A Gold Coast Liberal National party MP has called for the return of vagrancy laws to allow police to prosecute homeless people amid an ongoing crackdown on tent cities inQueensland.
Ray Stevens, the member for Mermaid Beach, made the call in a speech to parliament last week.
He spoke about the rise of “presumably homeless people” setting up in tents in “some of the most sought after locations anyone could wish for – absolute beachfront” in his electorate.
“There are many local voices contacting my office to ask what I am doing to protect their residential amenity. My first call of course is to my local police station,” he said.
“The police reluctantly tell me they have no legislative power to move these people on, which I find incredibly disappointing. The vagrancy act is no longer applicable and unless there is demonstrable public disturbance the police, I am told, cannot move them on. This is unacceptable.”
“It is imperative a solution be found that includes giving law enforcement officers the legislative power to enforce the removal of these illegal camp sites,” he said.
The 1931 Vagrants, Gaming, and Other Offences Act made “having no visible lawful means of support or insufficient lawful means” an offence subject to six months’ prison. It also banned begging, public drunkenness, fortune telling, using bad language and more.
It was repealed in 2005.
South-east Queensland is facing its worst housing crisis in generations, with hundreds living in tent cities or sleeping bags. Councils in the Gold Coast,Moreton Bay and Brisbanehave carried out a campaign of clearing the camps in recent months.
Council rangers don’t have the same powers of detention as arrest, though they can levy a fine and can remove property such as tents from public land. Police typically accompany them during homeless camp clearances butonly as a supporting element.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
A University of Queensland law professor, Tamara Walsh – who has long studied laws criminalising homelessness – said police can still charge people with public nuisance offences.
But they tend not to because doing so is extremely expensive to the taxpayer, due to the cost of putting an offender through court and jail.
“If people are living in poverty and unhoused, then that is a housing issue. It’s a social welfare issue, it’s not a criminal law issue,” she said.
Walsh said homelessness is typically not a choice, so punishing people for being homeless can’t make them stop.
“I wonder how many people would swap their very comfortable, warm home for a beachfront squat at the moment, I certainly wouldn’t. Yeah, the view is spectacular, but at night you can’t see a thing and all you are is in the freezing cold,” she said.
North West Community Group president, Paul Slater, said bringing back the act would be a step in the wrong direction.
“Making homelessness illegal would be a disgrace and would be shameful for our country,” he said.
The attorney general, Deb Frecklington, was contacted for comment.
The state government is alsoconsidering bringing back laws against public drunkenness, contrary to the recommendations of the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Stevens said that he understood “that there must be solutions to where the homeless people can be moved to” but that he had heard several reports of bad behaviour on the part of the homeless, including one father who saw two of them “fornicating in the public toilets”.
Council rangers moved on a tent city in Rebel Wilson park in the Gold Coast on Tuesday. A few kilometres away, the National Homelessness Conferencewas being held at the same time.