Page 3574 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 24 November 2021
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Yet the government have failed to act. In any budget that we have seen, the government have not brought those numbers up to where they need to be. They have not invested in the infrastructure to keep pace with our growing city, either. It has been a long haul to get improvements in Gungahlin, which has been described as being “in a state of disrepair and not fit for purpose”. The AFPA have been calling for a new, dedicated facility, but they got improvements in accommodation in the Joint Emergency Services Centre, and very little detail being provided by the minister as to how that will all play out.
Indeed, with respect to the Winchester police station, it is stated that it is “similarly outdated and quickly falling below standard”. I refer also to Woden—and, as we have said in this place before, Molonglo. Where is the police station for Molonglo? Where is it? We have called for it repeatedly. The police have called for it. Where is it? This government refuses to build a police station in a growing area. It is not surprising, I suppose, because it will not even build shops for them. It will not even let Molonglo have shops. If you are not allowed to go shopping, I suppose police are well down on the list for the poor people of Molonglo!
Those opposite will promise it, as they did in the lead-up to the last election. They will say, “We’re going to fast track it.” What happens when you get to the other side of the election? They will say, “When we said fast track, what we actually meant was delay it by two years.” The poor people of Molonglo are left without resources, and I feel sorry for the police. It is a busy, growing area, and they have to go from Woden or Belconnen to get out there and respond. As Mrs Jones pointed out, there is a very small shopping centre at the Coombs shops. (Second speaking period taken.)
They have said they have called on police when they get broken into, when they get robbed, and the police do not respond in the time frames that you would expect. It is not the police’s fault; they are stretched too thin. We know they are stretched too thin because the police officers tell us, and the people on the ground being robbed tell us that is what is happening to them.
I commend our police; I really do. They are out there loyally doing their jobs when they are spread too thin across the town, and they are trying to deal with so many problems across our community whilst having one hand tied behind their back. That has been exacerbated by what we have seen over the last few years in terms of the fires and the pandemic. As the AFPA president said, when talking to the committee:
We do not have the bodies or the depth to be able to support an ongoing crime team or an investigation team and the pandemic or anything else that may flow out of it—whether it is another bushfire, because we are coming into that season …
They do not have the numbers, and that is the problem. Even in a best-case scenario, where nothing is happening, the police do not have enough numbers. But the best-case scenario seldom happens. We know that, in Australia, we will get floods and fires. We have now been dealing with a pandemic. That means we have seen people taken off investigations and, because they are spread too thin, they are then put on the COVID task force. The AFPA said:
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