Richardson: Revving up bikie laws creates familiar smokescreen
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Be simultaneously alert and alarmed.
The Premier has, in his typically low-key fashion, made it abundantly clear that the state’s MPs (those on the Government side, in particular) are risking life and limb by standing up to the scourge of outlaw bikie gangs. Aren’t they brave?
Calling for parliament to pass post-haste Labor’s latest foray into the War On Bikies – which, strangely, looks almost identical to the last few failed forays – Weatherill warned: “We think it’s likely that we’ll see a response from the outlaw motorcycle gangs …maybe a response that’s directed at individual members of parliament.”
Swoon.
The intimation was unmistakable: outlaw gangs trading in organised crime who reputedly use violence and intimidation as business tactics might turn those tactics against law-makers seeking to declare them criminals.
In the event, the most vociferous uproar came from the poor old Phoenix Motorcycle Club, whose sexagenarian syndicate of menacing motorsport monomaniacs took umbrage at being nominally included on a highly speculative list of declared organisations.
But if you’re worrying yourself to sleep about the personal and office security of your local MP, fret not. Liberal leader Steven Marshall had a SAPOL briefing on Wednesday, and was assured there was a “low risk” of retribution.
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Hang on, didn’t Jay Weatherill say pretty much the exact opposite? They can’t both be right, can they?
The fact is, so-called tough-on-crime measures are always liable to pass with less scrutiny in a culture of fear.
One parliamentary wag coined the “alert and alarmed” tag, and indeed there is much in Labor’s rhetoric redolent of that Howard era notion that “the way of life that we value so highly must go on”.
While the Opposition and evidently, privately, the SA Police, are hosing down security concerns, the Premier seems happy to invoke a heightened state of paranoia.
But if we break down his statement, it’s not technically incorrect. “We think it’s likely that we’ll see a response from the outlaw motorcycle gangs.” Well, that’s true, isn’t it. Laws of this sort are invariably tested in the court, and given that they were found wanting in a previous incarnation it’s a no-brainer they’d be tested again. “Maybe a response that’s directed at individual members of parliament?” Well, the qualifier ‘maybe’ is significant. Maybe there will be a response directed at individual members. A strongly worded letter perhaps. Some heckling from the public gallery. There could even be threats or actual violence. But probably not.
"As lawyers point out, if authorities can so confidently claim gang members are committing crimes, shouldn’t there already be laws under which to arrest them?"
If his policy has been handed down from the Mike Rann era, Weatherill’s rhetorical flourish also appears borrowed from his predecessor. Rann was a master of saying things that sounded like one thing and meant another. The most notorious example was back when he’d just been bludgeoned with a rolled-up Winestate magazine by a fellow named Rick Phillips. At an ensuing and brief media conference, I asked the then-Premier, who was sporting a seriously scuffed-up face, whether he knew the man who’d attacked him.
His response: “I’ve never met him before.”
Which was entirely true. And created a distinct impression that, as per my specific question, he didn’t know the man who attacked him. If he’d simply answered “No”, however … well, that wouldn’t have been true.
He did know him, inasmuch as he knew who he was. Since Phillips had called and written to him many times, convinced he had had an affair with his estranged wife, Michelle Chantelois – an affair, incidentally, that the former Premier denies to this day, instead couching the relationship as a “funny, flirty friendship”.
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But answering a journalist’s question – “Did you know the man who attacked you” – by saying “Yes, he writes and calls regularly because he’s convinced I had an affair with his wife” doesn’t have quite the same ring, or leave quite the same impression, as saying simply: “I’ve never met him before.”
Likewise, Weatherill musing that “maybe” there will be a bikie response directed at individual members of parliament doesn’t have quite the same ring as saying: “I’ve spoken to SAPOL, and they assure me there is a very low risk of any potential security breaches, so I’m not personally worried.”
Why does this matter?
Because Weatherill told us he wanted Labor’s fourth term to be one of action and bold ideas.
Instead, we get deliberately evasive and inflammatory rhetoric and yet another stab at the same policy smokescreen Labor has been trying to implement unsuccessfully for a decade.
Back in 2003, we were told bikie fortresses would be bulldozed under anti-fortification laws – they’re still standing.
Earlier bids to declare criminal gangs and clamp down on members associating with one another have been thwarted in the courts.
As lawyers point out, if authorities can so confidently claim gang members are committing crimes, shouldn’t there already be laws under which to arrest them?
Don’t get me wrong: if the police are calling for these laws and believe they’ll make them better equipped to fight organised crime, go for it. But the cynic in me can’t help but note the announcement was made in the midst of a week in which the Government was under fire for its bungled handling of vocational training changes and introducing contentious reforms to the state’s parole system, via its usual round of media drops.
Fuelled by Weatherill’s silly insinuations about potential breaches of parliamentary security and intimidation of MPs, the coverage of the bikie laws obligingly threw in the usual breathless descriptors that Labor so loves: the Bill was “tough”, “draconian”.
Funny, I had always considered “draconian”, which means “excessively harsh and severe”, to be a pejorative. I remember the first time I heard it used by a politician as a self-endorsement.
The politician was Mike Rann.
Tom Richardson is a senior reporter at InDaily. His political column is published on Fridays.
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