Page 1648 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 July 2020
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“I think the key benefit of anti-consorting laws, noting that’s not the only solution, is that it’s a preventative tool” …
Assistant Commissioner Saunders agreed that Canberra’s lack of anti-consorting laws made Canberra a haven for bikies.
“I believe that’s a factor in the decision to come here and undertake their activities,” she said.
She said of this issue that this is the one thing that kept her awake at night.
Another Chief Police Officer made similar points. In a Canberra Times article in 2016 titled “ACT police chief takes aim at ‘flawed’ arguments against bikie consorting laws”, then Chief Police Officer Rudi Lammers said his state and territory colleagues “had raised renewed concerns with him that the ACT was becoming a safe haven for outlaw motorcycle groups”. The article says that Mr Lammers “had heard the arguments against consorting laws and, in his view, those arguments were flawed”.
He is quoted as saying:
There is a need for strong laws in the ACT that stop a fourth, or a fifth or a sixth outlaw motorcycle gang getting a foothold and stopping the expansion of outlaw motorcycle criminal activity in Canberra.
For those groups who say this is an affront to human rights, I’m wondering how much they think is enough …
We may well ask that, following Sunday’s tragic events.
Anti-consorting laws are also backed by the Australian Federal Police Association, which says that the ACT has for years given a green light for motorcycle gangs to roam and operate freely in Canberra.
It is not only frontline police and chief police officers in the ACT that support these laws; the previous Labor Attorney-General and Deputy Chief Minister Simon Corbell did as well. This is what Mr Corbell had to say about anti-consorting laws when he tabled draft laws in 2016:
[He] said the changes would help police to respond more effectively to outlaw motorcycle gang activities, which commonly include violence, drug trafficking and money laundering.
“It will give the justice system improved capabilities to prevent and target crime at an individual level, where it has been shown most effective and disruptive to organised criminal activity,” he said.
He said:
… the fact is that this is a small number of people but with a very disproportionate impact on the level of organised crime in our community and that that level of organised crime has costs and impacts both economically and on a broad number of individuals in our community …
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