My understanding is that under the legislation---Serious and Organised Crime Control Act 2008-- the Attorney-General has right to call an organisation, which could be anything from an informal group of people who meet at the local pub for a weekly drink through to a football club or a business, a Declared Organisation. The Attorney-General can use secret and untested evidence in making that declaration, and his decision can't be challenged in the courts.

Secondly, the substantive issue of motorcycle gang criminality, namely, a criminal conspiracy to commit serious offences using violence or otherwise, is not dealt with by the accepted process of adducing evidence at trial. Rather it is dealt with by a quasi judicial process of prohibition of an organisation by declaration and the imposition of control orders on its members. Severe penalties are then visited upon controlled members who continue some form of contact, even remote contact by post, fax, phone or e-mail - two years imprisonment for a first offence, five years for a second or subsequent offence.

It seems obvious that the legislature has a political incentive to be seen doing something, as time in the media's spotlight is currency to a politician. It's common, although not universally accepted, to suggest that the sharp end of the executive (i.e. those charged with enforcing the law) generally wish for more options in carrying out that enforcement. In a Westminster system of the executive having a controlling influence in the legislature, that would imply inexorable movement towards illiberalism over time as exogenously-sourced crises occur.

So how has liberalism survived for so long in the Westminster tradition? What, if you'll excuse the pun, arrests the movement to a sort of democratic dictatorship?