ON YER’ BIKE AGAIN BOYS
Given some of the bikie-related incidents on the Gold Coast in recent times, there is a distinct feeling of here we go again
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TALK about back to the future. Nomads bikies arrested after the discovery of a ute-load of guns and drugs in Carrara. A Comanchero and an associate allegedly bash a bus driver in broad daylight at Surfers Paradise. Politicians throw verbal grenades at each other about proposed changes to motorcycle gang legislation.
And don’t forget alleged bikies partying alongside rugby league royalty.
No, it’s not the Gold Coast circa 2013. These are just a few of the stories to inspire headlines in recent weeks, prompting Flashback to put in a call to a man who played a key role in the great bikie crackdown that played out three years ago.
“I have a very vivid memory of (then Premier) Campbell (Newman) asking me if beach erosion was the biggest issue on the Gold Coast and I said ‘no, bikies are’,” Surfers Paradise MP John-Paul Langbroek recalls.
“Then it took six months before it really blew up.”
That blow-up, of course, was the Broadbeach bikie brawl, the infamous night when a few dozen Bandidos bikies strolled into a packed restaurant to confront a guy they had a grudge with.
The two parties then decided to punch on in front of hundreds of stunned tourists, locals and families before many of them later rocked up to Southport police station as a show of support for their arrested mates.
“It was September school holidays — people were there with little kids,” he says.
“Campbell rang me the next day and the Sunday from China and Japan and in typical ebullient Campbell Newman style, which I certainly appreciated as a local member, he said ‘mate, we are going to do something about this?’.”
What the LNP government did was implement an unprecedented legislative crackdown on criminal motorcycle gangs designed to make life unbearable for bikies. From mandatory jail terms to pink prison outfits, nothing was off the radar and while civil libertarians were outraged, Mr Langbroek says the proof was in the pudding.
“You can’t tell me that if we’d had a review and done nothing that we would have nipped it in the bud as we did,” he says.
“The bikies had obviously come to regard the Gold Coast as their town … the general public like to think the authorities have it under control but it became obvious from that night that the authorities — being the police — didn’t appear to have it under control.
“That one night of defiance was the catalyst for the premier to say we’re going to fix it.”
And what does Mr Langbroek make of the current landscape?
“The gangs have been making an appearance on our streets again,” he says. “I’ve had constituents send me videos of them. They tell me they’ve seen at Burleigh, Broadbeach, Surfers, and we’ve seen incidents in the news over the last couple of weeks.
“(Labor) say they want the toughest laws but are then saying they want a two-year implementation period ... they’re putting their heads in the sand and Gold Coasters are feeling distinctly uneasy about it.”