able to intervene when a gang meeting is disrupting members of the public by issuing dispersal notices so that they cannot associate with one another for seven days. This will be supplemented by new non-consorting orders, which can stop gang members from engaging with each other for up to three years.
National campaigned on this for a long time, and now we are walking the talk and delivering for you.
It’s not just gang members our Government is getting tougher on either. We’ve also just introduced a new package of sentencing reforms so that criminals face proper consequences for their crimes.
These reforms will cap sentencing discounts that judges can apply at 40 per cent and prevent the use of remorse discounts for repeat offenders.
It will also introduce a new aggravating factor for those who offend against sole charge workers – like dairy owners or service stations, and for those who livestream or post their crimes online or exploit children by aiding them to offend.
It’s a big suite of reforms – also encouraging the use of cumulative sentencing for offences committed on bail, in custody or on parole, implementing a sliding scale for early guilty pleas with a maximum sentence discount of 25 per cent, reducing to five per cent for a guilty plea entered during the trial.
Finally, it will also amend the principles of sentencing to include any information provided to the court about victims’ interests.

We are a government of targets and delivery – not talk and inaction. These changes begin to reset our justice system to rid New Zealand of lawlessness and put victims – not criminals, at the heart of the system.
Our Government has ambitious targets of 20,000 fewer victims of violent crime and a 15 per cent reduction in serious youth offending by 2029. Ensuring that criminals face serious consequences for their actions is part of how we deliver on those goals.
The level of criminal offending that Labour left us with was morally reprehensible – and it changes now. We are going to restore law and order so that we can get New Zealand back on track.