July 20, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of Real Crime with Adam Shand, we reconnect with Tom Mackie — a founding member of the Descendants Motorcycle Club, who speaks candidly from inside immigration detention. Tom reflects on the club’s rebellious beginnings, brushes with the law and eventual transformation into a family-centered, motorcycle-racing brotherhood. He discusses the controversial anti-association laws, his High Court battle for civil liberties, and the crushing reality of facing deportation after more than 50 years in Australia.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appoche production Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand I'm
your host Adam Shand. I met Tom Mackeye in two
thousand and eight during a moral panic about outlaw bikers
in South Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
As part of the government crackdown. The Pinks were the
first biker club in the country to be declared a
criminal organization.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Then Premier Mike Ran had enacted anti association laws he
believed would destroy the clubs. South Australian Premier Mike Ran
introduced the Serious and Organized Crime Act, which he described
as the world's toughest anti bike laws. Tom and his
brother Perry had founded the Descendants club back in the
nineteen seventies. They'd come from New Zealand as teenagers with
(00:53):
the spirit of rebellion. The club survived a crackdown by
police in the seventies, but several members fell into the
drug trade and ended up in prison, including Tom, Hiding
and Plainside.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Police said storefront was a bikei club house used.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
By members of the Outland motorcycle gang the Descendants. He
emerged determined to return the club to its freedom seeking roots.
When Ran tried to ban the clubs, Tom and other
bike has got together to challenge the laws before the
High Court, which declared them unconstitutional. The descendants are a
declared outlaw motorcycle gang, and the brothers played a prominent
(01:29):
role in fighting the state's harsh anti bikey laws. After
that success, Tom and Perry went back to a quiet life,
which mainly involved raising their families and enjoying club life.
But then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton had other ideas.
In December twenty twenty, Tom and Perry were arrested and
placed in immigration detention, penning their deportation to New Zealand
(01:53):
for failing the character tests.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Tom and Perry Mackie are being sent back to New
Zealand fifty two years after emmigrating. Her visas torn up
due to bad character and in.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
June twenty twenty five they now face imminent deportation after
exhausting all legal avenues and Tom joins me from broad
Meadows Detention Center.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Get it Tom, Yeah, good evening, Adam.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
How you doing good mate? It's days away now after
four and a half years of waiting. What's the next step.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, look, we're just pushing as much stuff as we
can directly through to the Minister you know, personal pleas
from the family to relook at our case, perhaps you know,
a late endtervention. In the likely event that he's going
to do that, then we're just faced with having to
comply with it, go with the deportation, and then you know,
(02:48):
while sitting off shore, I hope that somewhere on the
line in the future there's an adjustment to the directions
that sort of work around this act and we can reapply.
I mean, technically speaking, there's always an avenue to reapply
for a visa to come back in the country. But
technical normally deportation is pretty much the end of it,
and not not many people have the success after that.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Because you and Perry have raised big families in Australia.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, like ten kids between us, twenty two grandchildren,
three great grandchildren married to Australian woman for you know,
in relationships for over forty years. Five generations you know,
from my mum and dad Australian citizens down to my
great grandchildren. So you got five generations over fifty five people,
(03:33):
all Australians bar two of us who were only permanent residents.
So we were the odd two out.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah. People will be saying why didn't you apply for citizenship?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, Look, one of those things, isn't it. It's never
suggested to you. It's not a part of any criteria
where you know, if the government come to you and said, look,
we decided that, you know, after ten years, twenty years
as a permanent resident, there should be a progressive pathway
to citizenship. Never were asked. When our parents and our
sister got citizenship, they got the papers as we said, Yah,
(04:02):
I don't know, we'll do that a bit later, got
back to it, and that's you know, it's just one
of those things because there's no need to do it.
There's no real impetus. Never felt like it was urgent,
so we didn't never bother.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Your last conviction was how long ago?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So just over forty five years ago since I last convicted.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And what was that?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
For narcotic possession? Yeah, the result of an operation run
by the SA Drug Squad. At the time, they had ways,
ways and means our secure and convictions. But as happens,
they stand up in court and the conviction stands. You know,
whether it was absolutely as framed or not.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Because we've talked about that in the past, that you
believe you were loaded up with some heroin back in
the day.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately the word of one me against six
police or two in the actual action, but four that
were part of the visit that day. The corroborating power
of senior police is always going to outweigh the word
of a defendant in a court case. It's well know,
and in those days it was a well practiced methodology
(05:08):
by police to get secure convictions, and many times came
unstuck in lots of ways in course of appeal and
raw commissions and all sorts of things. But of course,
just as many times, the conviction stuck. And in my case,
that's stuck.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Because something happened to you while you were in jail.
Your heart changed. You realized you couldn't beat the system,
and you decided that you were going to change your
club from one that was had a criminal focus to
one that was really centered around the motorcycle.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well that's had It's a return, isn't it. You know?
I mean, you know, we all go around in circle.
So you know, you wander off with a little bit
of a venture in lots of ways, behavior, you know,
all sorts of ways, and then you bring it back around.
So when the club had a bit of a run
with the Biking Squad at the time, and they use
the methods as they used to get the convictions they
need to justify, you know, ends justify the means. Yeah,
(05:58):
there's only one way to sort of separate yourself, and
that that stepped back from it a little bit, you know,
let them move on, and of course by doing that,
you really returned to what you were doing before, which
was for us, it was motorcycle racing and when that
was our passion, that's what our sort of life story is,
racing from little dirt bikes, you know, when we're first
old enough to buy them, and then through to drag racing,
and then spent the next twenty twenty five years traveling
(06:20):
around Australia racing motorcycles and working on them, and you know,
returning to the sort of the fun, more fun part
of what we were doing. So you know, that was
pretty easy to return to something that you enjoyed. It's
not even like you're departing a style of life into
something totally different. It's just a return and that's what
I guess that's the true form of rehabilitation, and that
(06:42):
you go back to the behavior that didn't get you
in trouble and keeps you out of trouble. And it
was pretty simple formula.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Because you as president, what standards were you now enforcing
in the membership of the club. There was only one chapter,
by the way, there was an avalaide that was it. Yeah,
so you could keep an eye on the members.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, that's right, And we didn't have a hierarchical role
as such. Did let experience drive decision making. So as
an original member and you know, you try and set
direction as you were an older brother, a father figure,
or even just a part of a group. So so
it was more a consensus, you know, to sort of
move from people getting sick of getting hounded to just
(07:23):
sit back a little bit. Do some motor bike racing
police squads move on different clubs, different themes, you know,
sort of rise up, particularly in the motorcycle scene. Over
the years, it evolved into a different structure and a
different perception and everyone has of it now. But it
was easy for us to stay here the way we were,
being small club, family based, single chapter, one town, pretty
(07:46):
easy to not be affected by international national trends or compulsions.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Some some groups would have to operate, you know, in
a way that's set by somewhere else. We never had that,
so you know, to sit back, go motor boat racing
pretty easy because we weren't getting pulled or dragged in
any other directions.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
But the one percent tag, which yeah, delineates clubs that
have that tag from other social clubs.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, we'll look at the handy label that's been tagged
onto people. Because the original days of all the motorcycle
clubs in Australia, I don't think any, if and if
any did, there were few and far between actually identified
with a one percent tag. All wore it. It was
an americanism and it evolved and unfortunate. It's one of
those things where the more you're accused of one percent
of a different for everyone else and one percent identify
(08:35):
as an outlaw. Then it actually followed suit that lots
of clubs started actually wearing a one percent badge because
that's what they were told it was expected of them
in the media. So, you know, the media narrative drives
a lot of stuff. If you tell a certain group
of kids that this is what they're being accused of,
you know half of them will go do it because
that's what's expected, and clubs did a bit of that,
(08:55):
you know. So the one percent thing in our early days,
the one percent thing meant nothing. It was an americanism,
and you'll find every senior member from the seventies would
probably take that from most clubs. Some grabbed it quickly
and evolved with it and run with it and made
it a part of their thing, and then everybody did,
almost everybody did, and then the police and the authorities
(09:16):
lashed onto it as ah, there's the identifier, that's what
makes them different. Well, once they started saying it, everyone
started believing it. Whereas, like I say, you go back
to the old photos of nineteen seventy two, seventy three,
seventy four, big club runs where all the clubs are there,
you won't find a one percent badge there anywhere, very rare.
No one cared about it, police didn't care about it.
(09:36):
It wasn't a political identifier, and we didn't wear them.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Because it's become synonymous with crime, and all the clubs
are tagged with it. You've got forty one clubs, but
really there's only a handful of clubs that are even
in the media these days being involved in organized crime,
Yet all of you get tagged with the same idea
because of the one percent bags you wear.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, well that's what you know. There's been a handy tool,
didn't it for labeling. There's been a very handy tool
for law enforcement that want to market a product of
you know, create fear. And we've got the solution. Just
give us more resources. And so if you've got ten clubs,
they are always in the headlines, and thirty that no
one's ever heard of. But you can create some legislation
that covers all forty. You know, you've cultivated quite a
(10:20):
big range of potential arrests atistics without the actual justification.
Just say they're all one percent, as they must all
be criminals. And no matter what we say, and no
matter what the stats you get, Professor Goldsworthy and all
these criminologists come on and go and talk to all
over all commissions and all the commissions of inquiry and go, hey,
(10:41):
fifty two percent you know on our stats. Crime Commission
will tell you there's fifty two to fifty five percent
of them. I've got criminal records, So what's this criminal organization?
Through and through? It's not real in the stats, absolutely
not real.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah. I wrote a book back in the day called
out Laws. I looked at the level of bikey crime
occurring in society and it was low level. Really what
it was low level in the States, you guys get
all the publicity. I looked at it recently, it really
hasn't changed much despite all the publicity and some of
these very high profile clubs getting involved in some pretty
upscale organized crime, drug importation and so forth. The average
(11:16):
biker is still a busted ass guy with his motorbike, house,
a little family, and he's not a mister b No.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
No, it's look it it's a membrane between you know,
motorcol groups, people in the community that are involved, and
the transfer of people just mingling, you know, using their
club membership for what they get out of that that's
good for them, and then also having a sideline of
criminal endeavor. And you know that goes on in all workplace.
