AMID the simmering tensions of a turf war which gripped Perth's nightclub security scene last year, a security boss addressed a handful of bouncers he was trying to recruit.

His talk ended with a lucrative proposition: each bouncer was given a bag of pills with instructions to sell them at the nightclubs.

With each pill worth about $35 and each bouncer earning about $20 an hour, it was clear the drugs were not a business on the side - they were the business.


The bouncers were told they had a green light: their dealing was implicitly approved by their bosses and the venue and no opposition dealers would be allowed into the club.

The brief exchange was part of a major groundshift which saw some security firms linked to bikie gangs take control of Perth's nightclub scene.

A doorman used to be there to throw out the occasional drunk and lend the joint an air of order; the modern bouncer can be a productive employee in a lucrative trade.

They hold the key to Perth's apparently insatiable appetite for party drugs. Control the door and you control the dealers allowed in. If the dealers are selling your drugs without competition, you stand to make a lot of money.

Bikie gangs are well schooled in this economic equation and their roles in the entertainment scene are entrenched. A bikie gang member provides security at one of Perth's best-known hotels. He does so without question from management, despite the fact a simple glance at his gang tattoos give away his allegiance.

At another well-known nightspot, gang members and criminals banned from working as bouncers roam unchecked and unregulated as "bar managers". Police say it's a fair bet they sell more than drinks.

Then there's the security figures with intimate inside knowledge of police tactics and operations because they used to wear the blue uniform.

Several former police - who have left under corruption clouds of varying thickness - are increasingly involved in the security game and use their connections to good effect.

It worried senior police so much that a corruption probe was launched into whether cops were leaking information from police databases to their shonky former colleagues.

Now these revelations about the extent of organised crime's grip on our city's nightlife might come as a surprise to you. But what could be more of a shock is that the police know all of this and more.

They are aware of the web of lucrative associations which has the Perth club scene's multi-million-dollar drug market locked up. They have all the details of all the bouncers. They do sporadic surveillance on the main dealers.

So why can't the police stop it? Is organised crime a tumour so entrenched in Perth's entertainment scene that it can't be removed?

The latest suggestion, announced by Police Minister Michelle Roberts yesterday, may go some way to denting Perth's criminal networks. And it will make good use of the information the police have but have so far been powerless to use in any immediate, meaningful way.

Mrs Roberts wants police to be able to revoke bouncers' licences on the basis of top-secret police intelligence which links them to criminals. Applications would be made to a magistrate in-camera but the bouncer would never know the allegations levelled against him.

Police concede it removes the basic tenets of justice from the process but they say it also removes the criminal element from the nightclub doors. And the door is the key to the drug market.

Innovative laws are needed to tackle the problem, said Mrs Roberts, who expects little opposition when she takes her submission to Cabinet in the next few weeks.

Police have welcomed the innovation but are already predicting a flood of crooked bouncers taking up roles as "bar managers".

© 2004 West Australian Newspapers Limited

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