Qld: Police given vital tool in organised crime fight

AAP General News (Australia)
08-29-2008
Qld: Police given vital tool in organised crime fight

By Paul Osborne

BRISBANE, Aug 29 AAP - A vital missing piece in the puzzle that is organised crime
in Australia was shifted into place this week.

After decades of inaction because of concerns over privacy and civil liberties, the
Queensland government has finally joined the other states in giving its police the power
to tap telephones.

While Queensland police have been able to tap telecommunications by running joint operations
with national crime-fighting bodies, such operations have largely skimmed the surface
of organised crime.

The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) estimates that of the 97 major organised crime
groups across the nation, about 18 operate in Queensland. And of the 32 crime bodies considered
"high risk", three run their operations out of Brisbane.

According to investigative journalist Bob Bottom, who has made a career out of exposing
organised crime and triggering royal commissions, criminals are thriving in the Sunshine
State.

"There are fairly sort of regular Australian syndicates or groups but a couple are
overseas groups, including the Chinese triads," he says.

"You have the Yakuza from Japan, but more particularly you have outlaw motorcycle gangs
right up along the coast up to the north that are at the heart of the distribution of
drugs.

"You have a little bit of the old Italian mafia, still active in some senses.

"So it's pretty diverse, but they are all interlinked these days.

"The biggest danger for Queensland is it's seen as something of a Florida for the big
syndicates down south.

"They treat especially the Gold Coast as their place in the sun and they come to Queensland,
and not only infiltrate and lift the level of drug traffic in Queensland but often use
it as a base for elsewhere."

One of the reasons organised crime has flourished, Mr Bottom says, is the lack of phone
tapping powers by state law enforcement agencies.

"Some syndicates in Queensland have become entrenched," Mr Bottom told ABC Radio this week.

"They could have been wiped out but are now so entrenched with the absence of phone
taps they were virtually immune."

According to the ACC, organised crime costs Australia around $10 billion a year.

The ACC's investigations in 2006-07 disrupted 51 serious organised crime groups or
significant organised criminal identities and seized $1.6 billion in drugs.

Syndicates make their money through drug trafficking, corruption, violence, fraud,
money laundering and other financial sector crimes.

While some groups are ethnically based - such as South East Asian heroin and amphetamine
traffickers, Romanian and South American cocaine importers and Nigerian fraudsters - others
are linked by similar skills or interests such as outlaw motorcycle gangs.

They are using technology to commit fraud, produce designer drugs, launder money and
trade pornography and firearms.

More and more syndicates are going transnational - making Queensland's phone-tapping
step vital to investigations.

A landmark report released in 2006 by the parliamentary committee overseeing the CMC
set this week's move to introduce phone-tapping powers in train.

"The committee considers that the present position with respect to access to telephone
interception powers by the CMC and the QPS in Queensland is not adequate," the report
said.

"It is of the opinion that to maintain the present position in Queensland would be
to deny the CMC and QPS access to what has proved in other jurisdictions to be an extremely
useful investigation tool."

But while he was supportive of phone tapping, then premier Peter Beattie insisted that
they could not go ahead until the federal government allowed Queensland's unique Public
Interest Monitor to oversee the powers' operation. But then prime minister John Howard
declined to make the changes to commonwealth law to allow it.

With the election of the Rudd government, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh this week convinced
her federal colleagues to allow the PIM's involvement.

The PIM, an independent barrister, will play a role in safeguarding privacy by testing
applications of the phone-tapping powers against the statutory criteria.

However, while police have welcomed the new powers, civil libertarians still have their doubts.

Civil libertarian Terry O'Gorman said it was important for the PIM's powers to be expanded
to allow real-time monitoring of phone taps.

"The Public Interest Monitor should be permitted to inspect the police headquarters
that is operating the telephone tapping powers at any time," Mr O'Gorman said.

"There can be no operational or legal grounds where police can reject that proposal
because the PIM are bound by secrecy provisions anyway."

Queensland Police Union president Cameron Pope says he believes the checks and balances
are adequate and should be put in place as soon as possible.

"This is a tool that's been used successfully through all the other states and now
Queensland finally is in line to do the same thing," Mr Pope said.

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said he first challenged the government to introduce
the laws nine years ago.

"It's a great pity that the Labor government in Queensland didn't take our policy nine
years ago, but nevertheless it's happened ... and we welcome that," Mr Springborg said.

With the laws due to be introduced next year, and work to start shortly on a secure
facility for police, piecing together the evidence to put organised criminals in the dock
will soon get a lot easier in Queensland.

AAP pjo/cjh/de

KEYWORD: TAPPING (AAP NEWSFEATURE)

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