Victoria Police repeatedly pushed government to fix anti-bikie laws
Police pleas to make simple changes to give them more power over outlaw bikie gangs have been ignored by the state government.
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The Andrews government has failed to fix the flawed anti-bikie legislation it introduced shortly after coming to office, despite repeated warnings from Victoria Police.
The shooting of ex-Mongols bikie Sam “The Punisher” Abdurahim last weekend has prompted renewed calls for a crackdown on Victorian bikies.
The Herald Sun can reveal Victoria Police in 2020 told the authors of a government review the force needed serious defects with anti-association laws introduced in 2016 to be fixed.
The government is yet to introduce a Bill to parliament, and is instead sitting on another report that took two years to produce.
In 2020, police told the authors of a government review — retired judge Margaret White and former NSW public servant Andrew Cappie-Wood — they wanted officers ranked sergeant or above, rather than senior sergeant or above, to have the power to issue criminals with an “unlawful association notice”, which makes it a serious offence to associate with other criminals.
That fix had been included in an Andrew’s government Bill in 2018, but the government let the Bill lapse and has never revisited it.
Victorian police have also never used unlawful association powers, because officers must believe “an offence is likely to be prevented if … individuals are prevented from associating with each other” before they issue a notice.
The threshold for such a belief is almost impossibly high, and unlike other states, there are no protections to prevent the release of sensitive police intelligence in the event a bikie gang member challenges a notice in the courts.
Another defect that remains on the books, as previously revealed by the Herald Sun, is that criminals can only be issued with notices if they have been found guilty of an offence at trial, not if they have pleaded guilty.
The report’s authors concluded Victoria’s flawed anti-bikie laws “do not practically … prevent and disrupt organised crime”.
Victoria Police also told Ms White and Ms Cappie Wood they have spent precious legal resources preparing Supreme Court cases to have bikie gangs made “declared organisations”, but have abandoned the cases before they got to court.
Ms White and Mr Cappie-Wood urged the Andrews government to consider “developing a more operationally practical and effective method of limiting associations between serious criminals and others likely to be involved in organised crime”.
The government this week said it was considering another report on anti-organised crime laws.
A spokeswoman would not say why the government had not amended the state’s anti-association laws in the way Victoria Police have for years suggested.
She said the government was working to “ensure the laws on organised crime in Victoria are as strong as possible”.
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