Mr Jones not happy with P.M.’s help for Mob

Press, 8 July 1983, Page 3

Mr Jones not happy with P.M.’s help for Mob

PA Wellington The outspoken Government member of Parliament, Mr N. P. H. Jones, is not impressed by the Prime Minister’s involvement in finding a house opposite Parliament Buildings for the Wellington Mongrel Mob.

However, Mr Jones does not want the gang to be moved from its Hill Street home although he lives about 20 metres from it.

Mr Jones, the member for Invercargill, said that there were many other causes the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon could become involved in, such as finding refuge homes for battered wives and “street kids.” •

“The fact that the gang is going to be there only temporarily is not the problem,” Mr Jones said. “Nobody wants the gang next to them. I do not think the Prime Minister or anybody else should get rid of them from round politicians and push them into some poor innocent residential area,” he said.

Mr Muldoon told a postcaucus press conference yesterday that the gang members would move from the house because the property was not “entirely satisfactory” for them. He said there was some “questionable administration” in the Ministry of Works putting the gang members into the house. He had not been aware that there was a woman with a child living in the downstairs flat, he said. “We were told to the contrary that there was a young man there who was about to leave,” he said. “I guess that information was a litle outdated. She has moved now, anyway.”

Mr Muldoon had also been under the impression that adjacent houses were unoccupied, whereas two Labour members, Mrs J. Rodger (Dunedin North) and Mr B. P. MacDonell (Dunedin Central), live next door to the gang. The Ministry of W'orks was looking for another house for the gang. “It will probably be a few weeks before they can find something. In the meantime he (the social worker) who ‘keeps an eye’ on the gang has told them to behave themselves,” Mr Muldoon said.

He said there were only four gang members in the

house, but Mr Jones disagreed. “There may be only four at the moment. But I saw six gang members pass my window yesterday afternoon so there are two more. Soon there will be another 10. They will gravitate there,” he said. Mr Jones said he was not a “physical coward” but admitted he felt intimidated walking past the gang house. “I don’t want to have to walk the streets of this city in fear and that is what I am doing with that lot there. I don’t feel very happy walking up that street at night. I have met enough kooks and weirdos already.” Mr Jones said society wanted the gangs disbanded and that was what the Government should do. Mr Muldoon said the house was not suitable partly because of its location and partly because the gang “has visitors.”

If there were a lot of people visiting the property they would spill out on to the street, said Mr Muldoon, and it was “not a very spillable street. You have cars parked up there all the time.”

He said the Government was trying to “de-escalate” gang tensions and had had considerable success.

“There is less gang activity throughout the country at this moment than there has been for a number of years. The ones who hit the headlines are the exception,” he said.

“The three Wellington gangs that we have been in touch with, all at this moment have work. They are doing jobs on contract. The other two are satisfactorily housed. This is something that has gradually come about over a period of years'.” When asked if there had been any objection from within his own caucus to the role he had played, Mr Muldoon said that one or two members were “a bit put out” that they were getting the gang members as neighbours. “But they accept the fact that what we have been trying to do, and with some success for a number of years, is get these people away from a gang-type activity and get them into constructive work and settle the wßole thing down.”