Latest anti-bikie laws already need fixing
Labor’s “draconian” new anti-bikie laws hit a snag on the morning parliament began debating the legislation, with Attorney-General John Rau introducing a raft of “minor” amendments to his Bill.
In a move he described as “fine tuning”, the addresses of several properties identified as meeting places for prospective declared outlaw gangs will be changed in the Bill, and two have been removed from the list.
“Since the Bill was introduced there have been a number of minor matters brought to our collective attention, which will result in there being a couple of minor amendments,” Rau told a media conference this morning.
Police Commissioner Gary Burns said the changes were necessary because “there is a difference between what a property is known as in a colloquial sense and how the Land Titles Office identifies it”.
The two properties will be removed from the Bill because “police intelligence now suggests they are no longer likely to be gathering places for these people”.
Burns said one was a residence “no longer used on a regular basis for meetings” and the other a rental property that was “leased by an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang for meeting purposes but who no longer lease it”.
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The Attorney said the broader amendments did not mean properties had been wrongly identified, insisting “there’s no difference between the properties that are described in the legislation presently and the ones that will be”.
Nonetheless, it is an embarrassment for a Government that claimed it was confident on the detail of this Bill, after high profile failures to pass similar anti-association laws in the past.
“I said we’d got the big picture right, and we’ve got it even better today,” Rau insisted.
“If your house was accidentally proscribed, the only impact would be that members of a proscribed organisation wouldn’t be able to meet at your house … you should be very comforted by the fact that SAPOL isn’t adding more (addresses) on, it’s taking two off.”
In a further change, the Bill will be modified to clarify that publicans will not bear responsibility for barring declared gang members from their premises, after concerns were raised by the Australian Hotels Association.
However, there will be no clarification in the Bill of the identity of the NSW-based outlaw gang The Phoenix, after InDaily revealed the presence of an SA-based Phoenix Motorcycle Club, a social club for off-track racing.
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“I’m satisfied that there’s sufficient clarity in everybody’s mind that the SA people of that name are not going to be in any way put out,” Rau said today.
Burns said police were being “as thorough as they possibly can”.
“There’s legislation and then there’s common-sense, and from a police perspective we’ll operate with both,” he said.
While the changes follow the introduction of the Bill only two weeks ago, Burns said the information in the original legislation was three months old.
Rau nonetheless called on the Opposition to pass the Bill within the week, warning if it suffered “slow death by committee” it would be a “very serious setback for public safety in SA”.
The Opposition will support the immediate passage of the Bill through the Lower House, but leader Steven Marshall said there was “absolutely no chance whatsoever” it would pass the Upper House without intense scrutiny.
“This is just what we’ve come to expect from this Government,” he said of today’s amendments.
“Most of their legislation needs to be amended because they haven’t done the work to make sure it comes into parliament in the proper format.”
Greens MLC Mark Parnell said his party would not be supporting the “inappropriate legislation that infringes all the principles of the separation of powers”.
“It’s inevitable that when you try and list organisations by name and try and nominate addresses, you’ll get things wrong,” he said.
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