Page 4768 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017
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… the Commission considers that preventing, disrupting and responding to serious and organised crime, including outlaw motorcycle gang (OMCG) activity, in order to protect public safety is clearly a legitimate objective.
This was from the Human Rights Commission, who said that it is “clearly a legitimate objective”. They went on to say:
In the context of this bill, we support its basic underlying principle that there is no right to associate for the purpose of criminal activities.
It is very clear that the Human Rights Commission believes that there is no underlying principle that there is a right to associate for the purpose of criminal activities. Legislation designed specifically to disrupt and prevent organised crime shows a clear, logical connection to the objective stated.
This legislation is targeted solely at identified members of identified groups, determined by the CPO and a Supreme Court judge, and only when they are satisfied that the making of a control order will be for the purpose of disrupting and preventing criminal activity. This is a measured, targeted approach to a clear, specific objective.
Opponents of this bill, including the Attorney-General, have raised effectiveness in other jurisdictions. In particular, an Ombudsman’s report into the operation of the New South Wales legislation has been cited. Let me address that. There are significant differences between the legislation proposed for the ACT and how other anti-consorting schemes operate in their home jurisdictions.
The Ombudsman’s report notes specifically that New South Wales Police prefer to use less cumbersome but more intrusive mechanisms available in that jurisdiction. Those mechanisms include a broad anti-consorting power—which we are not calling for—that allows police to issue directives without judicial oversight. This mechanism has received its own criticism for being too harshly applied, with reports of warnings being issued more than 8,500 times, often to groups with no direct links to organised crime.
We are not recommending this broad approach. That is not what we are doing here today. We are recommending a targeted approach which also addresses some of the other issues in the report. Therefore, in the environment that the ACT currently faces, and that we continue to face, this legislation is our only option.
This situation is acknowledged in the Human Rights Commission’s submission. I will quote from it again:
The Commission acknowledges that, in the absence of comparable alternative powers in the ACT, such as anti-consorting laws, it may be that the control order scheme would be more readily used.
This is the point. Because there is a broad-based scheme in New South Wales, which we do not have here and we are not calling for, that has been used 8,500 times; so the control orders they have in New South Wales have not been used. However, with the
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