No doubt whatsover the VLAD (Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment) laws have worked to curb outlaw bikie gang crime and put the gangs out of business across Queensland.
Premiers in other states, including Labor's Jay Weatherill in South Australia, in past times have heaped praise upon former Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie for his political fortitude and gutsy determination to take the fight up to outlaw bikie gangs, when most other politicians would have wimped out.
Before the VLAD laws were enacted, the outlaw bikie gangs were literally "the untouchables", a law unto themselves. Not even seasoned cops were game enough to go near them most of the time for fear of their life or violent retribution against themselves and family members.
They're ruthless criminals who have always been bankrolled from the proceeds of organized crime, primarily the racketeering of narcotics and weapons.
Notably the VLAD laws have done much good to greatly cull the methamphetamine trade across Queensland and have a lot of riff raff involved in manufacturing ice or distributing that wicked drug brought to justice. Outlaw bikie gangs and ice certainly do have a tangible association.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has never indicated or suggested that Labor wants to go soft on outlaw bikie gangs, and never said straight out that her government has any wanton agenda to scrap the VLAD laws altogether. But the Attorney-General, Yvette D'ath, has been somewhat more lukewarm in her commitment to retaining the VLAD laws or at the very least, the overall framework of them.
It's fair to say that the current VLAD laws review could easily be seen as paving the way for the laws to be completely watered down to appease a small army of anti-cop civil libertarians forever loyal to Labor and forever hateful of the LNP on purely political grounds, minus any form of objectivity and rationale.
The onus is certainly on Yvette D'ath to prove that Labor is sensible and responsible enough to not use the VLAD laws to play politics for the sake of scuttling what was in essence one of the best legislative undertakings of the Newman government, and in the process, allow outlaw bikie gangs to rise up again in Queensland.
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