There are laws to deal with any bikies who are criminals now. It is only show; governments never get past laws on paper. Then the courts are too lenient, so it's all a waste of time.

Probably, the bikies have no more to fear than do ordinary decent criminals.

The author's concerns are all more than valid, and mirror my own.

In the unlikely event these laws do get ratified, this kind of legislation will just drive these guys to new and more devious ways of staying off the radar to carry on their business.

At least now when you see a group of huge, heavily tattooed men on choppers, you know who they are and behave accordingly for your own good.

I don't know about everyone else, but I like to know who and what I am dealing with when I walk down the street.

Maybe the police using the powers they have now to clean up the bikies would be more productive. They will have clean their own act up first to bring about any results. It is the law enforcers over decades that have allowed this situation about. I can remember an incident that occurred about thirty years ago in a local suburban hotel where the local gang met. Another gang turned up, removed parts from their bikes and attacked the local gang. This occurred in a beer garden full of families and their children. From all observations, both sides were to blame. The police eventually came after the fighting had finished. They spent a little time chatting at a table with the local bikies. Many angry mothers and fathers attempted unsuccessfully with police. No results, except to arrest a sleeping drunk in a rarely used passage way. The police often spent time socialising with the bikies. There were rumours of brown paper bags handed over by the police.

It is an odd world we live in where on one hand where criminals who use regularly use violence with illegally obtained weapons to enforce their threats and control their drug territories are defended by civil libertarians. They have rights, you know. However the law-abiding farmers, clay-pigeon shooters and Olympians who are licensed gun owners are subjected to intrusive regulation, including random police visits to their homes and have their personal particulars recorded on police computers as possible criminals.

Incredibly, if the firearm of a licensed gun owner is ever stolen he himself is likely to be charged for failure to guard it, be fined and lose his ownership 'privilege' forever. How many people whose homes are broken into can expect to be charged because some low life has managed to break in? In the exceedingly unlike event that a licensed gun owner should commit a crime, he can expect harsher penalties than the crack dealing bikie who committed a similar offence.

So lets not have any of that nonsense that the law or law enforcement is tougher on outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs). Really, if anyone wants to see State intervention in private lives be a farmer in a State like Victoria or a member of a clay pigeon club.

It is also time to dispense with the romantic notion that OMGs are comprised of free spirits who live for their Harleys. These are criminal organisations where many of the patch-wearers including senior office holders cannot even ride a motorcycle and don't want to. It is naive to believe that these criminals are always identifiable by their patches. As if regulation aimed at curbing their activities will send them underground, they are underground already to do their crooked business.

Defence of 'bikies' rights is misdirected when the OMGs are major drug manufacturers and dealers and are responsible almost all gun crime. The big money is in drugs and the OMGs are in it up to their necks.

The on-going history of bikie gangs provides ample evidence that "bikie gangs" is just an euphemism for drug distributors.They should be eliminated.I'd support any extreme measures. Not a prob

Socratease

I am sick to death of politicians pretending that in providing draconian penalties and over-riding important rights, they are showing their strength by being tough on crime.
They are doing nothing nothing of the sort. They are showing their abysmal weakness. They know (or they should) that increasing penalties has virtually no deterrent effect. They know that giving police powers without special supervision of their use is guarantee of misuse. They in most cases do not have the strength to stand up and say so.

The NSW bikie law was rushed through parliament in two days. That parliament's legislation review committee subsequently took look at it, and criticised it in much same way that Tim Meehan has here. It is very dangerous legislation, not only because it sets precedents, but because it is bound to be misused--and people will be jailed for breaching the law without being in a position to know that they are doing so.

The reason civil libertarians defend the rights of criminals and other unsavoury characters is because that is where the rights of all of us most often get infringed. It is the rights of all that we attempt to protect.

We more often, however, defend innocent people. Less publicity is given to such cases.