Lacanian ink and leather ‘down under’: Queensland’s ‘bikie’ legislation and its crimes of fashion

ABSTRACT

Throughout 2013, the then Queensland Government passed an increasingly bizarre series of legislative acts aimed, specifically, at largely Gold Coast based ‘bikies’; that is, local motorcycle club members long notorious for their links with drug traffickers, prostitution rings and organised crime. Consisting of the Criminal Law (Criminal Organisation Disruption) Amendment Act 2013 (Qld), the Tattoo Parlours Act 2013 (Qld), and the hilariously monikered but deadly earnest Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), this statutory troika extensively broadened police authority, potentially empowering Queensland’s ‘blue heelers’ to arrest bikies on grounds as flimsily ‘reasonable’ as wearing a leather motorcycle jacket or sporting a tattoo. Long staples of alternative cultures, leather and ink had effectively become crimes of fashion in Queensland. This article investigates the socio-legal processes involved in Queensland’s uncanny return of the sumptuary laws, the psychic economy underpinning said return. Psychoanalytic notions such as ‘the fetish’, ‘phobia’ and ‘suture’ will be utilised to unpack this demode instance of the ‘politics of the law’.

KEYWORDS:

• Crimes of fashion
• bikies
• psychoanalysis
• criminal law
• law and psychoanalysis

Acknowledgements

This article was first presented as a plenary address at ‘The Laws of Fashion: Between Transgression and Compliance’ Conference held at the Cardozo Law School, New York, NY in March 2015, and sponsored by the Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University (NY) and Parsons/The New School of Design. My thanks to the organisers, my good friends, Professor Jeanne Lorraine Schroeder (Cardozo), and Professor Renata Salecl (Ljubljana/Birkbeck). It was also presented as the closing keynote address of the ‘Law, Temporality, Disruption: The Futures of Law and Society Scholarship’ Annual Conference of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand, hosted by the Legal Futures Centre (Griffith University), the Griffith Law School and the School of Law & Justice, Southern Cross University, held in Brisbane in December 2016. My thanks to the organisers, especially Professor John Flood (Griffith), Prof Deirdre Howard-Wagner (ANU) and Dr Timothy Peters (USunshine Coast). I have also presented this article as seminar to the School of Law & Justice, Southern Cross University. My thanks to my colleague, Professor Bee Chen Goh, for organising this seminar and to my SLJ/SCU colleagues in attendance for their helpful feedback. This article is dedicated to my favourite fashionista, my partner, Pamela Adams, aka ‘Lady P’ – a once and future ‘mod’ for whom London swings, then, now and forever.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

William P. MacNeil is a scholar of jurisprudence and cultural legal studies. He is The Honourable John Dowd Chair in Law and the Dean of the School of Law & Justice at Southern Cross University. He is the founding editor of the book series, Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities and, currently, is chair of the Council of Australian Law Deans.

Notes

1 With its presumably unintended iteration of text-speak’s ‘OMG’ (‘Oh My God’), here OMG’s use (and abuse) neatly captures—and implicitly sends up, satirises and critiques—the tone of moral panic that has overwhelmed debates around Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.

2 ‘Bikie’ is Australian parlance for a motorcyclist. Some, however, would insist on a distinction between illegal ‘bikies’ and legitimate ‘bikers’, the former belonging to OMGs, the latter being law-abiding bike riders.

3 This fracas occurred on 27 September 2013. At one point it escalated into a siege mounted against a local, and understaffed, police station, a la Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). See, for example: Roberston et al. (2013); Stolz (2015).

4 Law Council of Australia, Briefing Note 28 April 2014, esp. [34–47].

5 Annerley is a suburb of Queensland capital city, Brisbane. Like many other inner-city suburbs, for many years it was run-down area with a high proportion of public and low cost housing. More recently, however, it has undergone significant ‘gentrification’.

6 Law Council of Australia (2014), esp. [4, 34]; Robson (2014), [14, 15].

7 The nickname ‘Can Do Campbell’ was attached to Campbell prior to his 2012 election. In fact, it was so well used during the election that the ‘Can Do brand’ was coined. See Bryant (2011–2012).

8 Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), s 5.

9 Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), s 5(1)(c).

10 Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), s 5(1)(b).

11 Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), s 6.

12 Queensland Law Society (2013).

13 Criminal Law (Criminal Organisations Disruption) Amendment Act 2013 (Qld), s 41.

14 Criminal Law (Criminal Organisations Disruption) Amendment Act 2013 (Qld), Sch. 1.

15 Criminal Code Act 1899 (Qld), s 60A.

16 Criminal Code Act 1899 (Qld), s 60B.

17 Tattoo Parlours Act 2013 (Qld), s 74.

18 Liquor Act 1992 (Qld), s 173EA.

19 Liquor Act 1992 (Qld), ss 173EB, 173ED.

20 Tattoo Parlours Act 2013 (Qld), s 75.

21 Criminal Law (Criminal Organisations Disruption) Amendment Act 2013 (Qld), ss 54, 55.

22 Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 (Qld), s. 29 (1A)(b).

23 Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 (Qld), s. 29 (1A)(a).

24 Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 (Qld), s. 29 (1)(b).

