Story: Gangs

Thea Muldoon, the widow of Robert Muldoon, former prime minister of New Zealand, is flanked by Bumpa Mahauraki (left) and Lani Clark at the Black Power marae in Wellington, following a memorial service for her husband at Wellington Cathedral on 17 September 1992. Muldoon had an unusually close relationship with gangs in the early 1980s. He felt that if they were kept busy on subsidised work schemes such as chopping firewood, they would stay away from crime.