Rewind almost 30 years, and a politically naive NSW Labor leader wanted to ban teens from wearing their baseball caps backwards. Clearly, Bob Carr insisted from opposition, such a choice of headwear linked a youth to a criminal gang.

At the time, youth crime – often involving knife attacks – in Sydney’s outer suburbs was dominating talkback radio and tabloid media. And so was born a law-and-order auction that would define Carr’s premiership and NSW politics for the next decade. At its election campaign launch in 1995, Labor promised to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. And it was.

Premier Chris Minns in Moree on Wednesday, when he went to the town to run a youth clinic with NRL chiefs and South Sydney Rabbitohs players Latrell Mitchell, Cody Walker and Tyrone Munro, alongside NSW policeCredit: NRL imagery

Now, three decades on, NSW Labor under the leadership of Chris Minns is adopting a similar tough-on-crime approach. There is a real sense of back to the future.

Youth crime is again a problem. In the 1990s, it was Middle Eastern gangs in south-western Sydney. Now crimes are being committed by desperately disadvantaged Indigenous teens in the bush.

In Moree, some 600 kilometres from Minns’ hometown of Sydney, kids are running amok and terrorising locals. No one doubts there is serious youth crime in the town, with children as young as five trailing along as cars are stolen in the dead of night. It is dangerous and frightening for Moree residents and urgent help is needed for the town. But Minns has taken a 1990s approach.

In a kneejerk response, the premier announced controversial bail laws that will make it harder for offenders aged 14 to 18 to get bail if they commit a crime while already on bail. The government then pushed the laws through in the last parliamentary sitting period, despite the serious concerns of some of Minns’ own MPs and ministers.

Meet and greet: Rabbitohs players Cody Walker, Tyrone Munro and Latrell Mitchell attended a youth camp in Moree on Wednesday, along with Premier Chris Minns. Credit: NRL Imagery

Only one spoke publicly against them. Upper house MP Cameron Murphy told parliament that despite his personal objections, he would support the bill because caucus decisions are binding.

A senior Liberal, meanwhile, told me that the Coalition would never have tried to pass such draconian laws in government, but it had to support the bill or be outflanked by Labor on law and order.