25 Wuth (2014).

26 Liquor Act 1992 (Qld), s 173EA.

27 Silva and Remeikis (2014).

28 Wuth (2013a, 2013b); Lauchs (2013).

29 Not that these developments went entirely unchallenged in the courts, a Queensland Hell’s Angel, Stefan Kuczborski having brought an action before the High Court, arguing for the constitutional invalidity of the laws under which these new criminal offences and enhanced police powers were authorised. While noting the wide reach of the statutes in question and the excessiveness of the penalties they imposed, the High Court was loath to pass judgement on the ‘political wisdom’ (or lack thereof) of the impugned laws and drew a sharp distinction between a law’s constitutional invalidity and its harshness. See: Kuczborski v. Queensland [2014]. For a detailed analysis of this case, see: Ananian-Welsh (2015).

30 On this criminologico-aesthetic theme, see two germinal texts: Ferrell (1996) and Katz (1990).

31 See, for example, Mick Edwards’ The Black Leather Jacket (1985), subsequently made into a Channel 4 documentary on British television, Black Leather Jacket (1989). For the longue duree of men’s fascination with black-coloured fashions, leather or otherwise, see John Harvey’s Men in Black (1995).

32 Consisting of Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).

33 ‘Tom of Finland’ is the nom-du-plume of Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen (1920–1991). In the years following WW2, Laaksonen produced thousands of homoerotic fetish illustrations (which illustrations are easily located on the internet). His work reached the USA during the 1960s via mail order and he became of counter-culture hero of gay liberation. Laaksonen’s life (and legendary aesthetic) is portrayed in the biopic Tom of Finland (2017). See Cochrane (2014), Needham (2017).

34 Mannoni (2003).

35 For his two principal treatments of fetishism, see Freud (1915, 1927).

36 Lacan (1955–1956, 1956–1957, 1956, 1958, 1977).

37 Miller (1996).

38 Zizek (see esp. 1992b).

39 See especially Lacan (2014).

40 Freud (1915, 1909).

41 Liquor Act 1992 (Qld), ss 173EB, 173ED.

42 Field (2014) ‘Queensland anti-bikie laws threaten work licences of 200 electricians, union says’, ABC News, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-10/tradies-could-lose-licences-under-queensland-anti-bikie-laws/5195116.

43 Viellaris (2014).

44 The regulatory schemes of various mainstream industries (including electrical trades, the construction industry, the racing industry, second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers, security, and tow trucks) were amended by The Criminal Law (Criminal Organisations Disruption) and other Legislation Amendment Act 2013 (Qld). The amendments ‘prohibit people, who may never have been accused on any wrongful conduct on the basis of their alleged associations’: Cappellano (2014), 120.

45 The Hon Campbell Newman (Premier) and The Hon Jarrod Bleijie (Attorney General and Minister for Justice) (2013). ABC News (15 October 2013); ‘Bikies only prison is planned under new Queensland laws’ ABC News (2013).

46 Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), s 3; Criminal Code Act 1899 (Qld), s 60A.

47 For a wide-ranging collection on this topic, see Phobia: A Reassessment edited by Sian Morgan (2003).

48 Ranging from Brisbane’s Albion to West End, as well as, up and down the State, all the alphabetic locales in between: eg Caloundra, Kingaroy, Moorooka, Noosa, and Townsville (CL(COD)AA, Sch 1, s3.

49 Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 (Qld), s. 29(1A).

50 Police Powers and Responsibilities Act 2000 (Qld), s. 29(2).

51 Liquor Act 1992 (Qld), ss 173EB, 173ED.

52 Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), s 4.

53 Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment Act 2013 (Qld), s 5.

54 Lacan (2014).

55 Sontag (1965).

56 Goldsworthy (2013). Also, the Report of the Queensland Organised Crime Commission of Inquiry (2015) notes that ‘in the 21 month period from 1 October 2013 to 30 June 2015, outlaw motorcycle gang members accounted for only 0.52 percent of criminal activity in Queensland’ p 2.

57 Freud (1909).

58 Lacan (1956–1957).

59 Parliament of Australia (2012).

60 Gallop (2012), The Brisbane Times (2009).

61 Barry (2012), Sheehan (2012).

62 Aristodemou (2014).

63 Zizek (1992b, 2001).

64 Lacan (1955–1956, 1956–1957, 1958, 1977).

65 Zizek (1989).

66 Zizek (1992a), Salecl (2000), Schroeder (2008, 2009), Hourigan (2015).

67 Davies (2012, 2017).

68 This headline was used by Independent Australia on 21 January 2015 to rebadge Terry Goldsworthy (2015a, 2015b).

69 Marx (1852).

70 Freud (1909).

71 Lacan (1956–1957).

72 Miller (1966).

73 The Fitzgerald Inquiry (1987–1989) is the short title of the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct. Presided over by Tony Fitzgerald QC, it was a judicial inquiry into Queensland Police corruption.

74 Galloway and Ardill (2014), Law Council of Australia (2014), Queensland Law Society (2013).

75 Burke and Howells (2014).

76 Eaton (2015); Kos (2016); ‘Tim Carmody controversy: timeline’ (2015).

77 Alan Wilson (2015).

78 Parliament of Australia (2015).

79 The Taskforce Report recommended the repeal of many of these laws—VLAD in particular—as ‘excessive, disproportionate or unnecessary’, p. 3. Interestingly, it argued for preserving some elements of the bikie laws in order to combat OMGs. All of which suggest that Queensland’s bikie law saga is not over yet, and its final act remains to be seen.

80 Davis (1998, 1999).

81 Chiesa (2008).

82 See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952). ‘Look, a Negro!’ are among the first words of ‘The Fact of Blackness’, the central text of the book.

83 Lacan (1969).