(11:46):
You know, not everybody in every workplace is using that
workplaces as the crush for their activity. It's just it's
just a part of their life. So I've certainly seen
in my time that the vast majority of blokes I
know and kick around with and have met and other crews,
you know, and days are all about you know, brother,
good fun, family, motor boat riding and all the good
(12:07):
stuff is plottin the scheme that must go on if
you're supposed to be one hundred percent and only exists
for crime. I don't think that's a truism in any
group at all. It's just an exaggeration that law enforcement
pedal to create a climate where they can get more
resources because they've created the fear that this is what's happening.
I don't see it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So what have you been doing since you gave up
crime at the seventies, all those years ago? What have
you been doing doing a living?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah? Well, just make we take on jobs that you've
got a skill out or a trade at. You know,
most of the boys a tradesman, and that I've always
worked on motorbikes, and to spend the last twenty five
years as a rigger, you know, working entertainment rigging, putting
up shows and you know entertainment centers and on navles,
big day outs, all that sort of stuff, hanging all
the speakers and the lights and working out those sort
of things where you set up the show and then
(12:54):
you watch it. For nothing, and then you pull all
apart at the ends a good gig.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
So you're not driving a Ferrari, you don't live with
a mansion, you don't get around like that.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Nah, that's right. You know, it's one of those things
in where they're only going to pull the one or
two or the five or six out of every group
of people that have got that sort of profile and
then cast it as being this is an average it's not.
You know, it gets out of the honesty. And I mean,
you're never going to get absolutely honesty from law enforcement
because it's not their interest. They're not going to go
(13:24):
to the meter and say, look, you know, yeah, we
know this club pretty well. They got four or five
boys that get up to a bit. Now the others know,
we've got no problem with them. There are many members
of many clubs that have never been raided by police,
never been hassled by them. They have no interest in
them because they do nothing. Then you see them on
a TV present if you're going these guys are all
criminals down and he exists for crime, and you know
(13:47):
that's just a plete and exaggeration and lie to perpetuate
better resource funding. It's nothing to do with the truth.
But how do you prove it? You know, we can't
prove that. We can just say, well, in my case,
forty five years without him arrest. I don't know from
most normal people that would suggest with the amount of
police attention that we get in terms of observation, supervision,
(14:10):
interacting with us on our rides and runs and stuff.
You're thinking forty five years with that sort of observations
on us, you wouldn't get away with much. And yet
there's no convictions. So what about the benefit of the doubt,
or maybe there's no convictions because there's nothing to convict for.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It certainly caused you a lot of grief, this membership
of a club. I remember talking to one BIKEI back
in the day in Adelaide, saying to him and all,
with trouble and strife that he was facing, maybe you
should take up golf as a hobby rather than motorcycles.
Have you ever considered giving it away completely, just stepping
away from it.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well, you know, we get to the stage, like in
our club particularly and most clubs, where you get to
a retirement age. You know, whether that's locked in on
a formal idea or whether it's just you pick a
time when you know you're too old to pick up
your bike that falls over, or you're too old to
ride it all day and can't walk for the rest
of the day. And so if you can't actually complete
your club runs and stuff like that, anything out, it's
(15:04):
pretty much time to hang up my hat and just
you know, so good o the boys now and then
go down for a beer at the clubhouse. And that's
That's got a whole variety of how you go about that.
Every club's different, and in fact most clubs are quite
private about that. There's all sorts of stories that permeate
through the media that you got to pay your way
out and you lose your bike, and there's all sorts
to carry on you can never leave or rubbish, you know,
(15:25):
look at all absolutely because if you have been a
really good mate and a really good club member for ten,
twenty thirty forty years and your back is so bad
you can't ride your bike, what your club's going to
cripple you financially because you want to leave, Like really,
I mean, the brotherhood doesn't extend of compassion for a
bloke that's actually at the age where it's actually dangerous
(15:46):
for them to be on a run and it doesn't happen.
People just get Look, you know where you go, come
down when you want. Yes, you come for a ride
when you want. You can keep your colors in the
wardrobe if you want. Because you're an honorable member. You're
left on good standing. We don't require that you handle
back there. And just like the military, you retire from
the military, you get to keep My dad add he's
(16:06):
an Avy uniform in the wardrobe my whole childhood, So
you got to keep his uniform so I can retire
and keep mind the police will not believe you.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
But you did see some clubs go down this gangster path,
and whether it's conforming to media portrayals or criminal opportunities,
I don't know. But things did change and some clubs
were the worst offenders for this sort of stuff and
brought heat on the others.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah. Look, and that's you know, you're going to get
that across all facets of all things, aren't you. It
doesn't really matter. If that's where a trend heads and
the type of people that like the look of that
trend go to those groups, then of course that's where
it's going to go. Nothing's going to change that, and
if police action comes in and it's targeted, then of course,
(16:56):
as they did in the seventies where they like your
squads in the day there as you were very targeted.
You know, they actually went after the personalities rather than
convinced legislators to just give us a big broad brush.
In that way, we can jar them all for knowing
each other, they actould come out and court. So in
our club at the time, a couple of us went
to jail, but a whole lot didn't because they weren't
doing anything. But now they'd all go to jail just
(17:18):
for knowing the guys that did. So it's a broad
brush approach from legislation that's actually made the crime wave
as such much bigger than it really is, because now
we can all go to jail for knowing each other,
whereas once on a time you had to go to
jail for doing something not knowing someone. So I think
that has played into it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Because you got through the consorting law era in the
seventies where people could be jail for simply hanging out
with other people with criminal records, and we thought that
was finished. It was a very corrupt piece of legislation.
That gave police too much power and created a whole
raft of informers. That was a very healthy situation, and
most states got rid of it, but we saw nearly
(17:57):
two thousands this returned in the form of anti association
laws and it was targeted at other clubs. How much
yours directly, But no, you made yourself a target by
unifying the clubs in a sense, by creating the United
Motorcycle Council to oppose the legislation.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah. Well, I mean, as it stands, when you're an
older guy, and especially in the club seeing you've been
around a long time, you know and know well a
lot of the older original members of all the other clubs,
no matter what they've morphed into, and so those friendships
come from personality friendships. And so then when there's actually
a combined action where you think, look, let's all get
together and you know, what are we going to do
(18:41):
about this? Is it worth hiring some lawyers and have
a bit of organized resistance to this legislation because it's
going to affect our workplaces, it's going to affect our
poker runs and stuff like that, you know, normal lawful activity.
It's going to impact that we probably should get some
legal minds on this. So rather than one club were
at all, why don't we just unify and do some
raffles and bikes and do some stuff to raise some
(19:02):
money to hire the legals that can do it. Do
you go to you go to the friends you know
from other clubs that you've known for ten years, twenty years,
thirty and you have a friendly relationship with, so that
can easily be and was labeled as a unification of
all the gang leaders the sky's falling in? Or was
it really just a bunch of old guys that have
known each other a long time from each club come
(19:23):
together because they can actually peacefully talk and discuss intelligently
motors operandi to actually try and defend the lifestyle, which
is actually what it really was. But the pits as
it once again law enforcement and media can get in
bed together and make it what they wanted, which was
a unification of the bad guys. Or was it really
just a meeting of the grandfathers? You know, we know
(19:44):
what was true, and the police and the media in
close absolutely know that too well.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I saw it up close as well. I was in
your clubhouse doing some of those meetings you'd have people
from clubs, not just old blogs by the way, some
younger guys as well, from clubs that had deep and
abiding feuds rivalries over the years, but they were appared
to put it aside for the purpose of protecting the
overall movement.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah. Well, and it became sort of a catalyst for
introducing younger guys. So you know, you always took a
few of you younger, newer members along because they didn't
often have any interaction with other clubs. And sometimes having
all those newer younger members along where they got to
meet newer younger members of other clubs and form friends,
(20:31):
found people that they sort of got along with the
right that all of us older guys that were friends anyway.
So now we had younger members who became friends. And
here we are ten fifteen years after those days, and
now those members are twenty thirty year members who are
still friends. So the legacy that it started, the legacy
that we had with all the older members got an
(20:53):
opportunity to start that for the younger members started then,
and now fifteen years later, those people still have friendships
and phone numbers, so that anything that arises, whether it's
another political movement or putting out a spotfim, you've got
that contact. So it served a lot of purposes that
were all positive. There was no plotting, scheming and you
were witnessed at some of those meetings. There was no
(21:13):
plotting or scheming or let's bringing the world down. It
was all about positivity, you know, represent ourselves properly. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It was quite remarkable seeing a group of people I
guess you'd dedicated themselves living beyond the law, if you like,
in their own world, were suddenly going to the High Court.
Tell us what happened, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Well there was a case where the first declaration of
a club started in South Australia and a couple that
were changed and become the test case. And so it
was really because we'd already started unifying a little bit
on ideas and fundraising to help whoever was the first
one that sort of unified then and now the clubs
had actually a fight on their hands with a real
(21:55):
case which took a year or so to progress through
the High Court, and the High Court handed down to
six to one affirmation that our view was right, that
these type of draconian and the association and declaring clubs
you know, sort of almost terrorist groups. Was I think
one judge in the High Court in his summary of
had declared a repugnant law. So you know, it got
(22:15):
washed away, it got scrapped because it was an overreach.
