Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Justice and Public Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on the report of the inquiry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission into legislative arrangements to outlaw serious and organised crime groups. Before I go on, I would like to thank the secretariat, Dr Jacqueline Dewar, Dr Robyn Clough, Ms Nina Boughey and Ms Danielle Oldfield.

The inquiry was established on 17 March 2008 and the terms of reference required the committee to:

… examine the effectiveness of legislative efforts to disrupt and dismantle serious and organised crime groups and associations with these groups—

I repeat: ‘associations with these groups’—

with particular reference to:

(a)

international legislative arrangements developed to outlaw serious and organised crime groups and association to those groups, and the effectiveness of these arrangements;

(b)

the need in Australia to have legislation to outlaw specific groups known to undertake criminal activities, and membership of and association with those groups;

They also said:

(d)

the impact and consequences of legislative attempts to outlaw serious and organised crime groups, and membership of and association with these groups …

Sadly, the committee in some way got lost on the way to Rome. We were supposed to focus very much on association and doing something about tackling serious and organised crime at the highest levels in this country, and that is something which I firmly believe was necessary. We look around the country and we see outlaw motorcycle gangs causing mayhem, especially in South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales, but I congratulate those governments for taking it head on. Victoria does not have an outlaw motorcycle gangs task force, so that would be one of the reasons why it does not appear to be a problem in Victoria.

In saying that, though, the Liberal and Family First members of the committee did not want to put out a dissenting report. Why? Because we believe we worked very effectively with the government members, in particular on unexplained wealth. We did not want to take anything away from that. The report’s recommendations do not go far enough when looking at anti-association laws, especially after committee members met authorities in Italy where anti-association laws have been very effective in dealing with the mafia. To bring down the mafia, and of course regarding unexplained wealth, the authorities there said that anti-association laws were the way to go. It was the same case in Canada, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police targeting laws to specifically look at people participating in outlaw motorcycle gangs. The same applied in Hong Kong where they have used them to great effect with the triads.

The report has no hard and fast recommendations that look at serious and organised crime, especially gang related members, whether they are outlaw motorcycle gangs or any other type of gangs involved in serious and organised crime. In some ways, when it comes to outlaw motorcycle gangs, it seems that the report was written by the bikies for the bikies. As a former policeman, that part is fairly embarrassing. You can see what the bikies have done in Australia.

I go back in time to show that outlaw motorcycle gang members have persistently caused havoc, whether that is against themselves or other members of the public. In 1998 a member of the Bandidos was shot dead outside their club headquarters in Geelong. In 1999 two bombings, also in Geelong, targeted the Bandidos. Obviously I am talking about Victoria. In 1999 there was the torture murder of a member of the Comancheros. In 2007—this really haunted Victorians—Christopher Wayne Hudson from the Hell’s Angels fired shots in the Melbourne CBD and killed an innocent bystander. At Sydney airport in 2009, there was the outright show of disrespect for society in general when a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels, was bashed to death in front of people wanting to go on holidays et cetera. It was an absolute disgrace.

I congratulate in particular Assistant Commissioner Harrison from South Australia police. I thought his evidence was first-class. He talked about police and said:

… we traditionally have the investigative focus which is very reactive. We wait for the crime or the criminal activity to occur and then the police put a response strategy in place.

Invariably that has not been overly successful when you look at serious and organised crime, established criminal networks and outlaw motorcycle gangs, because of their composition, structure and culture …

The antiassociation aspect … is all about trying to prevent those associations occurring. We try to disrupt the planning processes and we would like to hope that we then have some impact on preventing crimes occurring within our communities.

On the other side of the argument, if you read the report regarding the outlaw motorcycle gangs you find it is laden with examples of those who do not support it, such as Mr Ray, President of the Law Council of Australia, who said:

Consorting-type offences have attracted a great deal of criticism, particularly from academics, lawyers and judges because they are argued to impinge on the freedom of association.

Again, if you look at the outlaw motorcycle gangs and the United Nations Office of Drug and Crime report on amphetamine and ecstasy and its 2008 global ATS—amphetamine-type stimulants—assessment, when it refers to Australia it specifically refers to two groups: Asian organised crime groups and—guess what the other one is?—outlaw motorcycle gangs. This is a bizarre situation. The committee did go to other countries, and I remember Canada and America in particular. The authorities told us about the outlaw motorcycle gangs and what mayhem they have caused, especially in Canada. Let us look at the first recommendation in the report:

The committee recommends that the ACC work with its law enforcement partners to enhance data collection on criminal groups and criminal group membership, in order to quantify and develop an accurate national picture of organised crime groups within Australia.

