‘Robbie', an Adelaide-based member of the Finks Motorcycle Club, got a new tattoo to celebrate the South Australian government's war on bikies. He now has the word ‘Finks' emblazoned across his throat in bold green type. It was an indescribably painful process, but Robbie, a 25-year veteran of the club, endured it for what the tattoo symbolises. He is not going to hide away, nor submit to the labels anybody else might give him. He has a criminal record and has done time, but he refuses to be typecast as a criminal. He operates on a different plane altogether, willing to do some short jail terms in order to maintain a life of medieval-style knight errantry. If they send him back to prison, it will just give him more time to master the Navajo flute, which he has been learning to play.

At the same time, Robbie's new tattoo sends a message to his club mates. Their membership is not something they can wear, like a suit or a piece of jewellery, then put away in the cupboard when it's inconvenient. It's not an image that can be used to intimidate weaker beings for personal gain. It's a commitment, one for which a member must be prepared to sacrifice his liberty, and possibly even his life.

The strength of that commitment will soon be tested. The South Australian premier, Mike Rann, has just enacted what he calls the toughest anti-bikie laws in the world - which would suggest that the state is in the grip of some major bikie activity. Rann has said that his Serious and Organised Crime legislation was partly inspired by the commonwealth government's anti-terrorism laws, enacted after the London and Madrid bombings. In reality, it gives the police what they have always wanted: a lower burden of proof, making it easier to get convictions for offences already covered by existing laws.

The new law provides that the state's attorney-general, acting on advice from the police, can declare any group of people a criminal gang and then prohibit members from associating with each other, through the use of control orders. If the members meet or communicate six times in a year, they will face up to five years in jail. There will be no review or judicial appeal, nor can the clubs or individuals gain access to the intelligence on which the control order is based.

In a legal first for an Australian state, the police will also be able to ban the wearing of insignia in public if it deems that community safety is compromised. This amounts to a legally enforceable dress code. And to enforce it, the police will only have to satisfy a "balance of probabilities", rather than prove their allegations beyond reasonable doubt.  South Australia's attorney-general, Michael Atkinson, has proudly described this as "a social experiment" and branded his state "a laboratory" for others to observe in their own struggles with bikies.

Remarkably, the director of public prosecutions, Stephen Pallaras, QC, has told the Adelaide media that the new legislation doesn't go far enough. "Why do we tolerate [the clubs'] existence?" he said. The answer is that their existence is still legal, at least until 1 July, when the new law comes into force. The organisations' clubhouses are set up in accordance with council by-laws; their members are subject to the same legal framework as any other citizens. Over nearly four years of monitoring the media coverage of bikies, I have read on numerous occasions the phrase ‘outlawed motorcycle gangs', as if the clubs were already proscribed. They are not.

Premier Rann has said that the old laws were not sufficient. The bikies have been able to thwart police by hiring the best lawyers in town - hence the lowering of the evidentiary hurdles. This reinforces the popular belief that bikie gangs have become a new kind of organised crime, pursuing anarchic goals while cleverly working the legal political system to their advantage. In reality, there are no legal precedents in Australia to suggest that these clubs are set up for the purpose of criminal activity. Their hierarchies are not structured to facilitate crime, as they would be in dedicated drug syndicates. No club stipulates that members must have a criminal record or commit an offence to join. It would be ridiculous to suggest there aren't criminals involved - there are accomplished villains in most chapters - but it's equally fatuous to maintain, as South Australian authorities have, that the motorcycle is a mere prop, a cover. Illegal activities tend to be decentralised, carried out in groups of two or three members and often with accomplices from outside the club. The uneven distribution of wealth among club members is ample evidence of that. At most, clubs provide a permeable membrane through which criminals can pass back and forth, enlisting hard men to resolve their business disputes.