Page 1649 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 July 2020
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He said that there was also a risk that the ACT’s lack of consorting laws was making it a visiting place for bikies, including the gang leadership:
They are coming here to the ACT because they are able to meet together in person here, whereas they cannot do that in other jurisdictions … National leadership groups are meeting here in Canberra and organising and planning their activities here in Canberra, face to face … I do not want those people in the ACT and I do not think anybody else really does either.
That is what the Attorney-General’s predecessor, Mr Corbell, had to say. That was his position. The question is why Mr Ramsay and his colleagues do not take that same position. Maybe it is because they saw what happened to Mr Corbell. Maybe they saw Mr Corbell axed by a faction of the Labor Party in 2016. It seems to me that members of the Labor Party are now putting fear of losing their jobs ahead of community safety. I say to those members of the Labor Party: stand up for your community. Put their safety first. Stop putting your jobs ahead of the welfare of your community. Implement anti-consorting laws. Give the police the tools that they need to keep our community safe, before you end up with more blood on your hands.
MR RAMSAY (Ginninderra—Attorney-General, Minister for the Arts, Creative Industries and Cultural Events, Minister for Building Quality Improvement, Minister for Business and Regulatory Services and Minister for Seniors and Veterans) (3.35): I will take a deep breath; what an amazing speech! Unlike the opposition, I will not be commenting on the events of last Saturday night, noting that Mr Hanson was managing not to draw any conclusions while referring to the matter and drawing a number of conclusions; nor will I be making any comments about the independent decisions of an ACT court, which is an independent body. It is not a part of the ACT Legislative Assembly and it operates, as we well know, under Latimer House principles, completely independently from here. I will not be making any comments about the decisions of an ACT court.
I do want to put on the record that I am absolutely dismayed by acts of violence. I am disgusted by organised crime and criminal gangs. The shadow attorney-general’s motion calling on the ACT to introduce anti-consorting legislation is not unexpected. With regard to matters of organised crime and violence, the opposition have simply one card in their deck. It has been one card that they have been drawing on for 11 years, and that one card is anti-consorting laws.
The reason they keep coming back to them is that the ultra-conservative Canberra Liberals cannot think of anything else. The fact is that anti-consorting laws do not work. That does not seem to worry them. They do not seem to worry about the evidence regarding their effectiveness. Rather than look to the effectiveness, Mr Hanson and his colleagues find it easier to drum up fear in the community. They like being irresponsible and divisive, and it is easy to promise zero crime.
As always, the Canberra Liberals live in their own fantasy world. They aim for the headline. It is easy to aim for a headline and it is easy to speak without having any regard for the evidence of what does work, let alone having regard for active police
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