Starting a moral panic about bikies is Premier Campbell Newman's transparent ploy to take attention off his increasingly disliked Queensland LNP Government. Ynes Sanz comments.
APPARENTLY, the Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and his cronies would like the community to believe that the parliament needs to cower in fear behind locked doors in anticipation of an armed attack.
If the current posturing of the political right were not so damaging to ordinary people’s lives, this absurdity would be amusing.
As reported in The Australian on 4 October:
… public servants were instructed to observe tighter security measures as a result of the bikie crackdown, and the front gates of State Parliament were locked, and public tours suspended.
In an email headed "State Law Security Alert" sent by the Government Accommodation Office, workers were advised of the changes "because of measures to bring criminal gangs to justice".
It’s not as if we haven’t seen the model before.
It goes like this:
The government sets up a target that allows it to fan the flames of a public fear, based on some isolated incidents, then creates a larger-than-life legend around the target.
Once inflated, the chosen ‘threat to society’ can be more gloriously subdued by the might of ‘the forces of good’ that, we are supposed to believe, is what conservative governments are. This lets the party in power and its leader bask in a glow of ‘law and order’ virtue, aided by a police service that is understandably pleased to get a few brownie points on the chance of earning a useful budget increase.
Today, it’s the bikers in the frame again, but the ‘startling new facts’ that the politicians and main stream media are breathlessly spruiking are the same recycled stories we’ve been hearing for years.
When I was a student at Queensland University, the straw men that the conservative government of the day said were the threat to society were labelled ‘Communists’ and ‘Communist sympathizers’. The current Queensland political rhetoric substitutes the words ‘bikers and ‘biker associates’, but the political game is the same.
For my idealistic young friends and I, that political game meant being exposed to nonsense in the media about ‘reds under the beds’ and ‘Communists eating babies’. In daily life, we were subjected to intimidation and harassment, well documented now with the release of ASIO files. Like many others, we had our phones tapped, we were followed through the streets of Brisbane and photographed and generally hounded as we pursued our quiet and law-abiding lives. Later, as young professionals starting family life, my husband and I more than once arrived at work to find we had been summarily dismissed as a result of a federal police tip-off.
Whatever the next target group might be, this kind of persecution, and its corollaries in the formal and informal police directives and legal provisions and action developed to implement it, have no place in Australian society. Further, the lessons of history reinforce the fundamental truth that justice is never served by selecting one group to symbolize the evils in any society.
The presumption of innocence extends beyond its legal definition. Those in power have chosen to forget that anyone should be treated with respect unless there is proof that they do not deserve it. Surely the social costs of stereotyping don’t need spelling out?
The selection of a suitable target group by those in power can not primarily be seen as a genuine desire to see wrong-doers face justice, since it is tainted by being politically-motivated and probably class-driven.
It is a truism that many iconic groups within Australian society, including the Defence forces, the clergy, the Reserve Bank, CEOs of respected corporations, sportsmen and parliamentarians, contain within their ranks people who have knowingly committed criminal acts and who use the organization as an enabling platform for their activities.
As an example, using Liberal governments’ logic about damage control, emerging case statistics about child abuse and reports of attempts to pervert the course of justice suggest that a case could be made to curtail the activities of the Catholic Church.
'New South Wales Police have been accused of complicity in a Catholic Church bid to limit the release of incriminating evidence about child abuse.'
Indeed, if similar dossiers had been compiled about any other identifiable group, draconian steps would almost certainly have been taken long before now
Unlike motorcycle club members, many of these wrong-doers are not highly-visible and can operate under the radar.
"Don’t you know who I am?" says an MP, put on the spot after a night out.
"Don’t tell," the churchman suggests to the police.
"Just a bit of fun," say the footballers.
The Police Service, too, includes its share of cowboys brought up in the old culture, nostalgic for the days when it was called the ‘Police Force’ — who like to get a bit physical occasionally.
Despite the efforts of the politicians and the press to whip up anxiety levels in the community, most people understand that ‘biker clubs’ and ‘organised crime’ are not interchangeable terms. Hysterical claims – such as the latest suggestion that it is necessary to padlock the gates of the parliamentary precinct to keep out armies of marauding bikers – are an insult to the intelligence of the community at large.
Most of us can be tolerant enough to give the majority of priests, who we recognize in public from their clothing, the benefit of the doubt that they uphold the laws both of the land and their god. In the same way, we can be tolerant enough to allow the law-abiding majority of groups such as bikers, similarly readily recognizable in public, to live without harassment.
In considering high-handed government tactics, the phrase "what would Putin do?" comes to mind*. Setting up straw men is just one of the tactics this ex-KGB bully boy uses.
In tackling political fallout from the Pussy Riot case, ironically, Putin apparently found it expedient to defend the church. It seems that Putin, too, is a leader who finds it useful to cynically exploit bikers to enhance his political standing.
However, he does it in a rather more creative way according to a recent UK article:
The Kremlin needs the bikers, and movements like them … Putin’s popularity is at an all-time low: an approval rating of 60 per cent is high for a democracy but in a system built around one man it raises eyebrows. Apathy rules: only 30 per cent bothered to vote in the Moscow mayoral elections. The system needs new stars and the Night Wolves are just the type that’s wanted.
In his own inimitable style, Putin seems to have joined forces with Russian bikers, the Night Wolves, filled their coffers with state money, then wound them up and set them off in his chosen new direction, morphed into some kind of personal avenging Viking Christ-clan.
Good luck to Messrs Newman et al if they think they have enough muscle to try something like that.
* As used in ABC TV’s The Gruen Transfer.
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