The government is introducing legislation that would prohibit the display of gang insignia in public places. Aside from the wealth of experts suggesting that the law won't make communities safer, it also offers extraordinary powers to the Police Minister to list virtually any organisation as a gang, if they engage (or conspire to engage) in any criminal activity. This will have a chilling effect on civil society, as protest groups regularly break—and conspire to break—the law. I have pasted below an excerpt from my submission to the Justice Select Committee (you should also submit!) outlining some of my concerns that I have with the legislation but let me break it down by you.
The law is aimed at gangs who engage in criminal activity, and has a list of gangs of whose insignia will be banned (and can be ordered to disperse if in public). The list of gangs are laid out in ‘Schedule 2’ and include organisations like the Mighty Mongrel Mob and the Killer Beez. Usual and normal gangs. However, what caught my eye was the power of the Police Minister to add gangs to the list anytime the Minister believes they are engaging, or intend to engage in crime. The Minister can do this through an ‘Order in Council’ essentially, the Minister (and sometimes Cabinet) inform the Governor-General to change the law without any Parliamentary oversight. That means any organisation the Minister deems to be gang can have their civil liberties significantly curtailed.
Now for the excerpt from my submission:
Empowering the Minister of Police to amend Schedule 2 without proper democratic oversight is a part of the wider shift toward Executive overreach and minimising the role of the House of Representatives. It also allows for greater potential abuses of Executive Power. It would allow the responsible Minister to add political or labour organisations to this list of gangs, with no regard for the civil rights of these members. Unlike similar legislation in New South Wales which explicitly prohibits trade unions from being prosecuted under anti-gang legislation, the bill before the House does not. However, it is not just trade unions who could be subject to a Schedule 2 amendment: consider the likes of Greenpeace who routinely break the law as part of a wider civil disobedience campaign. Greenpeace could, by the current definition in the Bill, be classified as a gang: “its members, associates, or supporters individually or collectively promote, encourage, or engage in criminal activity.” Consider if a farming lobby group instructed its members to disregard legislation that dictates grazing activity, or environmental laws and covenants on freshwater. Consider members of political parties who break electoral laws or are investigated and found to be in breach of financing of election campaigns.
I go on to make recommendations to give the House of Representatives greater oversight because without it the Minister could, in theory, add any organisation who breaks the law to Schedule 2. Why does this matter? Well, it is unlikely for a Minister to this kind of action. A government that is reliant on a coalition, for example, would likely crumble if a coalition partner attempted to do this. Similarly, as politicians are vote-seekers they would in theory avoid angering the electorate by impinging on civil liberties. However, it does open room for potential abuse of power. If this legislation existed under the last government, they could have listed Voices for Freedom or Groundswell as gangs in Schedule 2: they were a majority government who seemed not to be interested in re-election, therefore they could’ve used the power of the state to curtail the civil liberties of their political opponents.
This continues a wider trend of power being concentrated in the hands of the government, and generally we should be increasingly concerned at the slow shift of power away from Parliament. I’ve been working on a post on this – out in a few days.