AUSTRALIA - New bikie laws criticised

OFF THE WIRE
ELIZABETH JACKSON: The organisation representing biker groups in New South Wales has warned that the New South Wales government's attempts to crackdown on bikies won't stop shootings.
Yesterday the New South Wales Premier Barry O'Farrell announced that members of 23 outlaw motorcycle and crime gxxgs will be banned from wearing their colours in Kings Cross.
And he's moving to stop bikies from operating tattoo parlours.
ut the New South Wales Bar Council says it won't make a difference.
Meredith Griffiths reports.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The United Motorcycle Council represents 20 biker clubs in New South Wales including the Bandidos, Comancheros, Hells Angels and Nomads.
The Council's lawyer and acting spokesman Wayne Baffsky, says people linked to the Hells Angels and Nomads may have been linked to some of the recent shootings in Sydney.
WAYNE BAFFSKY: The best information that I have is that some associates of some bikers have been responsible for some of the shootings. But we know from the last few days that the Hells Angels have been the targets of a number of these shootings or people associated with the Hells Angels or something to do with the Hells Angels. So the assumptionhas been made that the people firing these rounds off are from another club.
Well even if that's correct they're from another club, it's not club versus club, it's not a war as been suggested, it's individuals who are behaving in this criminal way. It's not a club thing because if it was a club thing, if the clubs were at war, you'd see it all over Sydney, you'd see it all over the state or you'd see it around Australia.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: So he says the police should be targeting individuals and certainly not preventing members of 23 clubs from wearing their colours in Kings Cross.
WAYNE BAFFSKY: At the end of the day, if you stripped, for example, those people who are there for reasons of intimidation or whatever criminal behaviour they're engaging in at the Cross, if you target those people and make them take off their colours, I mean what are you left with? 10 or 20 very large people with tattoos.
I mean what does it actually achieve at the end of the day? It reduces the ability to identify people and I don't think that would serve the police well at all.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The government also wants to amend the Crimes Act so controlled members of declared criminal organisations would not be allowed to operate tattoo parlours.
But Wayne Baffsky says so far, no bikie group has yet been declared a criminal organisation
WAYNE BAFFSKY: The use of the Criminal Organisations Control Act as a means of attacking motorcycle clubs is extraordinarily expensive; it takes a very long time.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Under the proposed changes the Police Commissioner could refuse to give certain people licenses to operate tattoo parlours.
And police wouldn't need a warrant to take dogs into tattoo parlours to search for drugs, explosives or firearms.
That's alarmed Phillip Boulten who is the Vice-President of the Bar Association.
PHILLIP BOULTEN: If it's a tattoo parlour today, it could well be a mechanics workshop next week, a motorcycle showroom the week after. And then, before you know it, just about any licensed premises, any restaurant or coffee shop, any nightclub could be then the subject of this sort of intervention without any check or balance.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: He says that outlawing bikie colours is extraordinary, but probably useless.
PHILLIP BOULTEN: The Police Commissioner suggested that this will give police the power to go and remove people from hotels if they are asked to leave and they refuse. The police already have that power and the power to arrest people for any other form of illegal conduct that takes place inside licensed premises or outside them.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Phillip Boulten says if the government wants to stop the spate of drive by shootings, it should crack down on gun ownership.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3482595.htm