AUSTRALIA - Pressure mounts on Qld govt over laws

OFF THE WIRE
THE Queensland government is facing mounting concerns from the legal fraternity about extraordinary new laws for bikies and serial sex offenders.
The Judicial Conference of Australia is warning that the state is venturing into uncharted territory.
Conference president, Justice Philip McMurdo, who also sits on the bench of Queensland's Supreme Court, says both sets of laws are cause for concern.
He says the new sex offender laws break new ground in allowing the attorney-general, not the courts, to decide which sex offenders stay in jail indefinitely.
"The power to imprison an offender, in this country at least, has usually been exercised by the courts," he said in a statement.
"This new law empowers the executive government to imprison a person whom a court - in a case between the government and that person - has ordered to be released.
"In this country such a power is apparently unprecedented."
Justice McMurdo also noted the extraordinary implications of the anti-bikie laws.
The laws mean bikies convicted of serious crimes will get an extra, mandatory 15 to 25 years tacked onto to end of their sentences simply for being associated with a declared criminal gang.
"This Act will require Queensland courts, in relevant cases, to impose at least two sentences for the one offence," he said.
He added: "The Act is not limited to associations which are bikie gangs."
He said the mandatory sentences the laws enshrined removed a court's discretion in punishing an offender.
And while that was not in itself "invalid", he noted: "Mandatory sentencing laws are relatively unusual and can often be undesirable".
"Mandatory sentencing has the practical inevitability of arbitrary punishment, as offenders with quite different levels of culpability receive the same penalty."
Earlier this week, Premier Campbell Newman accused critics of the sex offender laws of being apologists for pedophiles.
And on Thursday he told state's legal fraternity to come out of their ivory towers and implement the new laws, saying they reflect community expectations.
The Queensland Law and Justice Institute says the government should be defending not attacking judges and magistrates.
"The whole concept of Westminster democracy depends upon an independent judiciary and here is our judiciary being attacked by the government," president Peter Callaghan told the ABC.
"Because they stand above the fray, judges can't defend themselves from attack. It's traditionally the job of the attorney-general."
Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie was the architect of the bikie and sex offender laws, and insists they are in the interests of the state.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/qld-laws-will-deter-foreign-crims-truss/story-fni0xqi3-1226746460090