This will be the defence to some committee members, who were not convinced about the need to have laws specifically targeting outlaw motorcycle gangs. On numerous occasions—I do not know how many—committee members asked the ACC to provide a national picture of those outlaw motorcycle gang members who have committed murders or been involved in serious crime from state to state to give the committee members a picture of what is actually happening at a national level. Committee members asked the ACC for this information at meeting after meeting and it was never forthcoming.

In defence of the ACC are two very telling aspects. One is that there have been significant cutbacks to the ACC—22 per cent in its staff—and there is also the issue which I have spoken about numerous times: the seconded state members involved in investigations being sent home. So out of 150 it is down to 20. They do not really have enough members at the moment to organise a booze-up in the pub—I had another term, but I thought I would be very polite. That is a really sad state of affairs.

If you go to the Examination of the Australian Crime Commission’s annual report 2007-08 you see:

The Outlaw Motorcycle Gang National Intelligence Task Force (OMCG task force), which was Board-approved,—

that means by all the chief commissioners across the country—

… and formed under the High Risk Crime Groups special investigation determination, expired on 30 June 2008.

It was put together by the previous government 12 months earlier to target and find a national snapshot of what was actually happening with outlaw motorcycle gang members. The government should bow its head in shame because it actually disbanded this group. It is an absolute disgrace, and part of the reason the ACC no longer has members specifically looking at this. How can it supply that information? The annual report continues:

The ACC explained the rationale for the expansion of the Task Force’s jurisdiction:

This brought in these much broader linkages that we were seeing developing in the OMCG context.

If that were the case, I say to the ACC, ‘Why, under this new regime with your new task force, could you not provide the committee members with information about what was happening with the outlaw motorcycle gangs at a national level?’ The simple reason is that there have been government cutbacks on that.

I will give the Australian Crime Commission a huge plug now. The Australian Crime Commission’s Illicit Drug Data Report 2007-08 was absolutely brilliant. That is the sort of report the ACC can do, as opposed to looking at what happened with the OMCGs, because it was probably budgeted for and funded.

Another aspect I have great concerns about is what happens around the world when it comes to other countries dealing with organised and serious crime. I briefly talked about America. They have the Racketeering Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act, otherwise known as the RICO laws. They find this to be the best way to bring down the mafia. It does not work on anti-association laws; it works in reverse. It looks over a period of time and finds all the people working together. If it can be proved that there is a criminal enterprise network for the purpose of committing crimes within their association over a number of years, the law enforcement agencies use the RICO laws to target not the membership but those who have committed the crimes, and it then seizes their assets.

We can look at what happened in Canada. Throughout the 1990s in Quebec—and committee members heard this—they had major problems with the Hell’s Angels war. There were so many people killed. It was an awful state of affairs. They went after the Hell’s Angels with anti-association laws. Sadly, Canada now has a situation where their bill of rights allows freedom of association and they can no longer use the anti-association laws.

The committee recommended that the Australian government, in consultation with regional partners, give consideration to establishing an intelligence fusion centre in the Oceania region. I fully support this. The government talks about getting all of these countries to work together. The Australian Crime Commission’s 2007 annual report gave a huge plug to the Asian Collaborative Group on Local Precursor Control, the ACOG, which met in 2008 with 16 countries attending. But, sadly, the Australian government has removed the funding.

Finally to some good news. I congratulate all members on the unexplained wealth legislation. I see that the member for Werriwa is in the chamber. I know that he has been very passionate about this, as have the committee chair, Steve Hutchins, and Senator Parry and all the committee members. This is a fantastic way of going forward. When we talk about anti-association laws and targeting criminal gangs, the key point is to go after the money. As an ex-police officer, I know that is something we did not do in the past. We heard members of the Italian police say mafia members are happy to spend time in prison but it is their assets that they are greatly concerned about.

