Cam's Cycling Coaching in West End in Brisbane is an address named under the Queensland Governments Bikie Anti-Association legislation. 19th of October 2013. Photo: Harrison Saragossi
Brisbane's bikies will now have to go somewhere else for their cycling training – and the government is spending $800,000 to make sure they know it.
Labelled by Premier Campbell Newman as “the toughest laws in the nation”, the state's new anti-association laws passed last week, make it illegal for criminal motorcycle gang members to fraternise together, wear their colours in certain areas, own or work in tattoo parlours, or visit one of 40 “proscribed” addresses.
One of those addresses is 391 Montague Road in West End.
Cam's Cycling Coaching in West End Photo: Harrison Saragossi
The inner-Brisbane site is understood to be owned by a man with links to a bikie club, but it has been rented to Cameron Hughes, a former elite cyclist, who has run a cycling coaching clinic from the building for at least the past three years.
“It's not exactly where you will find Bandidos members, unless they have a penchant for wearing lycra and sipping lattes,” one man, who regularly passes the site, said.
Mr Hughes did not want to comment, other than to say that he didn't think his clinic's address being listed in the legislation would “really affect my business” and said anything else was a matter for his landlord.
Rebels bikies
The list of proscribed addresses was prepared by police for the Attorney-General's department during the two-weeks the government spent crafting its new laws.
A spokesman for the Attorney-General said the regulation “can be amended when need be”.
The government, which is gearing up for challenges to its controversial legislation now that the first people have been charged under it, has spent just under $30 million on its bikie blitz in just over two weeks.
Still shot from Queensland Government anti-bike advertisment Photo: Supplied
From that, $20 million has been allocated for additional Gold Coast police resources, $7 million was earmarked for the Crime and Misconduct Commission's suspected increased workload and $793,349.41 has been spent on an advertising campaign letting “Vicious Lawless Associates” know the government has “drawn a line”.
The advertising budget came from the existing Department of Justice and Attorney-General budget.
The government is remaining tight-lipped on the cost of the security detail senior ministers, including Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie, have had to use since declaring war on criminal motorcycle gangs, as well as the budget impact the increased police and security presence at government buildings has had.
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The cost of repurposing a 52-bed unit at the Woodford Correctional Centre, north-west of Brisbane, into the government's planned supermax bikie-only jail, has also not yet been finalised.
The legislation sets down a mandatory 15-year cumulative prison sentence for any offender, found by a jury to have links to a criminal motorcycle gang, with an additional ten years added if they hold a senior position within the club.
Prisoners inside the bikie “superjail” will spend 23 hours a day in their cell with no television, will be denied gym access and will only be entitled to one visit a week with family.
Bandidos bikie gang colours which have been handed in Photo: Amy Remeikis
The new laws were sparked by a brawl in a popular Gold Coast dining and entertainment precinct late last month, which was followed by a large group of Bandidos members “storming” the Southport police station, demanding the release of those who had been arrested after the fight.