Page 3104 - Week 09 - Thursday, 13 October 2022
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On seeing this, the victim, and also a friend in the court, on seeing this, went to the DPP and said, “Did you see that behaviour? Surely, that should go to sentencing?” Yes, it should go to sentencing; yet, when the DPP examined the video recording, it was of such a poor quality that it was unusable.
This victim had communicated their concerns to the Attorney-General’s office, as well as to me. My response was to have a meeting with her and pass on this story, as I am now. There was no response from the Attorney-General’s office. It somehow got lost in the emails.
Again, on the budgetary theme, surely, a recording of atrocious behaviour in a witness box in an ACT court should be of such quality that it will count as evidence in any
related litigation or appeal. Surely, that would be the case. But it is not so here.
What I got from the Attorney-General was the statement that the quality, he was advised, was reasonably high. Certainly, it was not in this case. There was no commitment. “We have a camera in the court”; that was the response. It is very disappointing that, even knowing this some time ago now, there has been no commitment to improving the quality of recording in the court system, or even the number of cameras, when something like this, that touches a human life so deeply and disturbingly, is not addressed; given that this may be, sadly, a frequent occurrence, if the quality of recording is bad in one case, I wonder what it is like in others.
Again, I am speaking about two things to which the government seems to have a strong commitment that has not been translated into real action by way of the required spending to implement that action.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (5.23): Tonight I want to speak about the police appropriation in this budget.
I want to start by sending a message of thanks, support and respect to our police. They do a very demanding job. They are asked by the community to do jobs that are usually difficult and all-too-often dangerous. That is why they deserve our acknowledgement and respect. That is why they deserve every ounce of support that we could possibly provide. It is also why we are disappointed by the support offered by this government, not just in terms of financial support but legislative support, policy support and moral support. Many feel, as I do, that the ideology of ministers and the rights of perpetrators are taking precedence over the rights of police and their victims. That is not right. It is not fair. It does not make our community safer.
Now I am not asserting that as an opinion. This is what the facts and the people on the front line are telling us. I will start with the facts. According to the Productivity Commission Report on Government Services, the ACT has the lowest number of police per-capita in Australia, the lowest funding per person for police in Australia, the lowest clearance rates for property crime in Australia and the lowest satisfaction of people who had contact with police in Australia. According to police, there were almost 1,700 hundred cars stolen since July last year, and over 940 breaches of bail by offenders for the first half of the year, placing the territory on target to record the highest number of breaches in history.
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