Page 806 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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The government responds, “We have Taskforce Nemesis and we are locking them up.” Good. There are eight full-time members, to my knowledge, and about $1.8 million per year is spent on the task force. Fortunately for the minister this unit is filled with brave and committed members of our police force. They work day and night to disrupt the actions of OMCG members whose intent is their own criminal success, no matter the price that others in Canberra pay. Yes, there have been a number of arrests and some of our bikies are in our prison. This would be a success story if it were having an impact on stopping the bikie war on our streets. But it is not. The numbers continue. The attacks continue at a fairly regular rate.
Mr Rattenbury refers to comments of the scrutiny committee. If Mr Rattenbury read the entire section, he would see that the scrutiny committee says that its opinions relied upon for the commentary in that report were based upon the New South Wales law before the New South Wales government amended their laws. This bill is based on those amended laws, so Mr Rattenbury needs to have a think about that. Mr Rattenbury also quoted someone who talked about “police laziness”. I absolutely refute that there is any issue with police laziness. Our police go out each and every day and work a whole lot harder than we do in here.
Ms Stephen-Smith referred to Aboriginal people being affected by these laws. These laws specifically exclude kinship ties in the use of these laws. So maybe Ms Stephen-Smith needs to read at least the exposure statement to the whole bill.
The only thing proven to have failed is this government. The balance is wrong, and the public knows it. We have 75 fewer police officers now than we had 10 years ago, yet the population has increased by some large amount. The police know that the government does not back them properly. That is why they themselves continue to seek anti-consorting laws.
The whole idea that we justify not taking further action because there is a task force making arrests and working like crazy with insufficient powers is like sending an electrician to do a job while the power is on. It is like expecting construction workers to work without safety equipment and, when they are going at it and achieving something, the supervisor standing back and saying, “It’s all fine. They’re achieving something.” Sending your police force to do a job with half the powers they need and want is irresponsible and no justification at all.
As soon as one violent criminal is locked up, he is replaced with another. What about firefighters? We know that the firies in Canberra have been called to car fires not even knowing that they are driving into the middle of a bikie attack. I have been told by members of the force that that has happened. We are failing our front-line operators.
We in the opposition will not stand by. We will not just wait for you to have an epiphany and suddenly realise that your response is completely and obviously inadequate. I urge you to support these anti-consorting laws to finally tackle the bikie war in our streets and to actually have an impact on the number of events that are occurring.
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