|
July 7, 2008
South Australia's anti-bikie legislation gives the police a lower burden of proof there by making it easier to get convictions for for offenses already covered by existing laws. The ban-the-bikie lobby is very strong in South Australia, and it holds that bikie gangs have become a new kind of organized crime and that they are set up for the purpose of criminal activity and are taking over the nation's crime.
Adam Shand argued in Club Rules in the June issue of The Monthly the new laws provide that:
the state's attorney general acting on advice from the police can declare any group of people a criminal gang and then prohibit members from associating with each other, through the use of control orders. If the members meet or communicate six times in a year, they will faced up to five years in jail.There will be no review or judicial appeal, nor can the clubs or individuals gain access to the intelligence on which the control order is based.
Thus we have the extension of anti-terrorist legislation to non-terrorists. What's more the police will be able to ban the wearing of insignia in public if they deem that community safety is involved. This, as Shand points out, amounts to a legally enforceable dress code. And to enforce it , the police will only have to satisfy a "balance of probabilities", rather than prove their allegations beyond reasonable doubt.
SA is targeting clubs rather than criminals in the clubs and relying on guilt by association to this with draconian legislation.
|
As Sonny Bolger pointed out in that article, if bikies were the organised crime gangs they're made out to be they'd all be living in mansions.
We're happy to get nasty with a bunch of insecure blokes with peculiar insignia who mostly get stuck into one another, but turn a blind eye to the corporate criminals in more tasteful clothing who do their damage to far more people.
Similarly, someone in a suit doing their business in a temple, or whatever it was that Jesus got cross about, can do whatever they want on World Youth Day while some schmuck in a t-shirt can be hauled off and fined thousands.