Just before the architects of Queensland’s bikie crackdown accused Annastacia Palaszczuk of going “soft” on bikies, the premier called in the “Bearcat”.
On Tuesday, Palaszczuk stood in front of the $400,000 armoured personnel carrier with the police commissioner, who avowed that Labor’s new organised crime laws would be “stronger than what we had in the past”.
This formidable scene followed tough talk by Palaszczuk on bikies on Monday.
She spoke of her belief that outlaw motorcycle gangs were indeed criminal organisations. Their return to riding “en masse in colours” was the last thing she wanted. Her government was looking for a way to extend a ban on bikies wearing colours in pubs and nightclubs to “all public places”.
It also wanted to keep the doors shut on 40-odd bikie clubhouses that are currently no-go zones under threat of jail for their members.
These were curiously token gestures by Palaszczuk upon the public release of a report that shows her government the route leading away from criminal gang laws credibly considered the world’s most draconian.
The taskforce chaired by former judge Alan Wilson has drawn a line in the sand on tackling organised crime in Australia.
It has traced 15 years of campaigns in every mainland state to combat organised crime through “tough” laws on bikie gangs.
The unifying trend has been a primary focus on punishing groups by association rather than the centuries-old method of pursuing the crimes of individuals.
The “high-water mark” of this approach was the 2013 regime introduced by the former Newman government with its “overtly unchecked executive power to criminalise groups and their members, and impose grossly disproportionate sentences”.
The review noted the crackdown was distinguished by its speedy process but also its pervasive impact: “crushing” mandatory sentences and harsh jail conditions of solitary confinement, no family visits or outdoor exercise; bans from working common trades on secret police information they would never see let alone be able to challenge; and “attacks on things like wearing their colours, their right to drive their motorcycles, go to licensed venues or meet together at all”.
It was otherwise simply the latest form of an approach targeting “participants in a criminal organisation” that “despite many serious attempts and a great deal of legislative verbiage, cannot be described as successful anywhere”.
“Where it has not proved disproportionately expensive and time-consuming, it has inevitably involved some infringement upon rule of law principles and approached (or surpassed) the margins of constitutional validity,” the review said.
One conclusion was an easy sell for the government. The conviction rate of bikies under the key Newman laws – the Vlad (Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment) Act that adds up to 25 years to sentences for organised crimes and the anti-association offences which punish bikies who recruit, go to clubhouses or meet in public gatherings of more than two with mandatory sentences of at least 18 months – was zero.
Labor at once committed to three recommendations that would effectively gut Newman’s signature legislative legacy.
But in its resolve to present itself a relentless enemy to bikie gangs in order to avoid getting beaten up over these proposed reforms, Labor has been less than candid about what is on the table.
The government has declined to spell out that under the Wilson recommendations, bikies would regain certain freedoms, and with that, public visibility.
They would be able to gather in public again. Wear colours too, though not in pubs or nightclubs. Go to clubhouses and on those motorcycle runs that detectives say cost $100,000 to police every time.
This all goes out the window for those who are convicted under a newly defined category of “serious organised crime” that casts a wider net than the traditional province of bikies. These involve serious drugs, sex and paedophilia offences, fraud and money laundering, serious violence and attacks on the administration of justice.
All the extra punishments and restrictions on the “organised and entrepreneurial” criminals in bikie gangs would flow from these convictions and not membership of the gang itself.
Such a conviction would be an aggravating factor in sentencing. The government has committed to the same option that police on the taskforce preferred on this, mandatory extra jail time. The police wanted 15 years but the taskforce were divided on that and in the end did not recommend a specific number. It would be mandatory unless the judge decides a willing informant should be rewarded with a cut to that time.
A serious organised crime offender would be automatically hit with a control order upon getting out of jail. For a bikie, this would likely spell the end of any association with his club for at least five years, lest he wants to be slapped with up to three years’ jail for a first breach and up to five years’ jail for a second.
The court could also slap control orders on bikies on lesser but indictable offences if it found on balance of probabilities he was part of a criminal organisation. They are inspired by similar control orders in the UK. They are in effect beefed-up parole conditions.
Consorting laws adapted from New South Wales, which have disproportionately targeted the Indigenous, would apply in Queensland only to serious organised crime offenders. They would apply for 10 years after their release from prison.
Three offenders who met or communicated would be given a written warning, and then risk charges if they did so again during the following year. They would face up to three years’ jail. Association by family members or through work, training and education, for legal advice or court appearances, or briefly by accident, would not be captured. Nor would links such as being members of the same sporting team or community group.
Recruiting for a gang would land a bikie up to five years’ prison – more than under the Newman laws – but police would have to prove in a court that a particular gang or chapter was a criminal organisation, rather than relying on the stroke of a minister’s pen.
Crackdowns on bikie clubhouses could occur if police suspected they were being used for illegal activity (such as sly-grog trading) or were being frequented by organised crime offenders. In a process again borrowed from NSW, they would apply to a court for an order for a “declared premises”. Those declarations would last up to two years. Police could then execute warrantless searches. Owners and occupiers could then be charged and face up to three years’ jail if “proscribed activities” occur.
These include the unlawful sale or supply of drugs or alcohol, the presence of organised crime offenders and – in what will surely be a test of self-control for many outlaw bikies – drunk and disorderly behaviour. Clubhouses could also be “dismantled” through police being allowed to seize everything from pool tables to stripper poles. But it would mean “members of clubhouses which are run in an orderly manner by law-abiding persons” are no longer criminalised.
There are further rollbacks of the Newman laws under the Wilson recommendations that remove the legal implications of simply being a bikie, including around licences to tattoo and work in building and electrical trades.
The overall regime suggested by the taskforce is, in the long sweep of legal history, uncontroversial, a reversion to a traditional approach to law and order that punishes people for what they do, not who they are.
The Palaszcuk government has committed to the consorting laws, the control orders and organised crime as an aggravating factor in sentencing.
But committing to the principles underlying the Wilson recommendations begs an admission that perhaps not all members of bikie gangs are organised crime players and that life is about to get easier for them.
That is a concession that the Palaszczuk government appears to have no stomach to make publicly.
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