If we look at the Northern Territory and Western Australia, through the unexplained wealth legislation they have seized $40 million. There are great concerns, though—and I have a letter from the Australian Federal Police Association. We have to make sure the unexplained wealth legislation is going to be as tough as what everyone hopes, because at this stage it must be linked to a specific federal offence, which I have great concerns about. It is going to be very hard for police to prove that. By the time they have proven that it has a federal aspect, they may as well be charging the person. I believe this should be looked at in the context of persons who have criminal associations and unexplained wealth—basically, where their genuine income is greatly exaggerated. I commend the members of the committee for working together on what was a long inquiry.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not often have the opportunity to follow my colleague from La Trobe. I would normally have some difficulty with his political views but, when it comes to the issue of law enforcement, whilst we may have some differences about the application of federal laws and some elements of constitutionality, I have to say that the member for La Trobe has been very consistent in his fight to ensure that the police officers and other enforcement agencies who represent us are front and centre in the minds of government when it is considering resources. I congratulate the member on his comments.

I would like to continue the remarks I made when this report was introduced in the House. It is a significant report about something that does go unnoticed. It seems to me that great attention has been given, and rightly so, to counterterrorism since 2001. I will come back to this point a little later. We have seen a considerable diversion of law enforcement resources into counterterrorism, not only across Australian law enforcement jurisdictions but across the globe and, in my opinion and certainly in the opinion of others—and I am sure the member for La Trobe shares this view—it has created an opportunity for organised crime and for criminal enterprises to put down their roots in various areas of our society. We need to be conscious and always vigilant of that and we need to ensure that those people who are sworn to protect us have the appropriate tools and resources with which to do their job.

The Prime Minister, in his national security statement to the parliament on 4 December last year, said:

Organised crime more broadly is a growing concern for Australia, one the Government is determined to combat. The Australian Crime Commission has estimated that organised crime costs Australia over $10 billion every year.

The Government will develop two initiatives in the related areas of border management and serious and organised crime …

Second, we will clearly define the role of the Commonwealth in combating serious and organised crime and enhance coordination among Commonwealth agencies.

He went on to say:

We have highly capable police services which respond to a spectrum of challenges from threats to public safety to terrorism; and emergency response organisations that protect the community in our most vulnerable times.

At any time, this country faces a threat from a range of different sources; our respective institutions of state, our people, our economy and even our technologies are placed at risk. In the past, people may have had the view that, if there is a criminal enterprise and there is certain money to be made from it, a criminal will likely be involved. That is true, but the underpinning thing in all this is that there is a monetary value to crime.

One of the less contemporary approaches to modern policing is to evaluate our police services simply on their arrest rates. That is after a crime is committed; and, after every crime is committed, there is a victim of that crime. If I were to follow the theories of defence lawyers, the appropriate application of criminal law is to wait until the crime is committed, prosecute that crime and, should the case be made, record a conviction. But the whole problem with that notion is that there has to be a victim of crime in the first place; the crime must take place. One of the things that we have been agitating for regarding the committee overseeing the Australian Crime Commission is to look at those underpinning models of criminal enterprise itself. Criminals operating out there operate businesses. I will not say that there is no difference between them and any other businessperson out there—they are certainly nefarious and they are there to pursue an illegal enterprise—but they have a for-profit motive in mind; they are there simply to get a return on their capital and they will operate in the areas of least resistance possible. Areas which are overburdened with regulation, where courts are hamstrung in terms of prosecution or where police are perhaps less resourced are all areas of opportunity for criminal enterprise. This is something that the Australian Crime Commission committee has been trying to get out there for some time—that this is not just going through a statistical exercise and working out how many people have been convicted for crimes that have been reported. We are more concerned, on behalf of the community, about how much crime we can prevent, how much criminal enterprise we can disrupt and, by doing that, and by looking at strategies that underpin that, we think we are in a better position to protect the community in the future.

Mr Deputy Speaker, as you are well aware, the committee members had the opportunity to look at some international jurisdictions and contemporary law enforcement, particularly the regulations and laws that underpin their fight against criminal activity, particularly with regard to organised crime. Together with the member for La Trobe and other members of the delegation, I had the opportunity to visit North America, Europe and the UK. From that journey we found five consistent things. We have summarised them this way: the importance of following the money trail, which I will come back to; the need for greater information sharing amongst law enforcement and other agencies within the government and between governments; the benefit of developing measures to prevent organised crime rather than simply reacting to it; the critical role that political will plays in combating serious and organised crime, and I will come back to that as well; and the need for governments to take a holistic approach in tackling organised crime through a whole package of legislative and administrative measures.

