WHERE WAS SECURITY?

In the aftermath of the bikie war at busy Sydney airport Sunday afternoon yesterday – with a man being beaten to death at the Qantas check-in area – one question stands out like the proverbial dog’s balls:  Where was security?

A gang of fifteen to twenty bikies rampaged through the terminal knocking people flying, including children and a baby in a pram, before bashing a rival to death with metal bollards in front of hundreds of people. And then leaving by taxi!

What if it had been a terrorist attack? Were the airport security staff too busy checking passengers’ briefcases for bombs and confiscating bottles of perfume.

Where were the airport guards? The sky marshals? New South Wales Police? As I understand it the only person detained at the scene was the unconscious bikie who died from head injuries. He was a 28-year-old Hell’s Angel who had just flown to Sydney from Melbourne with his brother.

The bikie gangs involved in recent violence in Sydney –including more gunshots in suburban streets last night—are the Bandidos, the Hell’s Angels, the Comancheros and a breakaway group called  Notorious.

The very public airport attack in a supposedly high security area, with CCTV cameras everywhere, came at 1.30p.m.  only 12 hours after six houses were fired at in suburban Auburn.

The Angels clubhouse was bombed in February. Bikie gangs have been in the headlines in recent times more than at any period since the Milperra Massacre in Sydney twenty years ago when eight bikies and an innocent teenage girl were shot dead in a hotel parking lot gun battle.

Most of the recent wars have been over the amphetamine trade and territory. There have been shootings in Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Geelong. There have been links between bikies and football players like  the Eagles’ Ben Cousens and  Collingwood’s Alan Didak.

There has been multi-state criticism of Police policy for not being tough enough on bikie gangs. For treating their clubhouses as virtual ‘no go zones’.

Only in South Australia where nightclub shootings were almost epidemic has tough anti gang laws been brought in.  After yesterday’s airport chaos NSW Police Minister Tony Kelly has promised to ‘throw every resource’ into the investigation and has foreshadowed new laws to stifle the clubs’ illegal operations.

Right now, as shown yesterday, the bikies are laughing. The laws don’t apply to them.

Monday, March 23 , 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009