New bikie laws target law-abiding citizens as well as criminals

Just your average law-abiding biker ... Source: News Limited

Ms Cripps rides a Honda CBR 600 SuperSports, which looks nothing like the big clunky machines that outlaw bikies favour.

But she was pulled over by police and put through what she remembers as a bout of "contempt and disrespect" simply because she was on a bike. She says, "It was quite intimidating."

She had not broken any law.

That incident was in Hobart. Ms Cripps, an executive member of the Australian Motorcycle Council representing recreational riders, has told police and politicians that worse is happening in Queensland.

She and other recreational biker groups went to Brisbane for talks yesterday which she hoped opened the eyes of Police Minister Jack Dempsey and Deputy Police Commissioner Brett Pointing.

There was one breakthrough. The police confirmed that new Queensland laws to combat criminal bikie gangs had led to harassment of innocent recreational bikers.

Riders were pulled over not for traffic offences, but because police had to check in case the criminal bikies had doffed their distinctive colours and switched bikes to carry out their vile business.

This admission of a problem which previously had been denied or ignored showed how loopy things have become in Queensland: Police can stop people and search and interrogate them simply on the basis of their choice in transport.

The government of Premier Campbell Newman is grandstanding on promises to end bikie gang crime and won't accept criticism coming from lawyers, the judiciary, the Human Rights Commission, and now ordinary "civilian" riders, as to the harm this is causing others.

Ms Cripps attended the meeting with representatives of Ulysses Club (minimum membership age 40), and the military based Patriots (Aim: "to make ALL motorcycle loving service personnel welcome in their new posting, assist & guide them in their welfare, administration & social needs, including family members" ).

None of them is a proscribed group; all fear the precedent for harassment being set in Queensland might spread to other states.

These and others, such as the HOGs - the Harley Owners' Group - can tell of unwarranted police attention including threats of fines for invented bike mechanical defects unless information on criminals - which riders didn't have - was not forthcoming.

The best Commissioner Pointing could offer was a suggestion that when clubs went on a run they told police first. It was an admission that otherwise there could be stop-and-search without genuine cause.

"We're looking at a strategy where you can register your rides," he said.

At least one group thought that would be acceptable.

"As long as it means that down the track we're not going to have to register every time we get our bikes out of our garages," Garry Luxmoore from the Gasoline Alley Harley Owners Group was reported as saying.

Eva Cripps did not agree.

"The motorcycle is a legal form of transport and it's unacceptable that people would have to ring the police to tell them they are going for a ride," she told news.com.au.

But in Queensland this intrusion into basic rights is framed as a concession by police. That's how serious matters have become.

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