And as governments do, which I guess if they're entitled
to do, they instruct their solicitors to spend a few
years on reconstructing another version of it. That they did
they as she marketed it, the next version of it
as high Court proof, So you know, they construct legislation
to meet the ends which they want. Was is the
(22:35):
match the media threats that they were making. We're going
to do this, We're going to do that to these clubs,
and we're going to make it high court proof as
a slayer on the highest court in the land. So
that's the political side of it.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So what is the state of play with being a
biking in South Australia? Now, are you outlawed as some
media would call.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
You, sorony of it all? And it's not illegal to
be a member of a motorcycle club in Australia, not
in any state. It's absolutely not illegal. You can join one.
There are then tariffs and consequence that happened to you
for that membership. But you can legally be a member,
no problem at all, and you know, display your membership
in areas where it's legal. Obviously not hotels or license
(23:16):
premises anymore, and in some states not even on the street,
but certainly in lots of other areas you can. So,
you know, for one of those things where it's a
legal activity to be joining a club, but there will
be so many other consequences that are placed on you,
you know, to try and encourage you to not stay
with that club, will be in that club, but that's
designed to make it unbearable or uncomfortable to the point
(23:39):
where you may walk away. And then of course we
move into this position where the Immigration Acts sort of
comes in over the top of that and goes well,
just because you've had an association with a Mozole club,
whether you left twenty years ago, thirty years ago, or
last week, you know, your permanent residency visa becomes compromised
because even though membership is not illegal, it actually is
(24:02):
seen negatively under thecharacter assessment, and therefore your visa can
be canceled, and therefore you can be placed in attention
and removed from the country for at one stage in
your life. Because there's no time limit. Could have been
forty years ago, it could have been four days ago.
You're liable for a whole other set of punishment. Where
now the original bit of trouble I got in the
(24:25):
nineteen seventy nine ninety eight I've now been incarcerated now
for another four and a half years, you know, three
times longer than that sentence got me, and about to
be deported. So that's three punishments for one offense. You know,
some people might say that's done past the pub test,
but that is the state of play when it comes
to club association legislation. It's not illegal, but you can
(24:49):
be deported over it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, because the means to do this was, as you say,
the conviction back then, more than twelve months in jail
would I mean you couldn't pass the character test. But
also your advocacy on behalf of the other clubs was
seen as you showing that you're a leader of the
clubs in South Australia and that having won this high
(25:14):
court battle, that you may well be predisposed towards breaking
other laws.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Absolutely well, it shows in their eyes, it shows that
even campaigning for your own rights and being proven that
your rights were being illegally affected, which is what the
High Court did. It struck down the government's legislation as
illegal legislation. So we were being illegally corralled by legislation
that got thrown out. So my punishment for bringing that
(25:40):
with a bunch of another hundred people that got involved
in the UMC. So my punishment for being involved in
exposing that illegal legislation is that that shows that you've
got anti government character. Well not really, I've got pro
lawful law character. That's what I've got. You know. I
was interested in campaigning for the laws being legal, not
so much anti government. They just had to be the
(26:00):
people that were bringing them about. So my anti government
stand and so on legislation means that that's another slant
on my character.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, And a lot of what Minister Dutton relied upon
back then in twenty twenty came from the media. So
I do confess to feel a little tinge of guilt,
more than a little tinge actually about publicizing what you did,
because I guess I was seeing something that was pro social,
that was, as you say, it was trying to assess
(26:30):
whether this was fair and constitutional. In the end, it's
caused the destruction of your family here in Australia.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And you know, and I guess that's the timeline of
legislation that actually should not be retrospective because when we
were involved in that advocacy for better laws around motorcycle clubs,
not only was it legal to do that and still is,
but there was no other ramifications that could be used
against this because the Immigration Act as it stood under
(27:00):
the five oh one wasn't using character assessments on motorcycle
club advocacy as a component. So in two thousand and seven, eight, nine,
ten eleven, when we were doing all this advocacy work
for better laws, no one was getting deported for doing that.
No one was getting deported for being a motorcycle club associate.
Twenty fourteen, a new law come in that actually included
(27:24):
those things, unbeknown to all of us, of course. And
then years and years later when they trolled through all
the names and heritage timelines for people involved in those things,
you know, they struck across a couple that were like myself,
long term fifty year residents, permanent residence but actually still
(27:45):
on the visa and this new law forbid being involved
in political protesting when you're on a visa. But when
we did it, it was legal. But then when they
made it illegal, they reached back into the past. So
basically technically that I'm getting passed for the sins that
I did when it wasn't illegal to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
You've been there four and a half years. Now, you're
inside broad Meadows Detention Center. Now what's it like as
a long term resident there or inmates?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
If you like mundane? You know, I mean that's a
problem with this. It's a cage bus stop. You know,
it's not a prison. So while you get a few
little things that are more comfortable in terms of devices
and the ability to have these conversations uncensored, there's no
actual progress. So I can't through progressing like in a
(28:31):
prison system where you will come in at the bottom
of it as a maximum security prisoner, and then your
behavior and your work record and your demeanor will will
every six months or a year reassess your security rating.
So you work your way to a better prison, You
work your way to a better job, You work your
way to eventually to a country jail. You have work
your way to home detention on weekends, you work your
way to parole, so there's a carrot in front of
(28:53):
you the whole way, and so there's a progression of
your rehabilitation. And I did a lot when I was
in prison for my drug offense and came out of
a prison farm at the shiniest end that you can
rehabilitate yourself with an assess and it worked because I
never went back, obviously it worked. But in here don't
matter what you do. As we saw the NZEDYQ High
(29:13):
Court decision a year or two back where two hundred
detainees got released by the High Court that was not
based on their character. It was based on the country
they came from. So they got released because they the
countries they come from won't taken them back. And they
just happened to be the biggest bunch of rat bags
in the system generally. So you've got all the worst
people getting released because of a court decision, whereas all
(29:34):
the best people who own homes and have got jobs
and got families that would behave and did behave, didn't
come here because they misbehaved. They come here because of
who they know. We weren't beneficiaries of that High Court decision,
and so you get the sort of stigma here where
it's a well known thing set in here by officers
and staff and all of us that are that all
(29:56):
the wrong people get the visas, whereas in a prison
you've got to earn them, you know, so you get
out of prison, you've somehow earned that. This is not
an earned base cage. We just sit in there and
you either get deported or you get out because some
legal avenue is open to you.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Because in prison you get a release date. In your case,
the release date is when you submit to deportation. And
you've been fighting it all this time.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
That's try you well. I mean, I think coersion just
got made illegal in relationships. So we're victims of coersion.
So we've got to sit there for a year and
year and year, and they ring you or come and
see you every thirteen weeks as after by law. Are
you ready to go yet? Do you wish to sign? No?
I'm still fighting it. And of course when you read
the voluntary removal paper that actually says on there, I
(30:44):
respectfully request the Minister of Home Affairs or Emigration to
remove me from Australia as soon as possible. So you're asking,
please can I go? Or please can you remove me
from my family? And like I said the first time
I read it, I am never going to sign a
document that actually asked the minister to remove me from
my family forever. Who the hell would sign that? Like,
I don't want to leave my family forever. They're devastated,
(31:06):
They've been devastated for five years. But because you won't
comply with that, then you're just sit here. You sit
there until you do or they eventually get sick of
you and they're forcible removal, which they don't like doing
because it's basically forcing you out of the country kicking
and screaming, And they don't do it a lot, but
they will do it. And if they know that's your stance,
(31:28):
then that's what they have to do. But you know,
has that for like a cohesive thing? I mean, I
can't earn my way out of here by reasonable behavior,
passing courses, moving to a less secure facility so that
I can say untrustworthy home. I can't do what you
can do in a prison. All I can do to
get out of here is give up and request to
(31:49):
be removed to a country. I don't know what a choice.
The hell would I'll never take that choice. Why would I?
I don't really want to sit in there forever, but
I don't want to ask them to take me away
from my family. That is just fundamentally emotionally impossible for
me to do and impossible for my family to not
so much tolerate. But they are fighting just as hard
(32:11):
for the last five years through videos on social media
campaigns with all my grandkids talking on video about Australia
is our home, you know, just over and over, just
letting me go viral. So everybody gets it that when
you've got fifty family members, you know, ten children, twenty
two grandchildren, three great grandchildren between you, who the hell's
(32:34):
going to walk away from that like willingly? When you
haven't done anything, Like we didn't come from prison to
this environment. Everyone else there did, so you sort of
expect that that's a continuation of your punishment. But this
is not a continuation of any punishment. We're Laura abiding.
Motorcycle clubs are legal to be a part of so
we're Laura.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Abiding because over four years or nearly five years now,
you've seen a whole range cast of characters come through there.
What sort of people have you been associated with?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Well, you know, I mean it's a pot pourri of
the migration. Cohort is a microscopic version of what you'll
get in twenty suburbs around Melbourne. Just take ten people
out of every suburb and put them in there, and
that's what you've got. All nations, all nations, all safe
size and languages and not a lot of English. So yeah,
(33:26):
it's challenging, but it's okay, you know. I mean it's
like everything you may do with the predicament, we're handed
and of course we're lucky, but with such strong support
from our family, like we can live mentally outside of
this place and we can actually live our days in
the visiting room where regular visiting and spending most of
the day in the visiting room with your family is
sort of you know, it's just saving grace because you
(33:48):
keep those bonds going, it keeps you in family mode.
And then we just come back into this environment to
walk some laps and generate some kilometers. As you know,
we've spent the last four and a half years walking
around around a soccer pice to generate twenty six thousand
kilometers of steps through our Fit Better accounts to raise
money for charity, and that sort of kept us linked
(34:09):
to our family through a charity group.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
So you've walked the equivalent of around the globe in
a small circle effectively.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, Basically, twenty thousand steps a day punches out to about,
you know, one hundred and twenty hundred and thirty kilometers
a week, rounds out at about six thousand k's a year.
Four or four and a half years later, we've on
the twenty third of March, we've banged past twenty two
hundred and thirty two k's, which is actually registered on
(34:37):
the Againness Book of Records as the World Runners Association
length of the lap around the globe on land. So
to qualify for that, if you were to do it physically,
you got across four continents and cover twenty six thousand
and you actually then become a part of the circumnavigators.
