South Australia has toughest anti-bikie laws in the world

Names will never hurt them . . .

IN South Australia, the State Government felt so strongly about confronting the power of motorcycle gangs that it passed the toughest anti-bikie laws in the world.

In NSW, police have harassed and raided bikies so persistently that at least two clubs, Rebels and Bandidos, avoid wearing their colours in public as a way of attracting minimal attention from the law.

In Queensland, the best threat Police Minister Judy Spence can muster is that police 'will be keeping a very close eye' on bikies when the 600-plus members of the Rebels gang come roaring into the streets of the Gold Coast today.

Indeed, the strongest term Ms Spence reserves for the Rebels is 'outlaw bikie gang', which in strict legal terms is not true.

In Queensland, their club membership is perfectly legal and South Australia remains the only state that has legislated against bikies, with gang membership being enough to earn a bikie five years' jail.

Neither Ms Spence nor Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson seem willing to do more than wag their fingers as these undesirables ride into town.

There are thousands of Gold Coasters who love and ride motorbikes -- the recreational riders who take to the Hinterland roads every weekend, the moped riders in the suburbs and the trail bike riders who go off-road.

Let's never confuse them with motorcycle gangs, those groups of mainly men whose illicit drug trafficking, standover tactics, extortion, money laundering, weapons trade and public disturbances have earned them a fearsome reputation.

Annual hospital toy runs on one day of the year don't make up for their criminal behaviour on the other 364 days.

Their taste for violence is well documented. Ordinary motorcyclists don't resort to pulling guns and shooting at each other in ballrooms, nor do they have stashes of pistols, knives, crossbows, machine-guns, rocket-launchers, ecstasy tablets, wads of proceeds-of-crime money, steroids and pill-making machines in their homes.

Police files are bursting with information about bikie gang networks, their known links with international drug networks and their long history of violence.

Everywhere they go, they challenge law and order and intimidate and hurt those who get in their way.

Much to the irritation of some police officers on the Gold Coast, Ms Spence and Mr Atkinson seem content to simply monitor the Rebels rather than to move them on.

May we suggest that, if the time had been World War II and the same principle had been applied, Japanese invaders would have been monitored all the way to the Story Bridge, in Brisbane, before the alarm was raised. Ms Spence, these outlaws, as you describe them, should be moved on well before they hurt a hair on any Gold Coaster's head. They are not welcome.

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