Page 5281 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 29 November 2017
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does not intend to resource such work in the future. The Ombudsman’s review highlights an example of the impracticality of the criminal organisational laws.
The bill allows the Supreme Court to make a control order where it is satisfied by acceptable cogent evidence that is of sufficient weight to justify the making of an order. Based on the advice of the New South Wales Police Force and the New South Wales Ombudsman, it appears that it will be too difficult for ACT Policing to prepare evidence of this nature. The New South Wales Ombudsman considered the operation of criminal organisation control schemes in all jurisdictions across Australia. The Ombudsman found that no state or territory police force has been able to successfully use their criminal organisation control legislation to have any organisations declared as criminal organisations.
In 2012 the Queensland police force filed an application to declare the Finks motorcycle club a criminal organisation. During proceedings, nearly all of the members of the Finks patched over to the Mongols, making the application process more complex for the Queensland police force. The Queensland police force did not continue with the application, which it discontinued in 2014.
To address this, the bill states that a declared organisation is taken to include any organisation into which the members substantially restructure themselves, with or without dissolving the organisation named in the declaration. However, if the Queensland example were to occur here in the ACT, the declaration made by the court would only remain valid if enough members patched over to the new organisation. The members who patched over would have to form a significant group in their new criminal gang in terms of their numbers or their capacity to influence the organisation. ACT police would have to take a new approach to the application, taking into account all of the information available about the old criminal gang, the history prior to members patching over and the make-up of the criminal gang now that members have patched over. Substantial police resources may have been invested to prepare an application which cannot be filed because members patched over, making the information in the application irrelevant.
I understand that there are some differences between the bill and the New South Wales criminal organisations control scheme. However, importantly, the New South Wales Ombudsman found that the experience of police forces across Australia does not suggest that the operational difficulties presented by the New South Wales model or any other comparable legislation could be easily remedied by making amendments to the model. There is no evidence that a criminal organisation control scheme will combat serious and organised crime in the ACT. In fact, the evidence demonstrates that such a scheme is unworkable and provides too many practical barriers for the court and police.
Combating serious and organised crime requires a holistic approach supported by a range of measures. The government works closely with ACT Policing to develop practical and legislative responses which are effective in addressing serious and organised crime activity. The government is taking action. We are not being reactive or irrational or spreading fear; instead, we are being measured and implementing sustainable and evidence-based law reform to deal with one of our biggest challenges.
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