You get called and you get a T shirt and
a badge. And so technically we've done the kilometers, but
(35:00):
we haven't crossed any We haven't crossed the four continents,
although when you look at the different language groups here,
we certainly have.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
You know, I was going to say, you've got enough
nationalities there to qualify somehow. But you've done it to
raise money for dementia, because while you've been in there,
your mother passed away from dementia.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Absolutely. Mum had got diagnosed not long before we had
our visas canceled. Perry and I were a primary careers.
We were getting into auto medicals every day and making
sure she had a lunch, making sure she had a dinner,
because you're starting to forget those things. And we were
doing volunteer work anyway. Perry was driving meals on wheels
who were people we met when we were sort of
(35:36):
the primary careers for our mum. We met all these
support groups that the bus that used to come to
the age care so unless she was in and take
them all to the library. And I was told to
Terry that one of the drivers one day and he said, mane,
we need drivers. You've got a truck license on the AGAs,
come on down. So I end up driving the community
bus taking them all to the library. And it wasn't
just mum and Dad's village, it was all the villages
in the area. So I was doing that. Perry was
(35:56):
driving meals on wheels because he got to know those
people through them coming to see mum. So I sort
of got us involved in a lot of that community
stuff as well as beings care. So then we got taken.
We were discussing with a family, like we've already had
a walking group going, just a chat group on what's happened.
We'd all lock in our fitbit steps every day is
(36:17):
a bit of a quasi competition. So one of the
girls in Adelaide thought, you know, I'm going to register
it and let's generate all these kilometers in the sponsors, Like,
let's get sponsors. Here'll be someone out there will give
you a cent for a kilometer or a cent for
one hundred kilometers. And we thought, yeah, okay, let's do it.
And we just keept walking and walking and walking here
thing and one day we're going to get out and
(36:37):
then we can go collect and we're never getting out
by the look of it. So we thought, well, here's
a target. Once it come to our attention that there
is this Circumnavigator club and if you do the twenty
six and thirty two k's you can hang your hat
on that, we thought, well, let's finish it there. Let's
clack the money and a little charity here. I've got
(36:59):
my prop already. It's Mackey Family Steps for the Dementia
of Australia. That was the other day at twenty five
thousand dollars. It's over nearly thirty thousand dollars now. We've
raised with people just logging on and chucking a couple
of dollars at A couple of seventy year olds have
just walked around the globe in a prison. Never been
done before that we've been told anyway, So just a
(37:21):
bit of purpose, keep the family involved. Dementia's very big
in our family. Mom passed two years ago. While we're here,
we campaigned as best we can about transfers to get
back to Adelaide so that she could be brought to
us in the detention center there, which is very close
to where she lived, so she could have lived out
her last days by coming to visiting her sons every
(37:41):
day rather than us coming to visit her. We worked
for a couple of years before they denied it. They
denied it four times. We've applied because there is no
as I explained before, there's no pathway better to better
places here. There is no behavior driven pathway. So no
matter how good we were here and you know, reasonably
well and I can think quite well respected by the
Star getting permission to go back to Adelaide to aid health,
(38:05):
and we had lots of letters from her treating physicians
about how much it would do her good to be
seeing us. We never got there. We never got to
see her again, and she passed a couple of years ago,
but we kept on. We've got the money and now
it's sort of in her name that we've clocked the
miles and now we're reading the money, and we've had
planned on DEMNSA Australia. We're going to sound a representative
(38:28):
and here so we could actually do a proper presentation
involving the staff here who have been real supportive on
this and actually often come out and walk with us,
and so we can actually sort of give this place
something to hang us hat on, you know, not that
it does anything positive for anyone except you know, keep
your healthy until your bus arrives. At least it would
(38:48):
be seen that their programs and activity staff supported and
participated in a fairly long term fundraising target that got achieved,
you know, and they helped it, and so we thought,
you know, you come in on it. You can all
be a part of the presentation. But you know, as
you well, we've got days less, so we're not going
to be able to do that. We're not going to
make it.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
So what happens from here? You've exhausted all avenues of appeal.
What happens next?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Basically we wait they come for us. The family's doing
its best, they're lobbying the ministers involved that they're very emailing.
We've got this charity group lobbying the minister, the social
media campaigns that they're trying to run to alert the
minister that this is a five generation, fifty five strong
family that you're actually destroying. He may probably isn't aware
(39:38):
of that because we're under that cancelation minister or cancelation
where nobody has to read our file. It's a non
compallable order. So we can request the minister read our
file and intervene if he sees some value in us,
but he can also refuse to read it. And of course,
you know, sometimes it may be a safer option to
not read something that you might find it's too compelling.
(39:59):
And so you know, everybody, we know, hundreds of people
have been emailing, you know, these ministers to say, look,
just open it. You know, if you open it and
read it, you may think different. There is a story
in there about fifty three years in this country, fifty
seven members of a family, five generations, heaths of grandchildren,
(40:19):
a lot of Aboriginal grandchildren and great grandchildren in our
blood lines, deeply entrenched in the community, involved in sporting
clubs for thirty years, you know, awards, recommendations for fundraising
before we came here for breast cancer. Family still in
deeply involved in Red Tree Foundation for fundraising, facids and
(40:41):
and and death. My grandson was still born two years ago,
young Zen, And so we move on to that and
make that family tragedy a part of what we do
for funds now fundraising now. So yeah, that's that's where
we're at.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
It's sad no matter what, it just doesn't seem no
matter what you put forward, there is this absence of
natural justice in the whole process which counts against you.
If you fail that character test. No matter how much
rehabilitation you've done, no matter how many good works you do,
you're always a biki. You're always an ex criminal and
(41:20):
we don't want you in this country. It's a very
bitter pill to swallow.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Look, it's the pathway you get taken down or pushed
down or led down because all the stuff that we
have that are countervailing situations to the actual bad character.
So bad character is not the question in this. There
are murderers, rapists, child molesters that are released from detention
centers every week because they get the opportunity to go
(41:46):
to the AAT or the AART. Now they administrative review
tribunal with all their character references, with all their family,
with all their rehabilitation, and all those things are presented,
and if it's compelling, then that judge can actually go,
you know what, I revoke your cancelation and I reissue
your visa because you've proven that you're not a danger
of the community to me with all this evidence, and
(42:10):
we believe we would have a very strong chance of
that being our outcome if we were granted the opportunity
to go to that tribunal. But when you're canceled under
a certain part of the five oh one Act, the
Ministerial cancelation, it's written in your cancelation you are denied
fair and natural justice. Like there's no hiding it. It's
not like it's secret, it's written in your thing. You
cannot apply for any tribunial, You cannot apply for revocation
(42:33):
because you are denied fair and natural justice because the minister,
one man, a politician, can decide, he may not be
legally trained, that none of the countervailing situation will change
his mind. Whereas as we know, ten twenty thirty percent
of these cancelations, when they go to a proper court
a tribunal, they do get found that they found wanting,
(42:55):
they were wrong, the cancelation was wrong. It gets reversed.
And I read those cases, and our lawyers read those cases.
They go sheepers, you know, like when you stack up
some only just won a murderer, double murderer, even against
an narcotic conviction forty five years ago. Like who's the
more bigger danger to the community In reality, that's.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
A very good question, Tom. Unfortunately, you're going to have
to probably fight this fight from New Zealand, and you
won't stop because your family is here. And let me say,
I'm very sorry that it's come to this because I
know in my heart who you are, and a lot
of other people do as well. And unfortunately politics has intervened.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, no, that's true, Adam. You know, you just can't
make someone look at your file if there's a non
compellable order. We we just can't force the issue where
someone everyone has had eyes on it, believes in us,
but we can't find a way to force the very
people that need to look at it look at it.
So it is what it is. We can we'll get
forcibly removed, and then we can sit in New Zealand
(43:58):
and find reacquaint ourselves with the country we don't remember,
and hope that somewhere on the line, if labour stays
in got for a couple of terms, which is looking
like they might, that somewhere someone introduces an adjustment to
the five oh one where there is a reevaluation on
some of these deportations that some of these people can
actually apply from overseas. And then that file gets open,
(44:19):
and we think that one day if our file eve
got opened and someone looked at it, it will be
looked upon as we probably should have had that opportunity
while we were here.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
I've got to ask you back in nineteen seventy seven,
the prison psychologist said that you have the descendants. Was
the pitvot around which you had built your life. Do
you regret that?
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Now? Look, you can only regret that legislation that changed
what that meant to me has impacted on my life.
The club life for me has been all that family.
There's lots of family involved in it, my brothers and
son in law's sons. So the actual essence of club
life is just family driven. It's honorable. What has changed
(45:02):
is how it's being perceived in legislation. Nothing that I've done,
I mean, you know, I haven't done anything that's actually
created in my situation here. I've just been the same
guy I was when I got out of prison forty
five years ago. I haven't been arrested or broke the law.
Since I've been the same person. The legislation has morphed
into something else. Immigration legislation has morphed into something else.
(45:24):
And now I'm being punished for something I already did
the punishment for. And the meanwhile, I didn't change. Just
the words on the paper that judge me have changed.
And now I've got to pay. And now I can
sit up in New Zealand and hope that more words
come onto the paper later that give me a right
to have another crack at it and come back and
hopefully that's before all of my eighteen seventeen grand kits.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
All right, I know how a feeling mate. I think
we'll leave it there. Tom, Thanks Mane. That's Tom mackey,
former president of the Descendant's Motorcycle Club, inside the Broad
Meadows Detention Center facing deportation, as he says, how many
(46:14):
times can you be punished for the one crime he did?
The crime back in the seventies, did his time rehabilitated.
His continuing offense was to associate with the Descendant's motorcycle
club that's been now used against him. And I think
this absence of natural justice is repugnant and I certainly
don't regret supporting the struggle to strike down unfair laws.
