Page 180 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 9 February 2022
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The Australian Federal Police Association, in response, says this is not an indication of poor policing, and I agree. The AFPA says it is an indication of “overstretched and overworked officers”. That was the case last year, and it is the case now.
We are still the lowest in the nation on all of those measures—resourcing, recurrent expenditure and clearance rates—and the situation seems to be getting worse, because now the community is really seeing the impact of that. The new report proves that. The new outcome that has been highlighted in the latest report—satisfaction of the public with their interaction with police—is now the lowest in the country.
The new ROGS report shows that those people who had contact with the police in the latest 12-month reporting period rated their satisfaction with the interaction at 77.6 per cent, which is well below the national average of 81.9 per cent, and the worst of all jurisdictions. This is not some general dissatisfaction; it is not some sort of generic survey. This is about people who had interaction with the police.
This is not just some quirk of our jurisdiction. The Greens come into this place, try to find excuses, and say that we are a different jurisdiction; it is different. What is your excuse? What is your excuse for the lowest rate of satisfaction of residents in the ACT regarding interacting with the police than anybody else in Australia?
We cannot argue about having unique jurisdictional characteristics. Australians are Australians, and Australians here in the ACT, interacting with their police, say that they have the lowest satisfaction rate in Australia. Let me be very clear: that is not a criticism of our police. That is a direct result of our police being spread way too thin on the ground.
One of the other statistics that is really disturbing is that we were the only jurisdiction in Australia to report a negative average annual growth rate in real recurrent expenditure from 2016-17 to 2020-21. I have not just made that figure up; that is one of the reporting lines in the ROGS. In that period every other jurisdiction had positive growth in real recurrent expenditure. We had negative growth.
We reduced the amount in real terms that we spent on police. Every other jurisdiction increased what they spent on police. And now we have the lowest satisfaction rate in Australia. Well, who’d have thunk it? It is pretty obvious what is going on, and the claim by the government that they are supporting police, against those statistics, is false. It cannot be true. Indeed, that is what the AFPA is saying.
We have been calling on them to respond and, sadly, they have not. Worse, they have been told that we are going to online reporting. That was one of the more controversial issues from last year. I am sure that many offices received correspondence; certainly mine did. This was reported widely. I will quote from the media, from the ABC of 1 December. The article was headlined “ACT police will soon no longer attend most home break-ins as reporting moves online”. The article reads:
Canberrans who have had their homes broken into may no longer be visited by a police officer—instead, they will be asked to report the crime online.
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