When we travelled overseas we found a range of things. The contemporary method of overseas law enforcement agencies is no longer to simply react to crime, because they know they are on a hiding to nowhere, quite frankly. As soon as you put one enterprise down, another is going to spring up in its place. And more often than not the principals behind these various enterprises are in common. Raffaele Grassi, of the Italian national police, put it best when he said criminal members:

… are prepared to spend time in prison, but to take their assets is to really harm these individuals.

As the member for La Trobe will recall, while we were in Italy we were told that there were many members of the mafia who are quite happy to parade around in a T-shirt and not draw attention to themselves by wearing flashy things, gold charms and that sort of stuff. But to pin them down, their assets are not necessarily in Italy; their assets are all around the world.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Justice and Public Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Melbourne!

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for La Trobe, as he volunteers—we will not go to his campaign fund. I withdraw that! It is a fact that these assets are being dispensed internationally. The member will recall that one prominent European jurisdiction that we visited made very clear to us when we asked about what sort of due diligence they imposed for international investment in their country that, unless there was evidence that the money was the proceeds of crime that had been committed in that very prominent country, there was nothing for them to do. In other words, that was a very green light. For anyone who wants to invest their proceeds of crime in hospitals, roads or anything like that, then this country is all but saying it is free for business. They are the things that legitimise criminal engagement; they are the things that legitimise all those things that people want us to stop—crime being peddled on the streets and drugs and all that sort of stuff. If these big fellas out there are earning that sort of money, but can legitimise their assets, protect their criminal empires and go to the most prestigious functions with Prime Ministers—not ours, of course—and other leaders around the globe and in Europe, they are bound to do that. They are the people who underpin the drug sellers on the streets. People out there selling drugs are an expendable commodity. Every time you knock one of those drug dealers over, someone else will take his place. But there are not that many Mr Bigs out there, and they are the ones we have to get to.

I am concerned that in every jurisdiction we visited they all agree that since 2001 there has been a diversion of law enforcement resources into counterterrorism. Clearly, if we have a terrorism event, it would create great damage to the targets and also affect the psyche of the nation. We understand that. We understand that it is a real and live threat and that therefore we need to take measures to meet it. But clearly simply diverting law enforcement resources into counterterrorism should not be seen to ameliorate the position that we need to take against serious and organised crime. That is consistent. It is there and it is a business model. It goes back to what I said a little earlier about a line of least resistance. Maybe these guys are not about to set up some form of jihad, but they might decide to go out and do some credit scams, get into car rebirthing or go into the processing of amphetamines and other drugs.

There is one consistent thing that has emerged when we have talked to each of the law enforcement jurisdictions, and the member for La Trobe will know this from his own experience in Victoria Police. These blokes are not committed; they are not specialists in one particular area. We see people who travel from state to state. They will move from one form of crime into another. It will depend on the return on capital. Just as any other business decision is likely to revolve around that, so their business revolves around it. To that extent, this is why we need to have a consistent national and global position on the way we deal with crime. I am saying that crime in this country moves from state to state and region to region, but clearly it actually moves from overseas and internationally.

I cannot recall the circumstances, Jason, but someone made a comment to us when we were in Europe. Actually, it was the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. They did an assessment. Kevin Rudd says that organised crime is responsible for costing this country $10 billion annually. Across the world, the UN gives an estimated figure that I cannot recall off the top of my head. But, if you were to add it up in terms of all the advanced economies, the criminal empire would come in as the 18th largest economy in the world. On those sorts of statistics, next time we have a G20 meeting we should actually have the don there, because they probably represent a significant portion of wealth. It is at that sort of magnitude.

That is why we are saying that in this country you cannot put your head in the sand and think that you can fix this just by having more coppers out there on the beat and all the rest of it, doing all those things that they have to do out there to ensure the wellbeing and safety of our people on the streets. That is a form of policing. It is also a form of policing to ensure that we are not subject to a terrorist attack, that we have all that intelligence and that we process it. Again, in this day and age, regrettably that is also core business. But it is core business for us to keep our focus on organised crime because, whilst terrorism may or may not occur, if we allow organised crime to flourish then we will be damaged, because their whole business plan is underpinned by the damage that they can wreak not only on people but on our economy. As I say, going back to the Prime Minister’s comments, there is $10 billion annually that flows out of this country into organised crime.

I have probably wandered on long enough, but I commend this report to my colleagues to read. There are some very serious recommendations. The unexplained wealth provisions, I think, are a key tool that should be given to our law enforcement agencies. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mr Briggs) adjourned.