(46:37):
Let's hope there is some turn of justice at the
end of this story, but right now looks pretty bleak.
Thank you for listening. This has been real crime with
Adam shand thanks for listening.
Appoche production Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand I'm
your host Adam Shand. I met Tom Mackeye in two
thousand and eight during a moral panic about outlaw bikers
in South Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
As part of the government crackdown. The Pinks were the
first biker club in the country to be declared a
criminal organization.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Then Premier Mike Ran had enacted anti association laws he
believed would destroy the clubs. South Australian Premier Mike Ran
introduced the Serious and Organized Crime Act, which he described
as the world's toughest anti bike laws. Tom and his
brother Perry had founded the Descendants club back in the
nineteen seventies. They'd come from New Zealand as teenagers with
(00:53):
the spirit of rebellion. The club survived a crackdown by
police in the seventies, but several members fell into the
drug trade and ended up in prison, including Tom, Hiding
and Plainside.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Police said storefront was a bikei club house used.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
By members of the Outland motorcycle gang the Descendants. He
emerged determined to return the club to its freedom seeking roots.
When Ran tried to ban the clubs, Tom and other
bike has got together to challenge the laws before the
High Court, which declared them unconstitutional. The descendants are a
declared outlaw motorcycle gang, and the brothers played a prominent
(01:29):
role in fighting the state's harsh anti bikey laws. After
that success, Tom and Perry went back to a quiet life,
which mainly involved raising their families and enjoying club life.
But then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton had other ideas.
In December twenty twenty, Tom and Perry were arrested and
placed in immigration detention, penning their deportation to New Zealand
(01:53):
for failing the character tests.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Tom and Perry Mackie are being sent back to New
Zealand fifty two years after emmigrating. Her visas torn up
due to bad character and in.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
June twenty twenty five they now face imminent deportation after
exhausting all legal avenues and Tom joins me from broad
Meadows Detention Center.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Get it Tom, Yeah, good evening, Adam.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
How you doing good mate? It's days away now after
four and a half years of waiting. What's the next step.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, look, we're just pushing as much stuff as we
can directly through to the Minister you know, personal pleas
from the family to relook at our case, perhaps you know,
a late endtervention. In the likely event that he's going
to do that, then we're just faced with having to
comply with it, go with the deportation, and then you know,
(02:48):
while sitting off shore, I hope that somewhere on the
line in the future there's an adjustment to the directions
that sort of work around this act and we can reapply.
I mean, technically speaking, there's always an avenue to reapply
for a visa to come back in the country. But
technical normally deportation is pretty much the end of it,
and not not many people have the success after that.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Because you and Perry have raised big families in Australia.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, like ten kids between us, twenty two grandchildren,
three great grandchildren married to Australian woman for you know,
in relationships for over forty years. Five generations you know,
from my mum and dad Australian citizens down to my
great grandchildren. So you got five generations over fifty five people,
(03:33):
all Australians bar two of us who were only permanent residents.
So we were the odd two out.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah. People will be saying why didn't you apply for citizenship?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, Look, one of those things, isn't it. It's never
suggested to you. It's not a part of any criteria
where you know, if the government come to you and said, look,
we decided that, you know, after ten years, twenty years
as a permanent resident, there should be a progressive pathway
to citizenship. Never were asked. When our parents and our
sister got citizenship, they got the papers as we said, Yah,
(04:02):
I don't know, we'll do that a bit later, got
back to it, and that's you know, it's just one
of those things because there's no need to do it.
There's no real impetus. Never felt like it was urgent,
so we didn't never bother.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Your last conviction was how long ago?
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So just over forty five years ago since I last convicted.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
And what was that?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
For narcotic possession? Yeah, the result of an operation run
by the SA Drug Squad. At the time, they had ways,
ways and means our secure and convictions. But as happens,
they stand up in court and the conviction stands. You know,
whether it was absolutely as framed or not.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Because we've talked about that in the past, that you
believe you were loaded up with some heroin back in
the day.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately the word of one me against six
police or two in the actual action, but four that
were part of the visit that day. The corroborating power
of senior police is always going to outweigh the word
of a defendant in a court case. It's well know,
and in those days it was a well practiced methodology
(05:08):
by police to get secure convictions, and many times came
unstuck in lots of ways in course of appeal and
raw commissions and all sorts of things. But of course,
just as many times, the conviction stuck. And in my case,
that's stuck.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Because something happened to you while you were in jail.
Your heart changed. You realized you couldn't beat the system,
and you decided that you were going to change your
club from one that was had a criminal focus to
one that was really centered around the motorcycle.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well that's had It's a return, isn't it. You know?
I mean, you know, we all go around in circle.
So you know, you wander off with a little bit
of a venture in lots of ways, behavior, you know,
all sorts of ways, and then you bring it back around.
So when the club had a bit of a run
with the Biking Squad at the time, and they use
the methods as they used to get the convictions they
need to justify, you know, ends justify the means. Yeah,
(05:58):
there's only one way to sort of separate yourself, and
that that stepped back from it a little bit, you know,
let them move on, and of course by doing that,
you really returned to what you were doing before, which
was for us, it was motorcycle racing and when that
was our passion, that's what our sort of life story is,
racing from little dirt bikes, you know, when we're first
old enough to buy them, and then through to drag racing,
and then spent the next twenty twenty five years traveling
(06:20):
around Australia racing motorcycles and working on them, and you know,
returning to the sort of the fun, more fun part
of what we were doing. So you know, that was
pretty easy to return to something that you enjoyed. It's
not even like you're departing a style of life into
something totally different. It's just a return and that's what
I guess that's the true form of rehabilitation, and that
(06:42):
you go back to the behavior that didn't get you
in trouble and keeps you out of trouble. And it
was pretty simple formula.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Because you as president, what standards were you now enforcing
in the membership of the club. There was only one chapter,
by the way, there was an avalaide that was it. Yeah,
so you could keep an eye on the members.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, that's right, And we didn't have a hierarchical role
as such. Did let experience drive decision making. So as
an original member and you know, you try and set
direction as you were an older brother, a father figure,
or even just a part of a group. So so
it was more a consensus, you know, to sort of
move from people getting sick of getting hounded to just
(07:23):
sit back a little bit. Do some motor bike racing
police squads move on different clubs, different themes, you know,
sort of rise up, particularly in the motorcycle scene. Over
the years, it evolved into a different structure and a
different perception and everyone has of it now. But it
was easy for us to stay here the way we were,
being small club, family based, single chapter, one town, pretty
(07:46):
easy to not be affected by international national trends or compulsions.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Some some groups would have to operate, you know, in
a way that's set by somewhere else. We never had that,
so you know, to sit back, go motor boat racing
pretty easy because we weren't getting pulled or dragged in
any other directions.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
But the one percent tag, which yeah, delineates clubs that
have that tag from other social clubs.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, we'll look at the handy label that's been tagged
onto people. Because the original days of all the motorcycle
clubs in Australia, I don't think any, if and if
any did, there were few and far between actually identified
with a one percent tag. All wore it. It was
an americanism and it evolved and unfortunate. It's one of
those things where the more you're accused of one percent
of a different for everyone else and one percent identify
(08:35):
as an outlaw. Then it actually followed suit that lots
of clubs started actually wearing a one percent badge because
that's what they were told it was expected of them
in the media. So, you know, the media narrative drives
a lot of stuff. If you tell a certain group
of kids that this is what they're being accused of,
you know half of them will go do it because
that's what's expected, and clubs did a bit of that,
(08:55):
you know. So the one percent thing in our early days,
the one percent thing meant nothing. It was an americanism,
and you'll find every senior member from the seventies would
probably take that from most clubs. Some grabbed it quickly
and evolved with it and run with it and made
it a part of their thing, and then everybody did,
almost everybody did, and then the police and the authorities
(09:16):
lashed onto it as ah, there's the identifier, that's what
makes them different. Well, once they started saying it, everyone
started believing it. Whereas, like I say, you go back
to the old photos of nineteen seventy two, seventy three,
seventy four, big club runs where all the clubs are there,
you won't find a one percent badge there anywhere, very rare.
No one cared about it, police didn't care about it.
(09:36):
It wasn't a political identifier, and we didn't wear them.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Because it's become synonymous with crime, and all the clubs
are tagged with it. You've got forty one clubs, but
really there's only a handful of clubs that are even
in the media these days being involved in organized crime,
Yet all of you get tagged with the same idea
because of the one percent bags you wear.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, well that's what you know. There's been a handy tool,
didn't it for labeling. There's been a very handy tool
for law enforcement that want to market a product of
you know, create fear. And we've got the solution. Just
give us more resources. And so if you've got ten clubs,
they are always in the headlines, and thirty that no
one's ever heard of. But you can create some legislation
that covers all forty. You know, you've cultivated quite a
(10:20):
big range of potential arrests atistics without the actual justification.
Just say they're all one percent, as they must all
be criminals. And no matter what we say, and no
matter what the stats you get, Professor Goldsworthy and all
these criminologists come on and go and talk to all
over all commissions and all the commissions of inquiry and go, hey,
(10:41):
fifty two percent you know on our stats. Crime Commission
will tell you there's fifty two to fifty five percent
of them. I've got criminal records, So what's this criminal organization?
Through and through? It's not real in the stats, absolutely
not real.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah. I wrote a book back in the day called
out Laws. I looked at the level of bikey crime
occurring in society and it was low level. Really what
it was low level in the States, you guys get
all the publicity. I looked at it recently, it really
hasn't changed much despite all the publicity and some of
these very high profile clubs getting involved in some pretty
upscale organized crime, drug importation and so forth. The average
(11:16):
biker is still a busted ass guy with his motorbike, house,
a little family, and he's not a mister b No.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
No, it's look it it's a membrane between you know,
motorcol groups, people in the community that are involved, and
the transfer of people just mingling, you know, using their
club membership for what they get out of that that's
good for them, and then also having a sideline of
criminal endeavor. And you know that goes on in all workplace.
