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Mark Hinchliffe·
Motorbike news
··9 Comments·2 min read

Call to fight anti-bikie laws

Should all people of Mid-East appearance be stopped on the street by police and searched in case they are terrorists?
Should all teenagers wearing a hoodie be searched for cans of spray paint in case they are graffiti tagger?
Should all mothers with shopping bags be stopped and searched in case they are shoplifting?
Should all V8 drivers be stopped and checked to see if their on-board computer has logged them speeding?
Of course not!
In what parallel universe would is be just to detain and harass the innocent on suspicion of evil because of how they look, dress or the type of vehicle they drive/ride?
Then why should groups of three motorcycle riders or more be subject to the same injustice?
That’s what the Queensland Government intends to do in their crackdown on outlaw bikie gangs.
Under laws before State Cabinet today three or more motorcyclists riding together will face police scrutiny regardless of whether they belong to an outlaw gang.
Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie has confirmed that riders would not have to be in club colours to warrant police attention if they were in groups of three or more.
Are the Queensland Police that dumb that they can’t tell the difference between a few recreational bikers and an outlaw bikie gang?
It’s not as if outlaw bikies go around in disguise. I can’t recall having seen outlaw bikies in groups riding without their colours flying.
This situation would be laughable if it wasn’t deadly serious.
I’m not saying everyone with colours should be pulled over, either. (Heaven help the pour Ulysses member with the old-guy emblem on his leather vest.)
If riders are not doing anything illegal, shouldn’t there have to be reasonable grounds to detain or search them?
I’m not here to tell the police how to do their job. But I am here to tell the government that I will not tolerate being stopped on the street simply because I am riding a motorcycle with a couple of mates.
However, I’m only one person.
So how do we put a stop this stupidity, this injustice, this – dare I say it – Nazi tactic?
Petitions, letters to the editor, street marches, etc won’t make a difference.
I believe in civil disobedience, Gandhi style.
We need to get some mates – maybe some from south of the border as well – and go for a ride.
Find some police – preferably down the Gold Coast way – and taunt them by riding back and forth past them in a proper and legal manner and put up with being stopped time and time again. (Make sure your bike is roadworthy!)
Exhaust them.
Make it obvious that punishing the innocent to chase the guilty does not work.
If it did, I don’t think I’d like to live in that society, anyway.
The final Cabinet announcement on this “law” is still up to a fortnight away, so we have time to act.

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Mark Hinchliffe
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9 Comments

  1. This beat up campaign, being conducted in concert by the Queensland government and The Courier Mail, has the very real potential to be the most savage attack on liberal democracy since Bjelke Petersen’s ban on street marches in the 1970s. It is a fundamental tenet of the criminal common law that all citizens (and that does include bikies) be afforded a presumption of innocence and that the onus is on the state to prove the guilt of the accused. The laws proposed by the Newman government are an outrageous assault on this fundamental principle on which our society is supposed to be based.

    This is very serious stuff and must be actively resisted.

    1. This is very well put Okanui , there are very clear danger signs here that I hope the average person will recognise . This is ‘code red’ on everyone’s civil rights and democracy . Existing laws are more than adequate ….

  2. I can’t believe it.! There are enough laws that the police and government have to stop criminals. What police and government need to do is ensure that they are resourced with the correct capability to truly investigate and then take appropriate action including arrest and court action if required. These draconian laws will introduce harassment and arrest because you ride a bike.

  3. Queenslanders have only themselves to blame for this situation. When you give one group absolute power and destroy any effective opposition you get a dictatorship. Newman and Co. have already destroyed thousands of individual and family lives due to sackings while employing more high-end bureaucrats and spending big on perks for themselves. Now owners of modified vehicles and bike riders are in their sights and we can only wonder which non-conforming minority will be next. There are plenty of laws available to deal with criminal gangs, all that’s lacking is the will to enforce them. Wonder how the small business people on the Gold Coast who were being robbed every second night and begged for more police feel now that an extra 50 have miraculously been found to follow bike riders around. Hopefully in 2015 we will have an election (unless Newman declares a ‘state of emergency’ to abolish them) and the voters of this state will remove this tyrant and bring police into this state under some form of control. Right now we are heading for a situation worse than anything Joh could concoct.

  4. I agree with all the above having lived through the Joh era and been the recipient of a ‘police massage.’ So if all of you and any of friends are serious about changing the equation, there is information on the Motorcyclists Australia Party Meetup site. Even better, when the party is registered put your hands up to be candidates. A website will not be up until the party has registration.

  5. A while back, they passed a law that OLMC members aren’t allowed to wear their colors in public unless participating in a registered ride or event. Do they want to target any group of three or more on bikes because they can’t tell the difference? If you ask me we don’t need another law allowing police to do this, we need one less law, let them wear their colors. In fact make it that they have to wear them while riding any time at all if they are a member of an OLMC. Then everyone will know exactly who they are. It’s not rocket science is it?

  6. The current action of the Queensland Government is illegal and in breach of Federal and State Anti-Discrimination laws. They also breach Schedule 2 of The Imperial Acts Application Act which lists old English law that is in force in Queensland beginning with the Magna Carta.
    Any and all misunderstandings between motorcyclists must be forever forgotten and a realisation adopted; what happened yesterday is finished.
    We must gather as one and not attempt to control another, for if we do are we not the same as the Government?
    I swore an oath to defend my country and I will honor that oath. These current Government actions strip away all rights we, the people, have earned over a thousand years of development of human rights. They spit on the graves and dishonour the families of a hundred thousand Australian soldiers who paid the ultimate sacrifice to bring freedom to lands far away.
    United we are unstoppable. No more division.

  7. Why not use the polices own ride registration form against them. Everyone lodge a form, for every ride. Riding to work? Submit a form. Riding home? Submit another form. Going to the shop? Another form. And another to ride home again. Submit a form for each and ride. Make them work to sort through them. Make them use resources- of which they seem to have limitless to persue these stupid laws- to work through numerous “applications.”

  8. They ban the wearing of colours under VLAD (advertising membership) then claim they don’t know who the 1%’ers are so they have to hassle everybody to find them. If the idiots spent more time catching crooks instead of banning the clubs, turning innocent people into criminals and then trying to make just about everybody who rides a bike an ‘associate’, none of this would be going on.
    These laws are dumb!

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