Checking In On Queensland

Remember when we were talking about the new Aussie laws against bikers? Groups declared to be "gangs" by government fiat could no longer hire plumbers, because any plumber who worked with them would have his license pulled. Queensland has started making noises about pushing that concept on lawyers, too. After all, lawyers have licenses that can be pulled, and too many lawyers have been willing to side against the government by defending people charged under these laws:
Not content with upsetting the blue-collar workforce, Queensland premier Campbell Newman labelled members of the legal fraternity involved in defending bikies as:

…part of the machine, part of the criminal gang machine.
Turns out these lawyers are real bad apples.
Mr Newman shocked the legal community last week when he labelled lawyers who represented bikies as “hired guns”.

“They take money from people who sell drugs to our teenagers and young people. Yes, everybody’s got a right to be defended under the law, but you’ve got to see that for what it is,” he said.

“They are part of the criminal gang machine and they will see, say and do anything to defend their clients and try and get them off, or indeed progress their sort of case, their dishonest case.”
What about the plumbers, though? Can the plumbers hire lawyers without being 'part of the criminal gang machine'?

And, by the way, if you could prove these were criminal gangs, why wouldn't you just do that without going after their lawyers and plumbers?

5 comments:

William said...

Hmmm... I had been looking at possibly moving there in a few years. I'm not so sure anymore.
But is it any worse than what's happening Stateside?

William sends.

E Hines said...

Well, after all, intermediation doesn't always make sense. Sometimes it's more cost efficient to cut out the middle man and directly connect up the producer and the buyer.

Oh, wait....

Eric Hines

Grim said...

"But is it any worse than what's happening Stateside?"

It seems like an escalation to me, but getting people to think about that is part of the reason I posted it.

raven said...

The twisted thinking here is exactly the same as the law in the US that holds a landlord responsible if his tenant is a drug user/seller- that somehow the landlord is take on the responsibility of the state, by administering the law, in this case by evicting a tenant. Now if the landlord is so sure the tenant is a lawbreaker, why cannot the police enforce the law?
This is an attempt to side step legal protections by pushing off the responsibilities of the law onto third parties. They should be very concerned about this , as it begs the question why we should bother with the law at all, if it will not shoulder it's responsibility.
"Permits"? We doon need no stinkeeng permits..."

RonF said...

I suppose that the concept that perhaps the main societal issue here is not that these guys are selling drugs illegally but that the sale of drugs is illegal hasn't occurred to them.

Prohibition didn't work in the 1920's and it's not working now. The results are the same - or worse - but no one wants to admit the problem.