(11:46):
You know, not everybody in every workplace is using that
workplaces as the crush for their activity. It's just it's
just a part of their life. So I've certainly seen
in my time that the vast majority of blokes I
know and kick around with and have met and other crews,
you know, and days are all about you know, brother,
good fun, family, motor boat riding and all the good
(12:07):
stuff is plottin the scheme that must go on if
you're supposed to be one hundred percent and only exists
for crime. I don't think that's a truism in any
group at all. It's just an exaggeration that law enforcement
pedal to create a climate where they can get more
resources because they've created the fear that this is what's happening.
I don't see it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
So what have you been doing since you gave up
crime at the seventies, all those years ago? What have
you been doing doing a living?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah? Well, just make we take on jobs that you've
got a skill out or a trade at. You know,
most of the boys a tradesman, and that I've always
worked on motorbikes, and to spend the last twenty five
years as a rigger, you know, working entertainment rigging, putting
up shows and you know entertainment centers and on navles,
big day outs, all that sort of stuff, hanging all
the speakers and the lights and working out those sort
of things where you set up the show and then
(12:54):
you watch it. For nothing, and then you pull all
apart at the ends a good gig.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
So you're not driving a Ferrari, you don't live with
a mansion, you don't get around like that.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Nah, that's right. You know, it's one of those things
in where they're only going to pull the one or
two or the five or six out of every group
of people that have got that sort of profile and
then cast it as being this is an average it's not.
You know, it gets out of the honesty. And I mean,
you're never going to get absolutely honesty from law enforcement
because it's not their interest. They're not going to go
(13:24):
to the meter and say, look, you know, yeah, we
know this club pretty well. They got four or five
boys that get up to a bit. Now the others know,
we've got no problem with them. There are many members
of many clubs that have never been raided by police,
never been hassled by them. They have no interest in
them because they do nothing. Then you see them on
a TV present if you're going these guys are all
criminals down and he exists for crime, and you know
(13:47):
that's just a plete and exaggeration and lie to perpetuate
better resource funding. It's nothing to do with the truth.
But how do you prove it? You know, we can't
prove that. We can just say, well, in my case,
forty five years without him arrest. I don't know from
most normal people that would suggest with the amount of
police attention that we get in terms of observation, supervision,
(14:10):
interacting with us on our rides and runs and stuff.
You're thinking forty five years with that sort of observations
on us, you wouldn't get away with much. And yet
there's no convictions. So what about the benefit of the doubt,
or maybe there's no convictions because there's nothing to convict for.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It certainly caused you a lot of grief, this membership
of a club. I remember talking to one BIKEI back
in the day in Adelaide, saying to him and all,
with trouble and strife that he was facing, maybe you
should take up golf as a hobby rather than motorcycles.
Have you ever considered giving it away completely, just stepping
away from it.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well, you know, we get to the stage, like in
our club particularly and most clubs, where you get to
a retirement age. You know, whether that's locked in on
a formal idea or whether it's just you pick a
time when you know you're too old to pick up
your bike that falls over, or you're too old to
ride it all day and can't walk for the rest
of the day. And so if you can't actually complete
your club runs and stuff like that, anything out, it's
(15:04):
pretty much time to hang up my hat and just
you know, so good o the boys now and then
go down for a beer at the clubhouse. And that's
That's got a whole variety of how you go about that.
Every club's different, and in fact most clubs are quite
private about that. There's all sorts of stories that permeate
through the media that you got to pay your way
out and you lose your bike, and there's all sorts
to carry on you can never leave or rubbish, you know,
(15:25):
look at all absolutely because if you have been a
really good mate and a really good club member for ten,
twenty thirty forty years and your back is so bad
you can't ride your bike, what your club's going to
cripple you financially because you want to leave, Like really,
I mean, the brotherhood doesn't extend of compassion for a
bloke that's actually at the age where it's actually dangerous
(15:46):
for them to be on a run and it doesn't happen.
People just get Look, you know where you go, come
down when you want. Yes, you come for a ride
when you want. You can keep your colors in the
wardrobe if you want. Because you're an honorable member. You're
left on good standing. We don't require that you handle
back there. And just like the military, you retire from
the military, you get to keep My dad add he's
(16:06):
an Avy uniform in the wardrobe my whole childhood, So
you got to keep his uniform so I can retire
and keep mind the police will not believe you.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
But you did see some clubs go down this gangster path,
and whether it's conforming to media portrayals or criminal opportunities,
I don't know. But things did change and some clubs
were the worst offenders for this sort of stuff and
brought heat on the others.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah. Look, and that's you know, you're going to get
that across all facets of all things, aren't you. It
doesn't really matter. If that's where a trend heads and
the type of people that like the look of that
trend go to those groups, then of course that's where
it's going to go. Nothing's going to change that, and
if police action comes in and it's targeted, then of course,
(16:56):
as they did in the seventies where they like your
squads in the day there as you were very targeted.
You know, they actually went after the personalities rather than
convinced legislators to just give us a big broad brush.
In that way, we can jar them all for knowing
each other, they actould come out and court. So in
our club at the time, a couple of us went
to jail, but a whole lot didn't because they weren't
doing anything. But now they'd all go to jail just
(17:18):
for knowing the guys that did. So it's a broad
brush approach from legislation that's actually made the crime wave
as such much bigger than it really is, because now
we can all go to jail for knowing each other,
whereas once on a time you had to go to
jail for doing something not knowing someone. So I think
that has played into it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Because you got through the consorting law era in the
seventies where people could be jail for simply hanging out
with other people with criminal records, and we thought that
was finished. It was a very corrupt piece of legislation.
That gave police too much power and created a whole
raft of informers. That was a very healthy situation, and
most states got rid of it, but we saw nearly
(17:57):
two thousands this returned in the form of anti association
laws and it was targeted at other clubs. How much
yours directly, But no, you made yourself a target by
unifying the clubs in a sense, by creating the United
Motorcycle Council to oppose the legislation.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah. Well, I mean, as it stands, when you're an
older guy, and especially in the club seeing you've been
around a long time, you know and know well a
lot of the older original members of all the other clubs,
no matter what they've morphed into, and so those friendships
come from personality friendships. And so then when there's actually
a combined action where you think, look, let's all get
together and you know, what are we going to do
(18:41):
about this? Is it worth hiring some lawyers and have
a bit of organized resistance to this legislation because it's
going to affect our workplaces, it's going to affect our
poker runs and stuff like that, you know, normal lawful activity.
It's going to impact that we probably should get some
legal minds on this. So rather than one club were
at all, why don't we just unify and do some
raffles and bikes and do some stuff to raise some
(19:02):
money to hire the legals that can do it. Do
you go to you go to the friends you know
from other clubs that you've known for ten years, twenty years,
thirty and you have a friendly relationship with, so that
can easily be and was labeled as a unification of
all the gang leaders the sky's falling in? Or was
it really just a bunch of old guys that have
known each other a long time from each club come
(19:23):
together because they can actually peacefully talk and discuss intelligently
motors operandi to actually try and defend the lifestyle, which
is actually what it really was. But the pits as
it once again law enforcement and media can get in
bed together and make it what they wanted, which was
a unification of the bad guys. Or was it really
just a meeting of the grandfathers? You know, we know
(19:44):
what was true, and the police and the media in
close absolutely know that too well.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I saw it up close as well. I was in
your clubhouse doing some of those meetings you'd have people
from clubs, not just old blogs by the way, some
younger guys as well, from clubs that had deep and
abiding feuds rivalries over the years, but they were appared
to put it aside for the purpose of protecting the
overall movement.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah. Well, and it became sort of a catalyst for
introducing younger guys. So you know, you always took a
few of you younger, newer members along because they didn't
often have any interaction with other clubs. And sometimes having
all those newer younger members along where they got to
meet newer younger members of other clubs and form friends,
(20:31):
found people that they sort of got along with the
right that all of us older guys that were friends anyway.
So now we had younger members who became friends. And
here we are ten fifteen years after those days, and
now those members are twenty thirty year members who are
still friends. So the legacy that it started, the legacy
that we had with all the older members got an
(20:53):
opportunity to start that for the younger members started then,
and now fifteen years later, those people still have friendships
and phone numbers, so that anything that arises, whether it's
another political movement or putting out a spotfim, you've got
that contact. So it served a lot of purposes that
were all positive. There was no plotting, scheming and you
were witnessed at some of those meetings. There was no
(21:13):
plotting or scheming or let's bringing the world down. It
was all about positivity, you know, represent ourselves properly. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It was quite remarkable seeing a group of people I
guess you'd dedicated themselves living beyond the law, if you like,
in their own world, were suddenly going to the High Court.
Tell us what happened, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Well there was a case where the first declaration of
a club started in South Australia and a couple that
were changed and become the test case. And so it
was really because we'd already started unifying a little bit
on ideas and fundraising to help whoever was the first
one that sort of unified then and now the clubs
had actually a fight on their hands with a real
(21:55):
case which took a year or so to progress through
the High Court, and the High Court handed down to
six to one affirmation that our view was right, that
these type of draconian and the association and declaring clubs
you know, sort of almost terrorist groups. Was I think
one judge in the High Court in his summary of
had declared a repugnant law. So you know, it got
(22:15):
washed away, it got scrapped because it was an overreach.
And as governments do, which I guess if they're entitled
to do, they instruct their solicitors to spend a few
years on reconstructing another version of it. That they did
they as she marketed it, the next version of it
as high Court proof, So you know, they construct legislation
to meet the ends which they want. Was is the
(22:35):
match the media threats that they were making. We're going
to do this, We're going to do that to these clubs,
and we're going to make it high court proof as
a slayer on the highest court in the land. So
that's the political side of it.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So what is the state of play with being a
biking in South Australia? Now, are you outlawed as some
media would call.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
You, sorony of it all? And it's not illegal to
be a member of a motorcycle club in Australia, not
in any state. It's absolutely not illegal. You can join one.
