I’d like to introduce you, dear reader, to my hometown of Adelaide. Adelaide is a small, very clean city along the South Coast of Australia, to the left and down the road from Melbourne. It is the capital of the South Australian state, and known by many as the city of Churches and Serial Killers. It’s also, coincidentally, the ass end of the ass end of the world. Now for many who have never been to Adelaide, Adelaideans have this tendency to be proud of the fact that Adelaide was the first Australian city to be built without the use of convict labour. According to the history books, Adelaide was intended to be a city where the best of British society was on show, primarily a respect for civil rights. That was until it turned out that politicians can’t comprehend economics.

Now, I’m not out to smear the city. I do enjoy living here and I think it’s an interesting little town. Once you know where to go and what to look you for, you can find so many fascinating shops, stores and galleries. What I am about to do is shatter the illusion that Adelaide is a city built around a fundamental respect for the civil rights of its citizens. You see, little do the Adelaidean public know that during the 70’s, the peak of Oh God, Oh God, the commie pinko’s are here, fever the Police “Special” Branch tasked agents with spying on the Adelaidean citizen, to help detect communists. You can read all about it in this article, although the author has an unforgivable tendency to forgive the system for a problem it created. But then again it’s an article on a government web page, so it’s safe to assume it was put there to make the government look good in some way.

So now we move on to historical point two: the referendum held that proposed to ban and outlaw Communism in Australia. Though this referendum was not inherently an initiative of South Australia, it is ridiculous that such a referendum even be held. The idea was to alter the constitution to allow the Menzies government the ability to destroy the Communist party by declaring their philosophy and organisations constitutionally illegal. So much for freedom of association and freedom of speech. Oh wait, we only have implied rights in the Australian Constitution, our political betters must be thankful of that. It must make their task of magically circumventing their own rules to get their way easier. Although it wouldn’t matter too greatly if there a bill of rights was introduce, for a piece of paper is not going to stop the Political Class from finding a way around it. Case and point, the American government over the last few centuries.

Moving on. So now we fast forward in time to the present. In order for you to understand the next point, I need to explain to you the Australian anti-terror legislation passed a few years ago. In a nutshell, if cops think you’re a threat, they can kill you. If you accidentally fund a terrorist organisation, you can be arrested. If you in someway declare declare support for a terrorist organisation, you can be arrested. Hell, if you’re a foriegn national, you can be deported like Dr Mohamed Haneef – whose name the Australian government has slandered and seems to refuse (like we couldn’t see that coming) to apologise for doing so. Isn’t great how governments find ways to justify their activities even when there is no real purpose for it?

Let us then look at the South Australian Governments, ‘Serious and organised crimes bill’, in all its oppressive glory.

Following traditional form, the South Australian state parliament has transferred the same abhorrent rhetoric used at the national level and applied it to the subject of organised crime within its freedom loving state. Local politicians have been forever talking up the new legislation. The simply statement It’s the toughest in the world care of Attorney General Atkinson has been published and repeated in the media as the jewel in Mike Rann’s crown. Under the legislation the Attorney general has the power to permanently brand organisations ‘criminal’ without any way to appeal the decision. What’s worse is the scope of the legislation means that any organisation, from a small business to a sports club (and maybe critical writers or political opponents) can be named a criminal organisation if one or more members has a prior criminal history – which doesn’t need to be recent. Other members can then be rounded up and arrested based on their association with the convicted crim. Doesn’t that strike you as outrageous? Yeah, well me too. But it seems no one but lawyers, a democratic politician and your civil libertarians understands the full scope of the legislation. What happens when the Attorney General acts in order to quell political dissent, branding anyone involve part of a ‘criminal organisation’? We’ve already seen the global war on terror used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan, then Iraq (which was a blatantly ridiculous statement as Iraq was regime changed based on the American administrations dislike of being disliked) transferred to countless situations. Thousands of innocents are now suffering a minor case of rigor mortis, having suffered a hail of bullets or are temporarily unavailable while they take a prolonged stay within an American prison.

Many objections are raised to this legislation and while many of these objections are fair enough, they’re all inherently statist – looking to replace one statist solution with another. This is understandable in that they are working within a purely statist framework. The anti-state objections to this legislation are obvious – it’s an overblown excuse to grant more powers to greedy, parasitic politicians based off flawed reasoning and a problem that is not as big as the politicians claim it is.

Furthermore, the justification for this legislation is the result of a kind of collective branding. Yes, some bikies are downright psychotic. But many aren’t. The same applies to gang members. I’ve known bikies and gang members, known others that are related or friends with them, and generally they can be considered good people – though some have a curious attitude to life, but we won’t go there. Politicians, such as South Australian Premiere Mike Rann, have claimed that the bikie threat (sound familiar?) is huge and that police must be given the power to defeat them. See now, this pushes me to ask, “If the bikie threat is so big, Mr Politician, sir, wouldn’t that mean that thousands of South Australians know a bikie or other organised crime figure in some way and are more than likely to associate with them more than 6 times a year?” So you can understand that we are presented with a situation that huge numbers of people can be locked up for nothing? Sounds reminiscent of Communist witch hunts, actual witch hunts, terrorist hunts, the war on drugs and the war on whomever is deemend to be causing global warming at the time. What’s worse is that those violent elements within bikie gangs are only going to be driven underground. They’re going to stop wearing their identifiers, start being more careful about when, why and how they commit their crimes and thus make it harder for the friendly neighbourhood copper to do anything. The law of unintended consequences strikes again!

Some may argue that I have a persecution complex, but I think the historical precedents and current issues within my humble city have me justly worried by the possibility of being whisked away at night to some kind of prison camp. If you’re a fellow Adelaidean reading this, I would suggest that you start getting worried too.