Brian Rudman: Ganging up on Sharples misses the point

It's a bit rich for Labour's law and order spokesman Clayton Cosgrove to climb on his high horse and berate Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples for flying 16 gang leaders to Auckland at taxpayers' expense for a hui last March. Isn't this the same Clayton Cosgrove who soon after, was among the gang of 17 parliamentarians, 12 of them from his party, who shuttled back and forth to Auckland at taxpayers' expense to campaign in the Mt Albert byelection?

One suspects the cost of airfares, accommodation, taxis and other expenses easily surpassed the $6000 or so spent on the gang conference, but we don't know for sure because the parties subsequently refused to itemise the expenses, or give details of the "official business" that had dragged all these MPs to Auckland around the same time.

For these reasons alone, it would have been smart for Mr Cosgrove not to have stirred up six month-old history. But I can think of a couple of others as well.

For a start, any attempt by Labour to try to outflank the likes of the Sensible Sentencing Trust and the mayor of Whanganui on law and order issues is doomed to fail.

Every time Mr Cosgrove or one of his backwoods mates tries to seize that moral low ground, Michael Laws and Garth McVicar will trump them by demanding four prisoners to a cell, or work camps on the Tasman Glacier for repeat litterers.

You might also ask whether this tired old "lock 'em up and throw away the key" philosophy is really the brand that a party identified with liberal and socially advanced ideas, wants to identify with as it struggles to attract lapsed supporters back. It risks alienating them again.

Taking cheap pot shots at Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples seems daft too. Dr Sharples is one of those rare politicians who manages to escape party labels.

Mud doesn't stick to him. Instead, it seems to miraculously turn into fertiliser and make things grow. Look at the Rugby World Cup fiasco. Somehow he's managed to get the Government to come up with a crazy scheme to help fund Rugby World Cup broadcasts not only on Maori TV but on every channel in the land it seems, simultaneously.

Yet instead of making him looking stupid, it's the Prime Minister and the Minister of Rugby World Cup Murray McCully that have emerged as the clowns.

Labour should realise that beating up on Dr Sharples and the Maori Party is not going to woo Maori voters back into voting for Labour candidates. Maori have learned the MMP game well. They elect Maori Party candidates as their constituency representatives, and give Labour their party vote in large numbers.

Labour should be happy with this. It could be worse. Maori could turn off the party vote tap as well.

As for the March hui with Black Power and Mongrel Mob leaders, Dr Sharples says he met "to tell them face-to-face of his concerns over violence and the P trade and the impacts of the spiral of violence on the communities, families and children involved".

Police Association president Greg O'Connor dismissed the meeting as trying to legitimise gangs and said former National Prime Minister Rob Muldoon "tried the same trick when he was PM". Mr Cosgrove echoed this, claiming "meeting with gangs ... sends them a message that they are equals".

Anyone with their eyes open during the past half century knows the gangs don't need a flight to Auckland to meet Dr Sharples to gain legitimisation. They are very real. In Parliament last month, Hone Harawira pointed out that 8 per cent of court charges are against gang members, and they are 18 per cent of the prison population.

For all their bluster, all the law and order claque can come up with is failed slogans like confiscating their patches, locking them up for life, confiscating property and the like.

Yet gangs are still with us, with the crime and drug trafficking associated with them.

As Mr Harawira mockingly observed: "Here we are in 2009 with a new plan - take away the patches, knock down the high fences, make gang affiliation a factor at sentencing, expand police surveillance powers, up the penalties and cross our fingers that things will change."

He said the bill banning gang patches in Whanganui that was being debated "can be summed up in just a few words - wave a stick and if that don't work, wave a bigger stick".

Sir Robert Muldoon was no bleeding heart liberal, but more than 30 years ago he - like Dr Sharples - appreciated the need to meet and try to treat with the gangs. He tried to speak their language.

At one early meeting, a young hot head flicked beer in the PM's face. Legend has it, Sir Robert tossed his tumbler of whisky in the offender's face, much to the amusement of the other gangsters, then dismissed the police who turned up soon after.

Sir Robert agreed to the funding of gang-run work trusts which would tender for public work such as gorse clearing. This fizzled out after the bad publicity associated with one of the gangs using a work schemes vehicle in an armed robbery.

Yet you have to hope that some of those involved through the works schemes - in real work for the first time in their lives - turned their lives around. The failure in public policy is not in being too soft on the gangs.

It is as Sir Robert acknowledged: that to our shame, for too many youngsters, joining a gang seems to be the most attractive option going for them.