There are then tariffs and consequence that happened to you
for that membership. But you can legally be a member,
no problem at all, and you know, display your membership
in areas where it's legal. Obviously not hotels or license
(23:16):
premises anymore, and in some states not even on the street,
but certainly in lots of other areas you can. So,
you know, for one of those things where it's a
legal activity to be joining a club, but there will
be so many other consequences that are placed on you,
you know, to try and encourage you to not stay
with that club, will be in that club, but that's
designed to make it unbearable or uncomfortable to the point
(23:39):
where you may walk away. And then of course we
move into this position where the Immigration Acts sort of
comes in over the top of that and goes well,
just because you've had an association with a Mozole club,
whether you left twenty years ago, thirty years ago, or
last week, you know, your permanent residency visa becomes compromised
because even though membership is not illegal, it actually is
(24:02):
seen negatively under thecharacter assessment, and therefore your visa can
be canceled, and therefore you can be placed in attention
and removed from the country for at one stage in
your life. Because there's no time limit. Could have been
forty years ago, it could have been four days ago.
You're liable for a whole other set of punishment. Where
now the original bit of trouble I got in the
(24:25):
nineteen seventy nine ninety eight I've now been incarcerated now
for another four and a half years, you know, three
times longer than that sentence got me, and about to
be deported. So that's three punishments for one offense. You know,
some people might say that's done past the pub test,
but that is the state of play when it comes
to club association legislation. It's not illegal, but you can
(24:49):
be deported over it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, because the means to do this was, as you say,
the conviction back then, more than twelve months in jail
would I mean you couldn't pass the character test. But
also your advocacy on behalf of the other clubs was
seen as you showing that you're a leader of the
clubs in South Australia and that having won this high
(25:14):
court battle, that you may well be predisposed towards breaking
other laws.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Absolutely well, it shows in their eyes, it shows that
even campaigning for your own rights and being proven that
your rights were being illegally affected, which is what the
High Court did. It struck down the government's legislation as
illegal legislation. So we were being illegally corralled by legislation
that got thrown out. So my punishment for bringing that
(25:40):
with a bunch of another hundred people that got involved
in the UMC. So my punishment for being involved in
exposing that illegal legislation is that that shows that you've
got anti government character. Well not really, I've got pro
lawful law character. That's what I've got. You know. I
was interested in campaigning for the laws being legal, not
so much anti government. They just had to be the
(26:00):
people that were bringing them about. So my anti government
stand and so on legislation means that that's another slant
on my character.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, And a lot of what Minister Dutton relied upon
back then in twenty twenty came from the media. So
I do confess to feel a little tinge of guilt,
more than a little tinge actually about publicizing what you did,
because I guess I was seeing something that was pro social,
that was, as you say, it was trying to assess
(26:30):
whether this was fair and constitutional. In the end, it's
caused the destruction of your family here in Australia.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And you know, and I guess that's the timeline of
legislation that actually should not be retrospective because when we
were involved in that advocacy for better laws around motorcycle clubs,
not only was it legal to do that and still is,
but there was no other ramifications that could be used
against this because the Immigration Act as it stood under
(27:00):
the five oh one wasn't using character assessments on motorcycle
club advocacy as a component. So in two thousand and seven, eight, nine,
ten eleven, when we were doing all this advocacy work
for better laws, no one was getting deported for doing that.
No one was getting deported for being a motorcycle club associate.
Twenty fourteen, a new law come in that actually included
(27:24):
those things, unbeknown to all of us, of course. And
then years and years later when they trolled through all
the names and heritage timelines for people involved in those things,
you know, they struck across a couple that were like myself,
long term fifty year residents, permanent residence but actually still
(27:45):
on the visa and this new law forbid being involved
in political protesting when you're on a visa. But when
we did it, it was legal. But then when they
made it illegal, they reached back into the past. So
basically technically that I'm getting passed for the sins that
I did when it wasn't illegal to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
You've been there four and a half years. Now, you're
inside broad Meadows Detention Center. Now what's it like as
a long term resident there or inmates?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
If you like mundane? You know, I mean that's a
problem with this. It's a cage bus stop. You know,
it's not a prison. So while you get a few
little things that are more comfortable in terms of devices
and the ability to have these conversations uncensored, there's no
actual progress. So I can't through progressing like in a
(28:31):
prison system where you will come in at the bottom
of it as a maximum security prisoner, and then your
behavior and your work record and your demeanor will will
every six months or a year reassess your security rating.
So you work your way to a better prison, You
work your way to a better job, You work your
way to eventually to a country jail. You have work
your way to home detention on weekends, you work your
way to parole, so there's a carrot in front of
(28:53):
you the whole way, and so there's a progression of
your rehabilitation. And I did a lot when I was
in prison for my drug offense and came out of
a prison farm at the shiniest end that you can
rehabilitate yourself with an assess and it worked because I
never went back, obviously it worked. But in here don't
matter what you do. As we saw the NZEDYQ High
(29:13):
Court decision a year or two back where two hundred
detainees got released by the High Court that was not
based on their character. It was based on the country
they came from. So they got released because they the
countries they come from won't taken them back. And they
just happened to be the biggest bunch of rat bags
in the system generally. So you've got all the worst
people getting released because of a court decision, whereas all
(29:34):
the best people who own homes and have got jobs
and got families that would behave and did behave, didn't
come here because they misbehaved. They come here because of
who they know. We weren't beneficiaries of that High Court decision,
and so you get the sort of stigma here where
it's a well known thing set in here by officers
and staff and all of us that are that all
(29:56):
the wrong people get the visas, whereas in a prison
you've got to earn them, you know, so you get
out of prison, you've somehow earned that. This is not
an earned base cage. We just sit in there and
you either get deported or you get out because some
legal avenue is open to you.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Because in prison you get a release date. In your case,
the release date is when you submit to deportation. And
you've been fighting it all this time.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
That's try you well. I mean, I think coersion just
got made illegal in relationships. So we're victims of coersion.
So we've got to sit there for a year and
year and year, and they ring you or come and
see you every thirteen weeks as after by law. Are
you ready to go yet? Do you wish to sign? No?
I'm still fighting it. And of course when you read
the voluntary removal paper that actually says on there, I
(30:44):
respectfully request the Minister of Home Affairs or Emigration to
remove me from Australia as soon as possible. So you're asking,
please can I go? Or please can you remove me
from my family? And like I said the first time
I read it, I am never going to sign a
document that actually asked the minister to remove me from
my family forever. Who the hell would sign that? Like,
I don't want to leave my family forever. They're devastated,
(31:06):
They've been devastated for five years. But because you won't
comply with that, then you're just sit here. You sit
there until you do or they eventually get sick of
you and they're forcible removal, which they don't like doing
because it's basically forcing you out of the country kicking
and screaming, And they don't do it a lot, but
they will do it. And if they know that's your stance,
(31:28):
then that's what they have to do. But you know,
has that for like a cohesive thing? I mean, I
can't earn my way out of here by reasonable behavior,
passing courses, moving to a less secure facility so that
I can say untrustworthy home. I can't do what you
can do in a prison. All I can do to
get out of here is give up and request to
(31:49):
be removed to a country. I don't know what a choice.
The hell would I'll never take that choice. Why would I?
I don't really want to sit in there forever, but
I don't want to ask them to take me away
from my family. That is just fundamentally emotionally impossible for
me to do and impossible for my family to not
so much tolerate. But they are fighting just as hard
(32:11):
for the last five years through videos on social media
campaigns with all my grandkids talking on video about Australia
is our home, you know, just over and over, just
letting me go viral. So everybody gets it that when
you've got fifty family members, you know, ten children, twenty
two grandchildren, three great grandchildren between you, who the hell's
(32:34):
going to walk away from that like willingly? When you
haven't done anything, Like we didn't come from prison to
this environment. Everyone else there did, so you sort of
expect that that's a continuation of your punishment. But this
is not a continuation of any punishment. We're Laura abiding.
Motorcycle clubs are legal to be a part of so
we're Laura.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Abiding because over four years or nearly five years now,
you've seen a whole range cast of characters come through there.
What sort of people have you been associated with?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Well, you know, I mean it's a pot pourri of
the migration. Cohort is a microscopic version of what you'll
get in twenty suburbs around Melbourne. Just take ten people
out of every suburb and put them in there, and
that's what you've got. All nations, all nations, all safe
size and languages and not a lot of English. So yeah,
(33:26):
it's challenging, but it's okay, you know. I mean it's
like everything you may do with the predicament, we're handed
and of course we're lucky, but with such strong support
from our family, like we can live mentally outside of
this place and we can actually live our days in
the visiting room where regular visiting and spending most of
the day in the visiting room with your family is
sort of you know, it's just saving grace because you
(33:48):
keep those bonds going, it keeps you in family mode.
And then we just come back into this environment to
walk some laps and generate some kilometers. As you know,
we've spent the last four and a half years walking
around around a soccer pice to generate twenty six thousand
kilometers of steps through our Fit Better accounts to raise
money for charity, and that sort of kept us linked
(34:09):
to our family through a charity group.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
So you've walked the equivalent of around the globe in
a small circle effectively.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, Basically, twenty thousand steps a day punches out to about,
you know, one hundred and twenty hundred and thirty kilometers
a week, rounds out at about six thousand k's a year.
Four or four and a half years later, we've on
the twenty third of March, we've banged past twenty two
hundred and thirty two k's, which is actually registered on
(34:37):
the Againness Book of Records as the World Runners Association
length of the lap around the globe on land. So
to qualify for that, if you were to do it physically,
you got across four continents and cover twenty six thousand
and you actually then become a part of the circumnavigators.
