Page 1657 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 July 2020
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Canberra one of the safest cities in the country. Contrary to the Canberra Liberals’ opportunistic scaremongering, local recruitment to motorcycle gangs has been declining. The number of bikie gang members has halved to around 35 in the ACT today.
The Canberra Liberals are always eager to pretend to be friends of our men and women in blue, but pretence is all they have. If Mr Hanson is going to come in here and verbal or quote from a previous CPO, he could at least get her name right. When it comes to tackling serious criminal gangs, the Canberra Liberals only have one trick—an ineffective policy that sees gangs still operating in states that have that policy. And that is all they will do. I have some news for Mr Hanson: anti-consorting laws do not work, and we have experts who tell us that.
We have these groups causing havoc in states that have those laws. There is a reason for that, and there is also a clue in Mr Hanson’s own motion. He uses the label “outlaw”. I will give him a hint: this means they do not care about laws passed in this Assembly. Unlike the inexperienced and conservative Canberra Liberals, this government has helped law enforcement effectively target organised crime with crime-scene powers, fortification laws, offences related to drive-by shooting, the confiscation of criminal assets and non-association orders.
The Canberra Liberals have voted, time after time, against budget support for Taskforce Nemesis. They have opposed budgets that delivered resources that have been used effectively by ACT police to reduce the number of gangs and the number of members. These new laws and resources come about by working with ACT Policing to ensure that they have the resources and the tools they need. ACT Policing will continue to keep our community safe. Police will be proactively disrupting gangs and their activities. There is a clear message: ACT Policing will work to shut down your activities and cut off your ill-gotten gains. If you are a member or associate of an organised crime group, you will be targeted by police and likely find yourself in prison.
Instead of congratulating ACT Policing on their success in halving the number of gang members and reducing gang related offences, the Canberra Liberals are choosing to politicise an ongoing police investigation. In contrast, the government is continuing to tackle the issue of organised crime through well-researched initiatives and programs that are subject to ongoing evaluation and improvements. Police deserve better than what the Canberra Liberals are offering, and so does the Canberra community. The government will continue working with our hardworking police to ensure that they have the powers and resources they need in the fight against organised crime to keep our community safe.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (3.59): I imagine that I speak in closing, as there are no other speakers. The opposition does not support the amendment because—I will not go into the specific details of the amendment—it removes the call to action to introduce anti-consorting laws. Without going through the various debating points that have been canvassed in great detail, I can say that it removes the nub of the argument—the whole point of this motion—so we will not be supporting it.
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