Outlaws want law on their side  
 
By Paul Murray  
   
   
THERE was a time when Perth's outlaw motorcycle gangs enforced their power through violence backed up by their code of silence.
 
Now they're using that much-loved instrument of New Age social engineers - the Equal Opportunity Commission.
 
Faced with an enforceable ban on the wearing in hotels of bikie club insignias - known as colours or patches - the gangs are looking to their civil liberties.
 
Gypsy Joker Dean Adams told The West Australian last week that publicans had been intimidated into displaying signs banning bikies from wearing their colours.
 
And he has taken an action to the commission alleging discrimination against an identifiable group of people - outlaw motorcycle gang members.
 
Mr Adams says he has twice been refused service at the Attfield Tavern in Maddington. He says he can only get a drink there if he is not wearing patches.
 
"I am disgusted at the length government departments can go to in order to discriminate while telling other members of the community that they should not discriminate," Mr Adams said.
 
The West suggested that the Department of Racing, Gaming and Liquor was behind the move, but Police Commissioner Barry Matthews confirmed to me this week that it is a police initiative.
 
Mr Matthews said the wearing of patches intimidated other people on licensed premises. It was a potential cause of violence when members of opposing bikie gangs entered the premises also wearing their club colours.
 
He said licensees had control under the Liquor Licensing Act over dress standards. He encouraged them to insist on refusing service to bikies sporting insignia.
 
Bikies can be dangerous when riled and the Equal Opportunity Commission is not without its challenges for respondents. So the coppers should start doing their homework.
 
I only appeared there once, when cartoonist Dean Alston offended some Aboriginals with a cartoon on the row about bringing the head of warrior chief Yagan back from England.
 
As the then editor of this newspaper, I had to face the commission on a charge of racial discrimination, not colours discrimination, as the bikies are alleging.
 
It was the first time the commission had adjudicated on a cartoon. To my surprise, we were assigned a commissioner who was blind, the only one in Australia.
 
He was a very fair-minded adjudicator, but the assignment probably wasn't very fair on him given his obvious limitations in getting to the nuances in the visual medium of satirical cartooning.
 
In the end, he found in Alston's favour and that decision was recently upheld by the Federal Court, many years down the track.
 
But the bikies' action in the commission raises the question of their civil rights to associate in gangs which sometimes - perhaps always - engage in criminal activity.
 
Mr Adams is a member of the gang held responsible for the 2001 suburban assassination of retired top detective Don Hancock and his mate, Lou Lewis.
 
Former Gypsy Joker Sidney Reid turned supergrass, broke the code of silence and implicated his gang superior, sergeant-at-arms Graeme Slater, in the murders. Mr Slater got off and, ironically, Reid is now the only gang member doing time for the murders.
 
It's well known that Mr Hancock was a marked man since October 1, 2000, when he confronted several drunken Gypsy Jokers at his pub at Ora Banda.
 
Mr Hancock ordered members of the gang including Billy Grierson, to leave after one of them started swearing at his daughter. Mr Grierson was shot dead about an hour later as he sat next to Mr Slater at the gang's nearby campsite - and the Jokers blamed Mr Hancock.
 
Anyone who doesn't think the Jokers were implicated in the murders of Mr Hancock and Mr Lewis is deaf, dumb and blind.
 
Lou Lewis' son, Brad, has kept up the fight against the bikies in the wake of the decision on Mr Slater. Again this week on my radio program, he confronted Premier Geoff Gallop about gang power.
 
He reminded the Premier of a letter he had sent him asking for tougher powers forpolice.
 
"Groups such as outlaw motorcycle gangs are easily identifiable through the wearing of their club symbol and colours," Mr Lewis wrote to the Premier.
 
"I understand that Japan also had a major problem with gang violence and organised crime and responded by introducing anti-gang laws.
 
"Such legislation was aimed specifically at limiting the recruitment of criminal gang members and forbid the overt display of gang membership which previously occurred through headquarter banners, wearing of club colours and gang insignia and several other flagrant acts.
 
"There is documented evidence that these and other new laws are having some positive effect in reducing gang-related violence and organised crime in Japan. I feel confident that the adoption of similar legislation in WA could only have the same effect."
 
I put the proposal to Mr Matthews this week. He doesn't like it. The Commissioner says blacklisting of bikies would just drive them further underground and make their activities even harder to detect.
 
However, our top cop is perplexed that the Anti-Corruption Commission contested the police ability to use the new fortifications laws to break down gang headquarters.
 
He said the ACC had held that the law could only be used for offences believed to have happened on the premises, which would make it relatively ineffective. The Commissioner will ask the new Crime and Corruption Commission for another ruling when it is up and running.
 
That aside, gang blacklisting is exactly the approach taken by the Howard Government in its new tough stance on terrorists. Groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah are proscribed and any proved association with them can result in a jail term.
 
So the question here is one of civil liberties. Bikies revel in the fact that they operate outside the law - the one per cent maxim.
 
But they appear to want the protection of the law - certainly the equal opportunities legislation - to allow them an "acceptable" level of lawlessness.
 
Mr Lewis is also demanding the removal from gang members of the right to remain silent.
 
He also wants more powers for police to record phone conversations of any person known to be a gang member.
 
"The suggestion by your colleague, John Quigley, to confiscate the motorcycle of any person who is unable to prove that they are not a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang is full of merit and is a good example of the type of response that is long overdue," Mr Lewis told the Premier.
 
So what civil liberties does our civilised society want to give to those who choose to live outside its norms?
 
They are called outlaw motorcycle gangs. But is the law actually on their side?  
 

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