You get called and you get a T shirt and
a badge. And so technically we've done the kilometers, but
(35:00):
we haven't crossed any We haven't crossed the four continents,
although when you look at the different language groups here,
we certainly have.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
You know, I was going to say, you've got enough
nationalities there to qualify somehow. But you've done it to
raise money for dementia, because while you've been in there,
your mother passed away from dementia.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Absolutely. Mum had got diagnosed not long before we had
our visas canceled. Perry and I were a primary careers.
We were getting into auto medicals every day and making
sure she had a lunch, making sure she had a dinner,
because you're starting to forget those things. And we were
doing volunteer work anyway. Perry was driving meals on wheels
who were people we met when we were sort of
(35:36):
the primary careers for our mum. We met all these
support groups that the bus that used to come to
the age care so unless she was in and take
them all to the library. And I was told to
Terry that one of the drivers one day and he said, mane,
we need drivers. You've got a truck license on the AGAs,
come on down. So I end up driving the community
bus taking them all to the library. And it wasn't
just mum and Dad's village, it was all the villages
in the area. So I was doing that. Perry was
(35:56):
driving meals on wheels because he got to know those
people through them coming to see mum. So I sort
of got us involved in a lot of that community
stuff as well as beings care. So then we got taken.
We were discussing with a family, like we've already had
a walking group going, just a chat group on what's happened.
We'd all lock in our fitbit steps every day is
(36:17):
a bit of a quasi competition. So one of the
girls in Adelaide thought, you know, I'm going to register
it and let's generate all these kilometers in the sponsors, Like,
let's get sponsors. Here'll be someone out there will give
you a cent for a kilometer or a cent for
one hundred kilometers. And we thought, yeah, okay, let's do it.
And we just keept walking and walking and walking here
thing and one day we're going to get out and
(36:37):
then we can go collect and we're never getting out
by the look of it. So we thought, well, here's
a target. Once it come to our attention that there
is this Circumnavigator club and if you do the twenty
six and thirty two k's you can hang your hat
on that, we thought, well, let's finish it there. Let's
clack the money and a little charity here. I've got
(36:59):
my prop already. It's Mackey Family Steps for the Dementia
of Australia. That was the other day at twenty five
thousand dollars. It's over nearly thirty thousand dollars now. We've
raised with people just logging on and chucking a couple
of dollars at A couple of seventy year olds have
just walked around the globe in a prison. Never been
done before that we've been told anyway, So just a
(37:21):
bit of purpose, keep the family involved. Dementia's very big
in our family. Mom passed two years ago. While we're here,
we campaigned as best we can about transfers to get
back to Adelaide so that she could be brought to
us in the detention center there, which is very close
to where she lived, so she could have lived out
her last days by coming to visiting her sons every
(37:41):
day rather than us coming to visit her. We worked
for a couple of years before they denied it. They
denied it four times. We've applied because there is no
as I explained before, there's no pathway better to better
places here. There is no behavior driven pathway. So no
matter how good we were here and you know, reasonably
well and I can think quite well respected by the
Star getting permission to go back to Adelaide to aid health,
(38:05):
and we had lots of letters from her treating physicians
about how much it would do her good to be
seeing us. We never got there. We never got to
see her again, and she passed a couple of years ago,
but we kept on. We've got the money and now
it's sort of in her name that we've clocked the
miles and now we're reading the money, and we've had
planned on DEMNSA Australia. We're going to sound a representative
(38:28):
and here so we could actually do a proper presentation
involving the staff here who have been real supportive on
this and actually often come out and walk with us,
and so we can actually sort of give this place
something to hang us hat on, you know, not that
it does anything positive for anyone except you know, keep
your healthy until your bus arrives. At least it would
(38:48):
be seen that their programs and activity staff supported and
participated in a fairly long term fundraising target that got achieved,
you know, and they helped it, and so we thought,
you know, you come in on it. You can all
be a part of the presentation. But you know, as
you well, we've got days less, so we're not going
to be able to do that. We're not going to
make it.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
So what happens from here? You've exhausted all avenues of appeal.
What happens next?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Basically we wait they come for us. The family's doing
its best, they're lobbying the ministers involved that they're very emailing.
We've got this charity group lobbying the minister, the social
media campaigns that they're trying to run to alert the
minister that this is a five generation, fifty five strong
family that you're actually destroying. He may probably isn't aware
(39:38):
of that because we're under that cancelation minister or cancelation
where nobody has to read our file. It's a non
compallable order. So we can request the minister read our
file and intervene if he sees some value in us,
but he can also refuse to read it. And of course,
you know, sometimes it may be a safer option to
not read something that you might find it's too compelling.
(39:59):
And so you know, everybody, we know, hundreds of people
have been emailing, you know, these ministers to say, look,
just open it. You know, if you open it and
read it, you may think different. There is a story
in there about fifty three years in this country, fifty
seven members of a family, five generations, heaths of grandchildren,
(40:19):
a lot of Aboriginal grandchildren and great grandchildren in our
blood lines, deeply entrenched in the community, involved in sporting
clubs for thirty years, you know, awards, recommendations for fundraising
before we came here for breast cancer. Family still in
deeply involved in Red Tree Foundation for fundraising, facids and
(40:41):
and and death. My grandson was still born two years ago,
young Zen, And so we move on to that and
make that family tragedy a part of what we do
for funds now fundraising now. So yeah, that's that's where
we're at.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
It's sad no matter what, it just doesn't seem no
matter what you put forward, there is this absence of
natural justice in the whole process which counts against you.
If you fail that character test. No matter how much
rehabilitation you've done, no matter how many good works you do,
you're always a biki. You're always an ex criminal and
(41:20):
we don't want you in this country. It's a very
bitter pill to swallow.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Look, it's the pathway you get taken down or pushed
down or led down because all the stuff that we
have that are countervailing situations to the actual bad character.
So bad character is not the question in this. There
are murderers, rapists, child molesters that are released from detention
centers every week because they get the opportunity to go
(41:46):
to the AAT or the AART. Now they administrative review
tribunal with all their character references, with all their family,
with all their rehabilitation, and all those things are presented,
and if it's compelling, then that judge can actually go,
you know what, I revoke your cancelation and I reissue
your visa because you've proven that you're not a danger
of the community to me with all this evidence, and
(42:10):
we believe we would have a very strong chance of
that being our outcome if we were granted the opportunity
to go to that tribunal. But when you're canceled under
a certain part of the five oh one Act, the
Ministerial cancelation, it's written in your cancelation you are denied
fair and natural justice. Like there's no hiding it. It's
not like it's secret, it's written in your thing. You
cannot apply for any tribunial, You cannot apply for revocation
(42:33):
because you are denied fair and natural justice because the minister,
one man, a politician, can decide, he may not be
legally trained, that none of the countervailing situation will change
his mind. Whereas as we know, ten twenty thirty percent
of these cancelations, when they go to a proper court
a tribunal, they do get found that they found wanting,
(42:55):
they were wrong, the cancelation was wrong. It gets reversed.
And I read those cases, and our lawyers read those cases.
They go sheepers, you know, like when you stack up
some only just won a murderer, double murderer, even against
an narcotic conviction forty five years ago. Like who's the
more bigger danger to the community In reality, that's.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
A very good question, Tom. Unfortunately, you're going to have
to probably fight this fight from New Zealand, and you
won't stop because your family is here. And let me say,
I'm very sorry that it's come to this because I
know in my heart who you are, and a lot
of other people do as well. And unfortunately politics has intervened.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, no, that's true, Adam. You know, you just can't
make someone look at your file if there's a non
compellable order. We we just can't force the issue where
someone everyone has had eyes on it, believes in us,
but we can't find a way to force the very
people that need to look at it look at it.
So it is what it is. We can we'll get
forcibly removed, and then we can sit in New Zealand
(43:58):
and find reacquaint ourselves with the country we don't remember,
and hope that somewhere on the line, if labour stays
in got for a couple of terms, which is looking
like they might, that somewhere someone introduces an adjustment to
the five oh one where there is a reevaluation on
some of these deportations that some of these people can
actually apply from overseas. And then that file gets open,
(44:19):
and we think that one day if our file eve
got opened and someone looked at it, it will be
looked upon as we probably should have had that opportunity
while we were here.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
I've got to ask you back in nineteen seventy seven,
the prison psychologist said that you have the descendants. Was
the pitvot around which you had built your life. Do
you regret that?
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Now? Look, you can only regret that legislation that changed
what that meant to me has impacted on my life.
The club life for me has been all that family.
There's lots of family involved in it, my brothers and
son in law's sons. So the actual essence of club
life is just family driven. It's honorable. What has changed
(45:02):
is how it's being perceived in legislation. Nothing that I've done,
I mean, you know, I haven't done anything that's actually
created in my situation here. I've just been the same
guy I was when I got out of prison forty
five years ago. I haven't been arrested or broke the law.
Since I've been the same person. The legislation has morphed
into something else. Immigration legislation has morphed into something else.
(45:24):
And now I'm being punished for something I already did
the punishment for. And the meanwhile, I didn't change. Just
the words on the paper that judge me have changed.
And now I've got to pay. And now I can
sit up in New Zealand and hope that more words
come onto the paper later that give me a right
to have another crack at it and come back and
hopefully that's before all of my eighteen seventeen grand kits.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
All right, I know how a feeling mate. I think
we'll leave it there. Tom, Thanks Mane. That's Tom mackey,
former president of the Descendant's Motorcycle Club, inside the Broad
Meadows Detention Center facing deportation, as he says, how many
(46:14):
times can you be punished for the one crime he did?
The crime back in the seventies, did his time rehabilitated.
His continuing offense was to associate with the Descendant's motorcycle
club that's been now used against him. And I think
this absence of natural justice is repugnant and I certainly
don't regret supporting the struggle to strike down unfair laws.
(46:37):
Let's hope there is some turn of justice at the
end of this story, but right now looks pretty bleak.
Thank you for listening. This has been real crime with
Adam shand thanks for listening.
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