Intrusive bikie gang law bid a brazen grab for power by police in Tasmania

GREG BARNS warns that a law-and-order obsession is eroding our democratic rights

Police kept a watchful eye on the motorcycle gang members arriving in the state’s North-West last year.

TASMANIA Police is running a campaign to ensure its latest grab for more power passes parliamentary scrutiny.

Over the past few weeks we have been told about the “scourge” of bikie gangs and how Tasmania is a soft target for such groups. Tasmania Police released a position paper, an intellectually vacuous and evidence-free series of proposals to again undermine the rule of law.

Tasmania Police want to reintroduce what are termed consorting laws. They turn you into a criminal not because you have committed an offence, but because you are seen with the wrong people.

Rightly, these odious laws fell out of favour as democracies became more enlightened but are creeping back on statute books in other Australian jurisdictions via the absurd law-and-order obsession.

There are eight proposals in the Tasmania Police paper. Some have been critiqued recently on these pages by Fabiano Cangelosi, a barrister and colleague of this columnist, and the new Tasmanian president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance.

The first proposal is to legislate to prohibit “a person aged 18 years or more, who has been convicted of a serious offence, from habitually consorting with another nominated person, aged 18 years or more, who has also been convicted of a serious offence.”

Police will give you a written warning first about the company you keep and if you don’t like it, you can seek “review from an officer of a higher rank, and if still aggrieved, may then apply to a magistrate for a notice to be revoked.”

We all know police rarely overrule each other, and why should someone have to expend funds to challenge such a notice in court? The danger of this is it will be used to harass people.

And what is a “serious offence”? Will it matter that a person might have been convicted of a serious offence ten years ago, and been law-abiding ever since?

tasmania Police will run around assuring media and the community they would never abuse these laws but we know the track record of police is they abuse powers.

In Queensland the obsession with bikies saw the introduction of consorting laws years ago (by the way you can still get ICE in Queensland by the truckload, despite draconian laws designed to stop bikies running drug businesses).

Remy Kurz, from leading Queensland criminal law firm Robertson O’Gorman, recently wrote about the abuse of consorting laws in that state.

While the law is designed to get at bikie gangs, Mr Kurz writes that he has “seen three recent examples of how the Queensland Police Service have broadened their application of these controversial laws.”

The first case he mentions involves a female partner of his bikie gang client being “issued a consorting warning listing her partner as someone with whom she cannot consort.

The warning was issued despite the law stating that any consorting with a spouse or someone whom you share parental responsibility with should be disregarded.

In the second case, a young man “had been served an official consorting warning seeking to prevent him from seeing his best friend since childhood.

The friend had one previous conviction which had been resolved summarily. Despite this, the friend was defined as a “recognised offender”.

He had been convicted of a drug offence which carried a maximum penalty which exceeded five years. There was no suggestion he was a member of an OMG.”

And the final case is one where Mr Kurz “acted for a young client who, with several others, was charged with a violent home invasion.”

Mr Kurz’s client was on bail before the charges against him were discontinued. After the charges were dropped the client was given a consorting warning prohibiting contact with some former co-accused. Importantly, writes Mr Kurz, the co-accused had been in custody for some time and any evidence which suggested a gang affiliation was not pursued by the Crown at committal.

“In reality, the police wanted to impose upon my client a quasi-bail condition preventing him contacting his co-accused. All of this when he was no longer before the courts,” he laments.

So don’t believe a word from police who say they understand the scope of the law and will not abuse it.

Tasmania Police’s push for consorting laws must be resisted. It is an example of what Bond University criminologist Terry Goldsworthy described as “strident moral panic being propagated by the media and law enforcement agencies”.

Fortunately, in Tasmania we have an Upper House where there are some intelligent MPs who demand evidence-based policy. One hopes this ugly grab for the power to harass does not pass muster in that chamber.

Greg Barns is a human rights lawyer who has advised state and federal Liberal governments.