‘Labor at fault’ for bikie violence

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman has blamed the state government for a resurgence in bikie violence.

Police at the scene of a fire at Brendale.

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman has blamed the state government for a resurgence in bikie violence, and has raised concerns about public safety after two shootings and a firebombing in less than a month.

Mr Newman said his Labor successors opened the door for the return of outlaw motorcycle clubs by winding back his bikie crackdown, which began after an ugly brawl at a Gold Coast restaurant in 2013.

“It’s all happening again,” Mr Newman told The Australian yesterday.

“We got rid of them. They’ve come back under Labor’s watch. It only took four years to unravel that good work.”

Last week arsonists destroyed Koolsville Studios, a tattoo parlour owned by Rebels life member Mick Kosenko at Brendale on Brisbane’s northern outskirts.

It came just days after a Rebels member was shot up to eight times and bashed with a baseball bat at his Gold Coast home, in apparent retaliation for the shooting of a Bandidos associate at a shopping centre at Logan, south of Brisbane, on February 4.

Queensland police on Friday conceded bikie violence was escalating, but said it was confined to gang members and that the community was safe.

Mr Newman said it was “utterly unacceptable” for police to suggest the public wasn’t at risk. He cited a clash of two rival bikies at the Gold Coast’s Robina Town Centre in 2012, when a stray bullet hit a female bystander.

The scrapping of his Liberal National Party government’s bikie laws and a failure by politicians to demand police treat outlaw motorcycle clubs as a priority was behind the outbreak of violence, he said.

“Because that focus has been taken away, the gangs now feel like they can operate with impunity,” Mr Newman said.

“The laws are weak and the government aren’t interested in prosecuting the issue.”

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on the weekend that “police have confirmed to us that they are not concerned”. Queensland has “the strongest legislation in place in Australia”, she said.

The Newman government’s Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act brought in an extra 15 to 25 years’ imprisonment for criminal gang members and associates convicted of serious crimes. Labor replaced the measures with its serious and organised crime laws in 2016.

Queensland University of Technology’s Associate Professor Mark Lauchs, who monitors outlaw motorcycle gang conflict, said there was a “massive reduction in violence” in Queensland from 2013 and a corresponding increase in trouble interstate.

The recent spate of incidents “means they’re more confident they can get away with it”, Dr Lauchs said. “The response needs to be to remind them the laws are there.”