Editorial: It’s time to put bikie gangs out of business

Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs represent nothing more than the world of organised crime, and the nation needs a concentrated effort to banish these gangs from our midst and curb the misery they deliver to the community, writes the editor.

Behind the Harley Davidsons and the tattoos Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs represent nothing more than the world of organised crime.

A story in today’s Sunday Mail lays out the truth about our bikie gangs in explicit financial detail.

The gangs now represent a 21st Century version of the mafia, selling cocaine and ice as they develop into sophisticated multinationals of the crime world.

The story, launching the podcast “Bikies Inc’’ which is the result of eight months of investigative work, blows open the modus operandi of the outlaws who now often work hand-in-glove with the mafia, Asian drug lords and South American drug cartels. They have even adopted the old mafia approach of outsourcing a lot of the dirty work to lower ranked divisions to maintain a perception that the bosses have clean hands.

The amount of money involved in these criminal enterprises is extraordinary.

Outlaw motorcycle gangs now control as much as one third of Australia’s $10bn illicit drug trade.

That means up to $8m a day can be flowing into bikie gang coffers.

As New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Stuart Smith tells Bikies Inc, the huge profits mean crimes beyond drug distribution are occurring with a disturbing regularity – from murders to kidnappings. And it has been repeatedly demonstrated over the past few decades that this violence is by no means “in house’’.

The Hells Angels are among the biggest bikie gangs in Australia. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)

The public is now constantly exposed to the violent fallout from bikie conflicts and that infamous Broadbeach restaurant brawl of September 2013, which led to the Newman government’s tough anti- bikie laws, was just another chapter in a long running saga.

Many Queenslanders remember the 1997 Mackay bikie shootout just off the Forgan Smith Bridge which left six wounded. Australians were again horrified in 2009 when a bikie brawl broke out in one of the most secure and well monitored places in the nation – Sydney Airport’s Terminal Three – leaving a member of the Hells Angels dead.

Bikie boss Tarek Zahed was reportedly “shredded” by 10 bullets in an attempted gangland execution in a Western Sydney gym in May while his younger brother Omar died in the attack.

It’s been more than 70 years since embryonic motorcycle gangs stirred to life on America’s west coast.

Largely composed of restless soldiers returning from World War II and unable to settle into civilian life, the gangs morphed into the Hells Angels, gaining media traction as the gang made inroads into the emerging counter culture world of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.

There are now 38 officially recognised bikie gangs in Australia, with the Comanchero now the most powerful, along with the Hells Angels.

There are more than 4700 patched members with another 1000 waiting in the wings to join.

The nation needs a concentrated effort nationally to banish these gangs from our midst and curb the misery they deliver to the community. And Queensland needs to be clear-eyed about the effectiveness of the Palaszczuk government’s anti consorting laws which were designed to crack down on bikie gangs but have resulted in slaps on the wrist for outlaws.