MPs’ bluster won’t put skids under bikies
Sunday Mail Adelaide, Page: 40. Sunday, 17 February, 2008
The whole of Adelaide should be asking whether we’re more scared of outlaw bikie gangs than we are angry at the political bluster over new combative laws.
Does anyone really think that bikie members are planning their futures based on the threats and intimidation being dished out behind the safety of Parliament’s thick granite walls? The load of twaddle trotted out this week was evenly divided between all the major players.
The Attorney-General made the bold forecast that within a year the influence of bikie gangs would be a shadow of its former menacing self.
Michael Atkinson says many of the leather-jacket-clad brigade will move interstate rather than face the tough legislation he’s about to hand down.
I’ve given Atkinson deserving praise in the past for showing guts by publicly confronting bikie gangs with tough words, but give us a break.
There’s been seven years of anti-bikie rhetoric and very little has changed in the meantime.
I’m not certain the criminal element of the Hells Angels, Finks, Rebels or Gypsy Jokers will read Parliamentary Hansard to find out when to pack their bags and shove off.
If you listen to the utterings of Martin Hamilton-Smith, it’s because they ‘re too busy controlling the streets of Adelaide.
In one of the greatest overstatements of all time, the Opposition Leader virtually says that bikie gangs now control every pubic thoroughfare in the CBD and are shooting people all over the state.
Even more bizarre, he says they may start schoolyard slaughters.
It’s all an insult to police and especially the top-level Avatar task force which is making inroads into locking up the villains.
Not once, but three times Hamilton-Smith pushed the trite line that all bikies should be sent as far away as possible, even to Antarctica, if need be.
So why is it taking so long to get the bikie menace under control? Every time the Premier or Attorney is reminded of the campaigning promises of 2001, that bikie fortresses would be bulldozed with Mike Rann at the controls, they tread carefully.
A couple of bikie compounds have been ordered to rip down their fortress walls, but the problem is still everpresent.
This week’s shooting at Paskeville, which seems to have bikie links, was enough to knee-jerk politicians into immediate action, bringing forward debate on the new legislation.
About bloody time.
Throw in the self-righteous opinion of Democrat Sandra Kanck and it topped off a week of political piffle.
Kanck says the new laws, which are based on anti-terror legislation, infringe the civil rights of gun-wielding bikies and others.
She fears innocent people will get caught in the net and be sent to prison for even having contact with a suspected bikie group member.
My fear is that the political hot air will continue and we’ll just keep talking about getting tough rather than getting there.
This is where Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Pallaras could play a role. He was originally brought in by Mike Rann to get tough on crime to become the fearless Eliot Ness of Adelaide’s crime beat.
Pallaras has vast experience in dealing with mafia-style gang crime in Hong Kong. Triads are just as feared there as bikie gangs are here.
But the Government has already dismissed the Pallaras solution, however worthy it may be.
The DPP’s uncompromising tactics have rubbed Rann up the wrong way ever since the ink dried on his employment contract.
The last thing the Government wants is Pallaras to have a good idea or be given any credit for helping fix a problem.
But I for one would be very happy to consider the DPP’s views, however tough or unorthodox they may be.
After all, we’ve already been waiting for seven long years for real action.
We all run the risk of being shot on Adelaide’s streets of anarchy if we listen to Hamilton-Smith.
And we mustn’t trample on the legal sensitivities of bikie human rights, according to Kanck.
Let’s get real, and if at all possible, fix the bikie scourge with whatever and whoever it takes.
Mike Smithson is Channel 7’s political reporter smithsonm@adv.newsltd.com.au
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